GEMS NI developed Talk-IT to assist employees of a major IT Company (AllState) who were non-native speakers of English, to improve their competence in communicating orally and in writing using English language as both the workplace spoken language and the main language used in IT business communication with customers and colleagues and also in respect of IT hardware and software and associated instruction manuals and technical authored documents.

All TALK IT partners have completed research into the IT sector for the purposes of placing the TALK IT provision in to the national context of each country. Each report highlighted that all partner countries have considerably large and influential IT sectors within their economies. The education system in each partner country however differs greatly in relation to people having the opportunity to learn and develop English language skills from an early age. In Ireland were English is the main language a substantial number of the workforce do not have English as their first language.
 
Both CTAMN, Romania and EQT, Germany have engaged with IT companies. SVLS, Hungary and NKJO, Poland have engaged with manufacturing companies as they found it difficult to get an IT company to engage in the project and explored other sectors. At the time of writing BJC in Ireland are finding it difficult to engage with an employer because of the economic downturn and are now also exploring other sectors and opportunities.

Four out of the five partners have begun their pilot phase. All partners who have begun their pilot phase have involved the employer, employees and the tutor in the assessment process to ensure all that stakeholders gain the maximum benefit from the programme.

Even though the pilots are taking place in different countries a number of key and common themes are being highlighted. The common themes are:

• English is the platform language used in the IT sector and is also the main language of technical support which is usually supplied through Europe and further afield;
• The increasing need for both potential and existing employees in the IT sector to communicate in English has emerged as a critical competency requirement for the IT industry with on many occasions being a pre-requisite for recruitment;
• It was established that the companies required assistance with all aspects of IT and business terminology particular in relation to presentation skills, the ability to explain ideas and negotiate, the formal language of meetings, grammar, business accounting understanding financial documents, technical documents IT articles, project management books, sales related documents. The capacity to improve on writing e-mails, business letters and presentations reports was also highlighted along with telephone presentation and the need to improve employees comprehension of English text and pronunciation;
• Overall it was highlighted that improving English language communication would mean avoiding misunderstandings, save time and money and their business process would become more effective thus improving their prestige and performance;
• It was highlighted in the research that there are thousands of business English courses available so making the programme IT related and as specific as possible to employer needs should provide that unique selling point and make it more attractive to potential users.

In summary the number of well educated professionals is growing in each country and based on interviews with companies it can be concluded that there is no current provision to fill the gap between general English and professional language. The Talk IT programme therefore presents the potential through a wide variety of methodological tools to improve active skills for those who have strong English but lack practice and self assurance for using it for professional situation.