The role of personal factors in 'Communication Mobility' development of Thai and Russian professionals in BELF context

摘要

With the aim of attempting to attain particular communicative goals, Communication Mobility (CM) can beudviewed as one of the key elements in the complex construct of professional communicative competence in termsudof oral English proficiency. CM has been proposed as an ability to employ a set of specific communicativeudstrategies to facilitate professional communication, particularly among non-native English speakers. Thisudpreliminary study aims to identify perceived CM levels among Thai and Russian professionals working inudinternational companies; to investigate possible correlation between personal factors (i.e. age, work experience,udtheir perceived level of oral English proficiency, frequency of their attendance at meetings conducted inudEnglish, and frequency of English usage in their workplace) and CM; to compare these factors and theudconditions in which CM may be developed among these two groups; and to predict the possibility of theuddevelopment of CM. A quantitative method was employed and responses to the specifically designedudquestionnaire were obtained from 60 participants. The findings revealed that Russian participants were rated asudvery good users of CM, while Thai participants were only rated as fair CM users. In general terms, for bothudgroups, only the frequency of English language use in the workplace was found to correlate with the perceived CM.udThe frequency of English language use in their workplaces was the only factor for the Thai participants toudpredict the development of CM. Such findings help in designing ESP courses which attempt to simulateudworkplace communicative situations, often seen as problematic and uncertain.