LANGUAGE SKILLS NEEDS IN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Andrea Holubekova and Maria Fordosova

Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE), 2017, vol. 20, issue 2

Abstract: In the article, results and findings of a survey aimed at identifying language skills needs of Slovak small, medium-sized and large enterprises operating mainly in agriculture and food processing industry are presented. An online questionnaire was constructed to collect data. 14 out of 50 selected companies responded. Our findings revealed the fact that the Slovak enterprises use mainly English and German when communicating with their headquarters, suppliers and customers. The respondents also require their employees to have the following special language skills: communicating on the telephone, conducting business negotiations and writing business letters in a foreign language. As for language management strategies, the enterprises organize language training courses for their employees within their premises or the employees have to attend language courses outside the premises. The results of the survey conducted in Slovakia and the EU surveys were compared. Based on the results, we suggest stronger cooperation between the SMEs and universities in Slovakia in production of graduates better equipped with the language skills required by the business environment.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/281183/files/R ... Holubekova_et_al.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:roaaec:281183

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.281183

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE) from Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().