A Study Of Finance Majors’ English Language Capital Investment

According to the Economics of Language and Human Capital Theory, English language is a kind of human capital and learning English is actually doing investment in English language capital. In order to get more chances to be employed by banks, it is better for Finance majors to have a clear idea about the gaps between banks’ expectations and their actual investment in English language capital. By doing so they can have new inspirations to invest correctly, which means they would be able to achieve balance between developing their maximum language competence and spending their time, energy and money. Although previous studies have already revealed that individual career development matters with the language capital investment, few are about Chinese college students’ English language capital investment, let alone the studies that focus on the gaps between their English language capital investment and employers’ expectations. So this study tries to clear three main doubts. First, what are the banks’ expectations of investment in English language capital? Second, what is the actual situation of Finance majors’ investment of English language capital? And third, what are the gaps between the actual situation of Finance majors’ investment in English language capital and the banks’ expectations?The study takes an empirical investigation by using both interview and questionnaires. Interviews with 30 managers and human resource directors from 10 banks were carried out in order to know the general expectations of English language investment at the levels of both managers’ satisfaction and recruitment. A questtionnaire was designed and sent to 50 employees from the same banks in person to get more specific expectations of English language investment caused by banks’ daily work. Another questionnaire was conducted via email with 80 Finance majors, who are going to graduate in July of 2015, so that their actual investment of English language capital can be found.Results show that banks expect Finance majors to do most proportions of English capital investment in writing and reading for employees using English writing and reading skills much more frequently. And considering the relatively bigger gap between the required proficiency and the employees’real competence, banks also expect Finance majors to do more investment in speaking. In fact, Finance majors invest mostly in reading but least in writing. And although they view speaking as the most needed skill to be invested, they still put most investment in reading and listening. So some gaps can be seen between banks’expectations and the Finance majors’ real investment. Especially, banks expect Finance majors invest mostly in writing while Finance majors actually invest least in it. The study also finds that both employees and Finance students are not totally satisfied with the ESP course at college, for they claim that the intensity of ESP is too much but with low difficulty level.It was hoped that the results of the present study could guide Finance majors to learn English scientifically in terms of investment in English language capital, and help them to have more priorities in applying for their ideal positions in banks in the future. It was also hoped that this study could offer some implications for ESP teaching.