French for specific purposes: The gateway to employment opportunities for Nigerian graduates

Abstract

For some years now, accessing jobs after graduation has become a serious issue for Nigerian graduates, their parents and the nation at large. This trend is traceable to a number of factors which include poor curricula in use for many programmes, lack of facilities for teaching, lack of teaching personnel and lack of seriousness on the part of many undergraduates. For these reasons, the tag ‘‘unemployable’’ has become the classification for Nigerian graduates. However, even when some students by dint of hard work manage to come out well groomed, the jobs remain in short supply due to the down-turn in the Nigerian economy. Under this situation, only those who have ‘‘something extra’’ such as working knowledge of Foreign Languages especially ‘‘French’’ can outsmart others vis-à-vis access to jobs locally and internationally. This paper therefore wishes to re-echo the need for the mounting of ‘‘French for Specific Purposes’’ for students in Nigerian Universities to help improve upon their marketability. This could be achieved by making French a compulsory GST course where adequate curricula are developed to suit the working needs of graduates in the various disciplines where French could be an added advantage to the job seekers.