BUSINESS VOCABULARY ACQUISITION:ASSESSING THE STANDARD OF RESPONSES OF VERNACULAR AND ENGLISH MEDIUM STUDENTS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

With the growth of ESP Business English (BE) in professional education curriculum, vocabulary enhancing strategies assume pivot importance as effective business communicative competency promotes the professionalism of engineering students. The growth is for three reasons: Firstly, the urgency of specialized English to suit specific needs of a profession; secondly, the changing contours in the field socio-linguistics from formal linguistic features to real work-a-day features of communication; thirdly, need-based education psychology, i.e. learners’ needs and interests determine the effectiveness of taught subjects. The present study attempts to assess the level of business vocabulary acquisition and the standard of responses of three groups of students – “Vernacular Medium with English as a Compulsory Subject at School and Intermediate Level (VMECSSIL), “Vernacular Medium with English as an Optional Subject at School and Intermediate level (VMEOSSIL), and “English Medium Background” (EMB) of an ESP BE language laboratory “Communication and Interpersonal skills for Corporate Readiness Laboratory” (CISCR). The 30 hours experiment comprising of 10 lab classes were conducted taking 18 engineering students of 6 from each medium. The obtained result revealed that the samples with the students of EMB had higher business vocabulary proficiencies than the students of VMECSSIL and VMEOSSIL.