PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE REAL WORLD: ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURS

Abstract

Entrepreneurship Education provides the opportunities and the training that would enable graduates to be creative thinkers—those with innovative business management skills, strong self-esteem, and the kind of discipline that would ultimately allow them to start their own businesses and create jobs for others. Nonetheless, studies have also shown that graduates who have undergone these courses rarely end up becoming entrepreneurs after graduation; the main reason being the students’ lack of communication skills in English as well as the fact that the “whats” to be taught and the “hows” to teach them have not been given due consideration by the designers and course instructors. As such there is a need to examine these elements as they are crucial parts of understanding entrepreneurship education. This paper explores the underlying conceptions of an entrepreneurship education course at a Malaysian public university as to what would prepare students to become global entrepreneurs. An in-depth exploratory qualitative study involving five (5) course designers was carried out and based on the thematic analysis method, four key underlying themes were generated mainly ‘Entrepreneurship Education Curriculum’, ‘Oral English Communication Skills for Global Entrepreneurs’, ‘Course Instructors’ English Proficiency’ and ‘Challenges in the Entrepreneurial Classroom’.   Finally, this paper discusses the implications to be drawn for the teaching of entrepreneurship such that we would be able to create global entrepreneurs.