The Language Industry’s Insight Into the Curriculum Design of a Language Programme

Participants

The thirteen participants for the study were purposefully selected through typical case sampling (Johnson & Christensen, 2004) to represent the key players of the language industry; from industry owners to freelancers with a minimum of ten years experience. Among them, three of them are owners of companies that offer language services such as translation, proofreading and editing. Four of them are executives at various publication companies responsible for language and creative-related work such as editing, creating creative contents, and evaluating works to be published. One of the four sits in an international editorial board evaluating media contents worldwide. Another six are doing free-lance translation, creative writing, proofreading, educational materials evaluation, and creative content editing while holding permanent positions at executive level in various organizations. Thus, they are a composition of reliable stakeholders in the language industry, able to provide valuable insights with their experience and knowledge. The selection of participants is important to fit the construct of the study and the size of participants is sufficient when data saturation is achieved (Omona, 2013).

Data collection

Firstly, the experts were provided with the program’s academic structure so that they were aware of the subjects taken by the students. They were also given all the course information consisting of the description, learning outcomes, contents, and assessments of each course. Next, they were invited to attend a focus group interview session with a panel of interviewers from the faculty. The interview session lasted for three hours, and the responses were recorded and transcribed.

Prior to the interview, these experts had become the panel of industry commentators for the students’ final semester individual project. For this project, students’ attainment of knowledge and skills learned throughout the five semesters of the program was evaluated. They were also assessed in terms of managerial and problem-solving skills as well as entrepreneur and inquisitive mindset. Thus, all the experts already had information on the skills and knowledge learned and the students’ ability in completing the project. The interviewers were invited to give their comments and fill up an open-ended survey. The verbal comments for the final project and responses from the survey served to cross-examine the experts’ responses from the interview for consistency and reliability as suggested by Nunes et al. (2019).

The focus group interview explored the following areas: Industry view on the curriculum design, basic skills required by the industry, technical skills required by the industry, and other matters pertaining to the industry in relation to the graduates of the programme. The open-ended survey given after the student project presentation required the expert to pen down their thoughts and opinions of the students’ project and the programme overall. There are three sections in the survey; feedback on the students’ project (weaknesses, strengths, entrepreneurial opportunities, suitability of final project in place of industrial training and career opportunities for students), feedback on the curriculum design (suitability and sufficiency of subjects for the program, the alignment of the subjects with the needs of the industry) and placement of graduates in the industry and other comments.

Data analysis

Data collected were first of all, notably rich and informative. Verbal responses were recorded, transcribed, and summarised. They were analysed qualitatively by paying attention to emerging responses from the participants; words, phrases, and context by which they were treated based on their consistency, intensity, and extensiveness (Krueger, 2002). Similarities and differences were noted and classified, and attention were given to frequently emerging responses as prevalent findings. All responses were analytically analysed and treated as saturated data when common findings in the responses were identified (George, 2021).

The design of the academic language program

The developers of the programme were responsible to determine first of all which of these learning outcomes outlined in the MQF were the most significant and useful for the programme. The outcomes, nonetheless, do not spell out the skills specifically. Reflecting the nature of the nature of the language programme, communication skills note the highest percentage (18%) of the total outcomes. It is followed by practical skills (13%), cognitive skills (12%) and digital skills (10%). They are followed by Interpersonal skills; leadership, autonomy, and responsibility; and personal skills, all at 8%. Ethics and professionalism; and knowledge and understanding both at 6% and lastly numerical skills at 1%.

Simultaneously, the developers also worked on designing courses based on the description of the body of the knowledge for language programmes in the Program Standard: Language. Next, the MQF clusters need to be mapped to the courses developed. Table 1 shows the Frequency of MQF clusters mapped to course clusters. As shown, the courses are classified into three clusters with six courses under proficiency cluster, another six courses identified as content area cluster and 10 courses for work-based cluster.

The six proficiency courses are reading, writing, listening, speaking and grammar offered in semester 1 and 2 emphasizing on communication skills, practical skills and cognitive skills. For six content area courses, they build on knowledge and understanding as well as interpersonal skills. There are 10 work-based courses, and they enhance communication and digital skills followed by practical skills and leadership, autonomy, and responsibility. This mapping however was a non-linear process by which a lot of adjustments were made along the way.

Skills

The experts were very articulate about the skill sets for the language industry as cited by few that skills are translated into workplace competence (Angelone et al., 2020; American Malaysia Chamber of Commerce, 2020; Camacho & Alexandre, 2019; MCMC, 2015; Xavier, 2022). The skills were discussed at length and continuously emerging when other areas such as the courses and curriculum structure were brought up. As the language industry is an interplay between both technical and soft skills, there was no separate discussion between the two sets of skills.

