Suggestions for Business Japanese Language Education from a Foreign Students' Employment Opinion Survey

A questionnaire to investigate the employment consciousness of foreign students in respect of Japanese companies was deployed. We found that 70% of the foreign students wished to find a job in an overseas subsidiary, in their mother country, after an initial period of working for the same or another company in Japan. In this way, they envisaged making maximum use of their linguistic capability. They didn't always aim to join the major companies and were seeking to choose a company according to the achievements of the company, or from the point of view of the benefits package on offer. And once they had been employed, they thought they would like to harness their linguistic capability and so contribute to the company. Moreover, foreign students bear uneasiness about Japanese corporate culture, sense of values, in-company order, and communication with Japanese workers. These uneasy elements were in agreement with similar unease felt by the Japanese companies. However, it was observed the foreign students had a positive mindset within which they studied these uneasy elements during their lessons at the university. This paper, as an extension to reporting the results of the investigation (Fukuoka and Zhao: 2013) into foreign student employment at Japanese companies, seeks to analyze the gap between Japanese companies' foreign student employment consciousness and foreign students' employment consciousness. The results are intended to inform better teaching of business Japanese language