BRIDGING ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY: ENGLISH COMMUNICATION TRAINING FOR GLOBAL CAREERS

Abstract

In today's global economy, English communication skills have emerged as a vital employability skill particularly for graduates seeking positions within multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper provides a comparison of the English language teaching programs of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar and the Institute of Technology (IOT) Zakura to see how well they are aligned with the MNC requirements. The assessment used corporate communication skills benchmarks as a framework, focussing on the course syllabus, instructional materials, Language Laboratories, and assessment of skills. The findings of the research reveal that NIT Srinagar has more coverage for skills in their two-semester course with a dedicated language lab, more faculty resources compared to IOT Zakura which offered a one-semester course and had only limited faculty, and no language lab availability which restricted opportunities for developing oral and auditory skills - attributable skills often favoured by industrial recruiters. The study suggests that in order to assess graduate employability, a redesign of the existing curriculum, an improvement to faculty training, and technology enhanced language learning, will be required to improve engineering graduates employability globally.