Speaking Justice: Communicative Competence and Instructional Strategies among Criminology Students in Higher Education

Criminology students must communicate effectively in challenging settings such as courtrooms, news reports, and police documents. However, many find it difficult to use English specific to their field, even after learning general English. Using a descriptive correlational design, this study examined how well criminology students communicate and how it relates to teaching methods and English mistakes in private colleges in Santiago City, Philippines. The study used a survey of 65 third- and fourth-year criminology students to measure their communication skills across vocabulary, social language use, and strategy, as well as common English mistakes and classroom activities. The results showed that the students had moderately high communication skills, with strategy as their strongest area. There were significant negative links between overall communication skills and grammar mistakes, social language errors, and coherence problems. In contrast, interactive teaching methods such as debates, role-play, and blogging were positively associated with better communication skills. No significant differences in communication skills were observed based on gender, age, or year level. These findings highlight the need for real-world, performance-based English teaching in criminology courses. Activities such as mock trials, report writing, debates, and practicing law enforcement communication can help students prepare for their careers. Future research should focus on developing and testing English for Criminology Purposes (ECP) modules and on using different study designs to determine the effectiveness of teaching across various schools.