English Across the Curriculum: Voices from Around the World: Students’ Perceptions of the Use of English in a Core Business Subject for First-Year Business Students

English literacy and communication skills are crucial
to business graduates for their future career development, and
Hong Kong universities emphasize language competency
across the curriculum to develop students as effective communicators. In the Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, each core subject includes an individual English language writing task, contributing to at least 15
percent of the overall subject assessment. This chapter reports
on a study investigating the ongoing English Across the
Curriculum collaboration between the Faculty and the English
Language Centre. The study examined student perceptions
of the use of language as a grading criterion in a core business subject, as well as the usefulness of assessment language
support materials. The findings indicate that most students
used the language materials and reported improvements in
their case study reports. However, some did not recognize the
central importance of language competency, believing that language skills and professional knowledge are separate entiti