The participants in the research are the international trade salesman working in the international trade enterprises in China. These participants have been working as an international trade salesman for at least one year. They can tell their needs and difficulties encountered in their work. There were totally 114 international trade salesmen participated in the survey.

The research is a needs analysis on the language needs of international trade salesman through a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire is a self-developed one under the guidance of Hutchinson and Waters’ (1987) model.

The questionnaire was Chinese to facilitate the students’ full comprehension of the items included. For the purpose of investigating the international trade salesman’s English language necessities, the questionnaire comprised mainly of two sections: evaluating the current language ability of the participants and language difficulties encountered by the international trade salesman in target situation. This research explores the salesman’s present language ability by checking their education history and English related certificates they held. In the section of identifying their language difficulties, questions on the perceptions of the importance of the English language skills used in their work, the frequency of using the English language sub-skills were also concerned and detailed difficulties that had ever happened in their work were asked.

The questionnaire was distributed out in 2022. The research adopted convenient sampling method to collect the data. First, the questionnaire was sent to friends of the researcher, then they sent the questionnaire to international trade salesman they know. The questionnaire was sent to the participants through https://www.wjx.cn/ , a website which can collect questionnaires and analyze the collected data. Participants can get direct access to the questionnaire by a link generated by the website and do the questionnaire. In 2 months of snowballing sampling, there were totally 114 international trade salesman completed the questionnaire.

The data collection was finished in two months, after which the online responses were set to “stopped accepting responses” to finish the collection procedure. The questionnaire composed closed-ended items and these items were analyzed statistically using percentage calculation.

First, the Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire was checked on SPSS to check the reliability of the questionnaire. The percentages of each item were calculated to check the overall tendency. The results were presented and discussed in the following section.

Figure 2 , Table 1 and Table 2 below show the results obtained from section A of the questionnaire, regarding the demographic profile of the participants. The demographic profile, from three aspects, shows the background information of the respondents.

There are 114 respondents participated in this study which was composed of 42.11 percent male and 57.89 percent female. There were more female participants than male participants, but the number is relatively in average in terms of gender.

Table 1 shows the age of the participants. Since China began the education reform in 1985, and set up system of nine-year compulsory education in the country (Cheng, 1986) . China invested larger amount of funds on education since then. English education in China gained emphasis since the Open Door Policy in 1980s (Lam, 2002) . The 114 respondents covered the most age from 20 - 40. People in this age range got good education opportunities. It means the participants are well educated, but not illiteracy.

In the respondents, as shown in Table 2 , enterprises that most of the respondents are working in are the small companies with 1 - 50 people, taking 47.37%. Rest are also medium companies. That means the small and medium enterprises (SME) are the main force in doing international trade.

SME represent a large part of the economic sector and contribute most of the profit, who is more dynamic and powerful in entrepreneurial activities, as well as innovative in the new management form (Iuliana et al., 2008) . Training is one of a crucial strategies for enterprises to develop, however, training in SME is normally ignored, because of underestimation of training outcomes, high cost of training and underestimation of training outcomes (Panagiotakopoulos, 2011) . Therefore, it’s necessary to do a needs analysis on international trade English to help the SME knows what to train for their workers, as well as to fill the gap of study in Business English.

The present language ability of the respondents will be demonstrated from two aspects, one is their education experience, the other is the English test certificates they have. These two aspects can show the language ability of the respondents objectively.

From their education rate, shown in Table 3 , it shows that 64.92% of the participants are under-graduated, 29.82% of them graduated from vocational college. In vocational college and undergraduate education system, English is a compulsory course to take (Wang, 2014) . According to China’s policy, students, no matter in urban or rural schools, must learn English as a compulsory subject from the 3rd grade on (Hu, 2005) , which means the respondents must have 9 years English learning experience, not to mention that 5.26% of participants who are post-graduated. Therefore, all the participants have basic English abilities.

English certificate they hold can tell more detail their English language level. College English Test (CET) is a national English test meant to assess non-English majors’ English ability in Chinese colleges and universities (Chen & Webb, 2017) . Students who have completed the College English Courses Band 1 to 4, usually in their second-year, take the CET-4 (Zheng & Cheng, 2008) . CET-4 certificate is a must for the successful attainment of a bachelor’s degree and is a guarantee of a well-paid job.

Both college and undergraduate students will prepare themselves ready for the test and try to get a high score in the test. This test covers listening, writing and reading in general topics. Speaking is an optional section, which is normally ignored by test-takers. This is a fair way to test the language ability of students (Zheng & Cheng, 2008) , however, brings problems for students also. Students pay much attention to listening, writing, and reading, but can merely speaking in English (Yu, 1999) .

CET-4 and CET-6 are two levels of the same test, and students who have passed CET-4 can take CET-6. According to the Syllabus, CET balances between linguistic knowledge and linguistic competence, between accuracy and fluency, between semantic level and discourse level (College English Syllabus, 1985). Those who have passed CET tests could communicate for general purposes. Other certificates, like TEM-4 (Test for English Major), TEM-8, and IELTS are in a higher level, which means the holder of the certificate has a higher English level than that of CET-4 or CET-6 holder. Like CET serial tests, TEM serial tests, not like IELTS, have no speaking in the test. This makes the Chinese English learners, non-English major students and English major students, weak in speaking.

From the results shown in Table 4 , most of them have CET 6 (38.6%), and CET 4 (29.82%), the participants in this research are prepared for basic English skills, especially in reading and writing.

The education status and English certificates held by the participants are a relatively objective and convenient way to check the current English language level. From the education status and certificates held by the participants, it proves that the participants have basic English language ability.

Acquired proficiency in English can assist in overcoming language difficulties (Ku & Zussman, 2010) . Language difficulties that the participants encountered in their work can show what they lack in real work. By learning specific skills and knowledge need in the target situation, the international trade salesman can improve their English proficiency.

