ASSESSING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY OF RURAL STUDENTS FOR BETTER EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Communication skill is one of the important generic skills essential for student's employment. After globalisation, communication skills are given importance due to varied business demands. Especially for students pursuing arts, science and commerce, the ability to communicate effectively is the most sought-after requirement during interviews and for seeking jobs. Thus, this study assess the communication skills of the rural students using a standardized English proficiency test and analyse their skill gaps in achieving English communicative competence based on their performances to the sub-skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The review of literature reports that there is lack of appropriate training in English communication skills for rural students studying in Arts and Science colleges. The findings of this study also reveals that the competency levels of the rural students are mostly low and in some cases it is reaching low intermediate level of ACTFL benchmarks.