Enhancing Police Officers' Communication Skills Through English for Occupational Purposes

Abstract

The study examined the effect of English for Occupational purposes on Police officers’ use of English. Specifically the study was designed to identify the essential components to be included in the teaching of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). It also examined the effect of EOP in enhancing the communicative skills of the trainees in Police colleges in Nigeria. The research designs used for the study were survey and experimental. The data collected were analyzed using different statistical techniques. These are the mean, standard deviation, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Five research questions were formulated and five hypotheses were tested. The main findings were that all the items listed in table 2 and 3 were accepted to be essential components that could be included in the teaching of EOP in police colleges that can enhance communicative competence. These finding were interpreted in terms of the need to restructure the Use of English course in Police colleges. The findings have shown that communicative language teaching, approach can be effectively adopted in Police colleges to enhance communicative competence and consequently improve the learners communicative performances. Based on this, five recommendations were made for EOP teaching in Police colleges amongst which is the need to focus the language teaching in Police colleges on achieving the needs of the learners in time and space.