Question on the using status of the four language skills, i.e. listening, reading, writing and speaking, tells the basic information of the target situation. As shown in Table 5 , the most often used language skills are reading and writing, whose Everyday usage rate reach 31.58 percentage and 38.6 percentage respectively. Together with the choice rate of Always, the rates are much higher. It means that reading and writing are the most important language skills in the real work of the international trade salesman.

However, the language skills the respondents want to improve most are listening and speaking. As shown in Table 6 , 40.35 percent of the respondents strongly agree that they need to improve their listening skills, and 45.61 percent of them strongly agree to improve speaking skills. The rates are prominent. This indicates that the speaking and listening ability of Chinese students is weak (Yu, 1999) , for in the education system much attention is paid to writing and reading. Under the influence of test-oriented education in China, the teaching of oral English is ignored since in the primary school curriculum (Liu & Yu, 2022) . Until to the higher education, both students’ learning and teachers’ teaching have been influenced by the the national English test CET 4 and CET 6, the CET tests should consider the examination of speaking. This situation is not only happening in China, but also in Greek. In the study by Batsila & Shrestha (2022) , it was found that oral communication was important in real workplace, however, content of oral communication was lack in business English textbook used in vocational secondary schools.

Detail language difficulties the international trade salesman encountered in their work can provide a micro-picture of the real situation that the international trade salesman met in target situation. From Table 7 , it shows that all the mentioned language difficulties had happened in their work.

From the result shown in Table 7 , difficulties like jargon, dialects and pidgin and slang take higher percentage. It means that international trade English tend to be informal. Here it is worth talking about business English and international trade English. Business English, as a sub-branch of ESP and a standard English for business purposes, has been studied. However, there are many parts under Business English, including international trade English (Beers & Bergh, 2010) , cross-border transaction English (Zhu, 2017) , and cross-border transportation English (Aouizerats et al., 2014) . International trade English is a sub-branch of Business English (Yang & Fan, 2020) . International trade English is different from Business English (Jiang et al., 2014) , who has its own features. Business English is formal English, but international trade English is formal in some situations and informal in other situations. Especially with the fast development of technology, people have more channels to connect with outside world. In 2023, people tend to use instant messages like WhatsApp or WeChat to communicate in real time and asynchronously (Kaufmann & Peil, 2020) . In the use of these instant messages, emojis are commonly used to better express the feelings (Koch et al., 2022) . To make communication more easier for both parties, colloquial words and simple sentences are more liked to be used in international trade English (Yang & Fan, 2020) . It indicates that, people tend to use informal language to communicate through instant message applications. To better communicate, maintain a rapport and keep a close relationship with each other, the two parts need to use some informal expressions. This needs the salesmen learn some regional expressions. According to the results shown in Table 7 , international trade salesman should pay attention to the accurate words to avoid of misunderstanding.

(Note: A: regional accent; B: Not clear speech; C: jargon, dialects and pidgin and slang; D: grammar; E: less vocabulary storage; F: cannot understand when the topic not familiar; G: lack cross-cultural communication skills; H: wrong body gesture; I: cannot understand long and complex sentences)

Percentage for wrong body gestures are relatively low, which is 5.26% for Often, 15.79% for Always and 28.07% for Sometimes. This may because international trade salesman normally uses written form to communicate with their foreign customers. Difficulties like regional accent, not clear speech are in high percentage of happening in their work, which indicates that the most difficult parts for international trade salesman is still in speaking. The international trade salesman should improve their listening and speaking skills to meet their work requirements.

Difficulties in grammar and cannot understand long and complex sentences are interrelated. Learning of grammar can help students to produce good sentences and understand the meaning of sentences (Sari et al., 2019) . The international trade salesman tends to use simple sentence structures to express themselves (Yang & Fan, 2020) in writing. However, when reading messages from their foreign customers, it may have difficulties in understanding the long and complex sentences. Good command of grammar is an important skill to promise effective business communication (Al-Musalli, 2019) . Therefore, the international trade salesman should learn more grammar to help them understand messages from their customers more easily and avoid misunderstanding.

Difficulties in less vocabulary storage and cannot understand when the topic not familiar are interrelated. Vocabulary is important for effective communication in workplaces (Huhta et al., 2013) , and is seen as the core of communicative competence (Amiryousefi & Ketabi, 2011) . Vocabulary storage has an impact on writing and speaking skills (Nation, 2013) , which could have an influence on communication. When the international trade salesman communicate with their foreign customers on a topic that he is not familiar with and without storage of relative vocabularies, he cannot understand the meaning or cannot express his thoughts. As mentioned above that international trade salesman have difficulties in understanding jargon and slang, which is also related to lack of vocabularies. Difficulties in less vocabulary storage and cannot understand when the topic not familiar can be resolved by learning words in width and depth.

Cross-cultural communication could improve and facilitate interaction between international trade salesman and their customers from a different nations or cultures (Adler, 1991) . Cultural differences can lead to conflicts (Triandis, 2012) , can be an advantage for those who have high cultural sensitivity as well (Luo, 2016) . Cultural communication skills are important for international trade process. There are several factors that affect the cross-cultural communication, including language barriers, variations in values and norms of behavior, lack of experience, lack of trust, a lack of understanding about other cultures, and stereotypical thinking (Lifintsev & Canhavilhas, 2017) . In the new technology area, instant messages simplify the process of cross-cultural communication and language barriers as one of the obstacles of cross-cultural communication can be solved by using online translators and auto-correcting (Lifintsev & Wellbrock, 2019) . International trade salesman should pay attention to other factors that affect the cross-cultural communication, learn knowledge on cultural variations and build strong cross-cultural awareness.