With the cost of the latest oil spill possibly as high as $100 million, safety in the oil and gas industry has come under the spotlight again. The well-head platform of the West Atlas rig, more than 200 km off Australia’s Kimberley coast, has been leaking oil into the Timor Sea for more than eight weeks. Thai-based operator PPTEP Australasia announced this week that it will make its fourth attempt to plug the Montara field well, as the third attempt had failed.
Though no one is saying that the oil spill was caused by a communications breakdown (the incident is still being investigated), it is the need for safety and first class communications that prompted Apollo English to develop a curriculum specifically for the energy industry. With offshore crews often coming from multi-cultural backgrounds, the urgent need for one common language can be easily seen.
As the first wholly owned English language company in Vietnam (Apollo has been here since 1994) company management saw the need some time ago for industry specific courses and has developed curricula for the oil and gas industry, banking, health, hospitality and pharmaceuticals, among others. Apollo English has recognised that specific industries have specific needs for their employees. The English language skills of their staff must not only include general English skills but must also include industry specific terms and vocabulary.
As the curriculum developed by Apollo for the oil and gas industry needs to be tailored to individual and company requirements, the syllabus is negotiated at the beginning and middle of the course. No core text book is used. The students and teacher together with company management decide on areas that require primary focus. This means that course work can be adapted and re-focused during the course. Participants are required to provide authentic material from their jobs and companies for teachers to use in class to give them “real life” examples of English usage. Also the job roles and responsibilities of the participants help Apollo decide on the most appropriate supplementary materials to be used in the course and which units of study should be expanded. It has also seen the need to focus on areas of English for business communication such as report writing, presentation skills, business writing, interviewing skills, customer service and telephone receptionist skills.
The company offers its corporate clients customised courses so their staff will achieve English improvements in the areas where it is most needed. Courses can also be tailored specifically for different groups within a company. For instance, management level teams will require different English language skills than workers at the “coal face”. Some teams may need English language skills for international business, so curricula can be targeted to increase their facility when travelling overseas or entertaining overseas clients. - VET