Teaching english to marketing students: bridging the gap between academic and real-world skills

Abstract

The marketing sector has been experiencing substantial changes due to the constant need to adjust to apace-evolving markets and demands. Digital development takes on an important role in this scenario, which may not be echoing in marketing education. Thus, there is an increasing discussion surrounding the skills required of marketing graduates in the current educational and professional set. Given that English proficiency is ranked as crucial by stakeholders, and it seems not to translate into many Portuguese marketing programs, the goal of this chapter is to provide a holistic view over the state of the art on the match/gap between the language skills developed in marketing programs and those expected from practitioners and marketing professionals in the 21st century. The results of the content analysis showed that (in)formal communication in English, namely through emails, instant messaging, and social media, should be recognized as a core competence within the marketing curriculum.