Figure 1 shows the skill sets for the language industry deemed important by the experts. The most important skills required is communication with an emphasis on the ability to communicate in various professional settings when dealing with clients. Human Resources Development Fund (2019) also claimed the lack of communication skills among graduates in Malaysia.

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Among the specific skills mentioned were attending to requests from clients and receiving and responding to feedback. This is, according to the experts, very vital in unexpected situations when dealing with difficult clients. Thus, students should also be equipped with the ability to negotiate and persuade especially when determining charges for their services and products that would be able to position language service providers as visible (Dan, 2021). In addition, intercultural communication is also deemed as important due to the diversity of culture at the workplace and that their potential customers could reach an international audience. The experts also suggested that any courses related to these skills should simulate real-life situations and include current issues in role-play exercises for instance. Language in many ways is culture and thus the localization becomes a language service with the highest demand (Whiteley, 2020).

The next important skills discussed were computer-based skills; from the most basic skills of word processing and data entry to the use of language service tools available and required by the industry. The experts highly recommended the introduction of computer-aided translation and proofreading tools as well as onsite screens. Among the recommended tools were Trados, MS Word Tracking, Memsource and PRPM by DBP. They also suggested the inclusion of multimedia and publishing tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and In-Design to complement the computer-based skills. The emphasis on computer skills also applies to designing skills and the experts suggested the use of simple open source designing software and that students must know basic graphic design principles. Thus, the experts advocated the need to keep abreast with the current trend and tools available in the market since according to GALA (2020) and Looi and Lau (2021), the technology in the language industry is not only vigorous but is also demanded by clients.

Marketing and sales were the next most needed skills by the industry. These include the ability to market products and services on appropriate social media as well as available marketing platforms such as Shoppee and Lazada and sponsored channels available on YouTube and Facebook. The experts also believe that direct marketing skills, meeting potential customers, and doing effective sales pitch are vital. The Economic Planning Unit (2009) stated that marketing skills are important to build resilience to sustain in the industry.

The experts also agreed that students need to be equipped with research skills which include the ability to search for information on products, services, and clients, doing need-analysis, and finding the right techniques for market survey and eventually to transfer these research findings into content writing. It is also beneficial if the students too are prepared with intellectual property rights knowledge that can assist in understanding copyright issues and getting patents for their works in order to avoid them from falling into the trap of plagiarism and to protect their works respectively. Last but not least, the experts cited the needs of personal and interpersonal skills. These include conflict and emotional management skills, time management skills and human resource skills which are deemed important for the development and sustainability of their professional careers especially if they choose to do free-lance jobs.

Courses

The experts’ insights into the courses offered in the curriculum structure was interesting even though it may not be as detailed as the discussion on skills. They neither proposed adding nor dropping any courses. They were more concerned about the knowledge the students should be equipped with thus, to strengthen the existing courses and to add suggested topics in any suitable courses. It is worth noting that the mention of skills kept emerging when courses were discussed. Figure 2 shows the suggested enhancement of topics to the already existing courses in the curriculum design.

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From Figure 2, the focus for the Publishing course should not be on one type of publishing but to also include desktop publishing and content conversion from one publishing type to another. They also believed that students should be exposed to e-publications such as Kindle, Create and Cygil. Next, For the Translation course, the experts suggested the addition of translation of fiction works, legal and formal documents as well as interpretation as they are the demands in the market. The experts also suggested the inclusion of business and professional communication topics for both written and spoken skills. The only addition of the new course was third language courses of any Asian or European languages. Knowing a third language does not only assist students to better understand how languages work but it also boosts their confidence. Most importantly it is an asset for them to work internationally and to get the extra allowance if they are working in-house.

Curriculum design versus industry needs

In essence, all but one agreed that the curriculum design meets the industry needs. They cited reasons such as the design is general enough for diploma students to learn all the knowledge, they need to prepare them for the workforce. The generality allows students to explore the various areas in the language industry such as translation, proofreading, editing, creative content creation, copy writing thus choosing their forte for their career. They also agreed that the curriculum design does equip the students with basic skills needed for the industry particularly their language skills. The students were applauded for their excellent use of English during their presentations as well as in the end-products of their final semester project.

The absence of industrial training has its merit; students were trained to opt for self-employment. This produces very independent graduates who plan for themselves instead of attaching to an employer waiting for instructions. The final semester project was considered as a suitable replacement for the industrial training provided that the industry players are kept informed and involved in the project. The project also showcased the students' creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneur mindset that prepared them for the real-world prospects.

The only reservation for a partial agreement to the design was that it lacks communication with and connection to the real people be them the potential clients, employers and fellow industry players. Thus, the suggestions to review the methods of learning activities and assessments should be given high consideration when revising the curriculum. It is also recommended that the program be promoted more rigorously to the stakeholders, which include industry leaders, potential students, language industry community and the society at large.