| In the era of economic globalization, fluency in the English language is seen as the key to achieve significant progress in many fields, such as, education, business, industry, trade, and commerce. Accounting is one of the fields of expertise that has been rapidly advancing in this situation due to its significant importance as an instrument to provide help in the process of making accurate economic decisions and regulations at various levels (Randriamiarana, 2016; Alsawalhah & Hamdan, 2020). Thus, many financial companies and business firms start to recruit potential employees with appropriate skills in international communications. To accommodate these needs, many educational institutions now start to provide and equip learners with basic English skills; a situation that leads to the increasing demand for English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) classes, particularly for Accounting students. However, many previous studies in this area have not yet provided comprehensive solution that could cater to these needs thoroughly. This study seeks to explore and investigate “what is needed” in the field of Accounting and “what is present” in the educational institutions to find the best possible solutions to bridge the alleged existing gap between the two sectors. Job reporting and interviews were administered to two Professional Accountants to gain in-depth understanding of their main job descriptions and the use of English language components to fulfil their working tasks, as well as the challenges they faced in regard to the English language. A survey was administered to fifty Accounting students in a private university in South Jakarta to explore and investigate the learning needs and challenges faced by these students during their study, followed by an interview session with a participant. The findings show that there might be a gap between the English skills requirement of Professional Accountants and the providence of English language exposure and development in the university. The results of the needs analysis then were used as the template of a theme-based EOP syllabus which promotes communicative competence by providing learners with the exposure of workplace English in the field of Accounting and the opportunities to use the language productively through the integration of all four English language skills, as well as appropriate learning and teaching materials that could accurately represent the actual working world of Professional Accountants. |