RESEARCH PAPERS ACCOUNTING STUDENTS' PERSPECTIVE OF WORK-RELEVANT COMMUNICATION SKILLS: EVIDENCE FROM A PHILIPPINE UNIVERSITY By PIA PATRICIA P. TENEDERO Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines. Date Received: 28/11/2016 Date Revised: 25/02/2017 Date Accepted: 13/03/2017 ABSTRACT To further probe the alignment (or misalignment) of university and industry priorities in terms of English language skills development of future accountants, this study extends the earlier investigation of employers' perception on the communication skills needed by entry-level accountants. Using conjoint analysis, this research examines the outlook of 302 graduating accounting students on the communication skills that they consider relevant to their target career. The respondents answered a researcher-made questionnaire by ranking 16 skills set in the order of their perceived importance for employment in audit firms. Results show that accounting majors perceive interview skills to be the most important communication skill related to employability, followed by reading and communication technology. Such views are relatively consistent with employers' perspectives. However, writing and listening are ranked lower by the students than employers. Analysis of gender variance further shows that female students give higher importance to reading than their male counterpart. Keywords: Communication Skills, Accounting Education, English for Accountants, Student Perspective, Conjoint Analysis. INTRODUCTION Significant reforms are reshaping the dynamics of education in the Philippines. As the Economic Community opens more opportunities for employment through , member countries are enjoined to take initiatives to facilitate regional integration. A concrete step taken by the Philippines is the adoption of the 12-year basic education system. This change was made official with the ratification of Republic Act No. 10533, also known as the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, on May 15, 2013. While it has yet to be seen if the added years in basic education shall, indeed, translate to more competent college students and future professionals, the curricular changes mandated by the K- 12 program presents an important opportunity to review course content to ensure convergence with workplace priorities. This goal is an effort to address the perennial issue Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mutual recognition arrangements (David, 2008) of skills gap, which has often been blamed on the education system (Cappelli, 2015; Jackson, 2013; Kavanagh & Drennan, 2008). Of particular interest in this research is the case of accounting education, which has been the focus of multiple studies examining employer expectations (e.g., Hodges & Burchell, 2003; Nair, et al., 2012; Ridoutt, et al., 2005; Stevens, 2007) and work-relevant skills (e.g., Boyle, et al., 2014; Chen, 2005, Stone & Lightbody, 2012; Tam, 2013; Weaver & Kulesza, 2014). A common approach in exploring this research agenda is perception analysis, which has yielded some reports of convergence (e.g., Jackson, 2013), but more cases of divergence (e.g., Jackling & De Lange, 2009; Kavanagh & Drennan, 2008; Lin, et al., 2010) in the views of students, educators, and employers. The novelty of this present study lies in its focus on the Philippine context, which has been recognized internationally for the competence of its accounting 30 i-manager’s Journal o English Language Teaching, n l l Vol. 7 No. 1 January - March 2017