Page 543 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Adapting authentic workplace talk for workplace training 521

authentic language contexts does not relieve the instructor’s burden of materi-
als development”.

3. The data source and workplace training context

This challenge provides the impetus for the current chapter. The corpus of work-
place interactions which provides the raw data for the chapter was collected by
2
the Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) at Victoria University of Wel-
lington which, since 1996, has been developing a large corpus of transcribed re-
cordings of workplace talk from a range of blue and white collar workplaces.
More than 2500 interactions have been recorded from twenty one worksites, and
involving around 5000 participants. This material has been used extensively for
research purposes (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003; see also Marra and Holmes in
this volume), but until recently it has been relatively underused as a resource for
workplace language training (although see Stubbe and Brown 2002; Holmes
and Fillary 2000; Malthus, Holmes and Major 2005).
We saw an opportunity to address this gap when, in 2005, the university was
contracted to provide language-focused training courses for skilled migrants
who had been unable to find work in their chosen professions in New Zealand
for at least two years. Applicants for the courses are required to be proficient in
English at a level comparable to at least an IELTS score of 6.0 (roughly equating
to intermediate proficiency) and to be trained and experienced in a profession.
Professions represented by participants in the programme include law, stock brok-
ing, finance and economics, teaching, academia, design, economics, accountancy,
and IT and telecommunications consultants. Applicants reported a number of
barriers to employment prior to joining the course. Primary among these are
limited language proficiency (especially in relation to job interviews) and the
need for professional work experience in the New Zealand context before many
employers will consider employing them.
The twelve-week course is divided into a five-week in-class component fol-
lowed by a six-week workplace placement (with each Friday spent back in class)
and concludes with a final week in class. The initial five week block focuses on
job interview technique and other aspects of finding employment as well as on de-
veloping awareness of critical aspects of communication in the NZ workplace in
preparation for the six week work placement and it is to this end that we harnessed
the LWP corpus. Using such a large quantity of workplace talk for intercultural
communication training requires careful planning around three critical issues: 3

1. Identifying pragmatic targets for instruction;
2. Selecting suitable samples of workplace talk;
3. Choosing appropriate instructional methods to exploit authentic workplace
talk.