The Role of Personal Factors in 'Communication Mobility' Development of Thai and Russian Professionals in BELF Context
English

Olga Marina, Krich Rajprasit
2016 3L Language, Linguistics and Literature: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies  
With the aim of attempting to attain particular communicative goals, Communication Mobility (CM) can be viewed as one of the key elements in the complex construct of professional communicative competence in terms of oral English proficiency. CM has been proposed as an ability to employ a set of specific communicative strategies to facilitate professional communication, particularly among non-native English speakers. This preliminary study aims to identify perceived CM levels among Thai and
more » ... an professionals working in international companies; to investigate possible correlation between personal factors (i.e. age, work experience, their perceived level of oral English proficiency, frequency of their attendance at meetings conducted in English, and frequency of English usage in their workplace) and CM; to compare these factors and the conditions in which CM may be developed among these two groups; and to predict the possibility of the development of CM. A quantitative method was employed and responses to the specifically designed questionnaire were obtained from 60 participants. The findings revealed that Russian participants were rated as very good users of CM, while Thai participants were only rated as fair CM users. In general terms, for both groups, only the frequency of English language use in the workplace was found to correlate with the perceived CM. The frequency of English language use in their workplaces was the only factor for the Thai participants to predict the development of CM. Such findings help in designing ESP courses which attempt to simulate workplace communicative situations, often seen as problematic and uncertain. 169 that at present, both the commercial and non-commercial aspects of professional communication are more likely to be found in non-personal international communication situations. Besides, the mode of international professional communication is predominantly either oral (Rogerson-Revell 2007, Wozniak 2010) or multimodal, which presupposes an interplay between productive skills (i.e. writing and speaking) (Louhiala-Salminen 2002) . In particular, professional communicative competence is seen as a complex construct, in which the shared core of English language knowledge is inseparable from a wider range of skills and abilities. With regard to the purposes of this study, the key concepts include communication as an interactive social activity (Harris 1987) , and a communicative situation as a combination of a specific time, place, activity and the people involved in the dialogue, which makes it both unique (Harris 1987), and dynamic (Celce-Murcia 2007). In the following section, communication strategies, the focal concepts of communication mobility, and the similarities and difference between communication strategies and communication mobility are to be discussed. COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
doi:10.17576/3l-2016-2202-12 fatcat:g55o2gxs3vbu3hr7veacleange