The Training of Business Professionals in ELT Materials: a Focus on Email Writing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i13.551Keywords:
BELF, corpus linguistics, linguisticsAbstract
Nowadays, business organizations are faced with the challenge of operating in a global, informational, and highly networked context. The globalization of business and the fast growth in digital technology are having a massive impact both on business structures, with a proliferation of international mergers and acquisitions, and on corporate communication, as most business transactions are being carried out via digital media.
In this context, professional communication needs are rapidly changing too: not only is a common working language required, but there is also the necessity for business professionals to acquire the communicative competence that will enable them to communicate efficiently, effectively, and rapidly. As for the language, although “[i]t is undeniable that English […] has now come to represent the main common contact language and lingua franca in an interconnected globalized world” (Vettorel 2014, 1), a more encompassing conceptualization of the language of business is necessary in order to cater to the ‘super-diversity’ (Cogo 2012) of today’s business contexts. On the communicative competence side, professionals need to acquire the ability to adjust quickly to the immediacy of the communicative event and to the dynamic nature of intercultural negotiations. This requires a vast array of pragmatic and interactional skills which have mainly been investigated in spoken interactions (e.g. Firth 1996; Björkman 2011, 2014). In business contexts, however, transactions are often conducted via non-face-to-face media, where the lack of contextual cues may pose a barrier to effective communication (Soucek and Moser 2010).
This diachronic study of a set of ten Business-English (email)-writing texts published between 2000 and 2016 focuses on the tasks and guidelines provided for the development of email writing skills. Drawing on Louhiala-Salminen and Kankaanranta’s (2011) notion of “Global Communicative Competence,” the analysis tries to establish whether there has been a change in the way the English language is presented in business ELT materials and whether provisions are made for the development of those pragmatic and interactional skills which can be of use to business professionals in the workplace.
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Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Piekkari, Rebecca, and Susanne Tietze. ”Introduction: A world of Languages: Implications for International
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Poppi, Franca. Global Interactions in English as a Lingua Franca. How Written Communication is
Changing under the Influence of Electronic Media and New Contexts of Use. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012.
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Communicating in Professions and Organizations. Eds. Glen M. Alessi and Geert Jacobs. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 272-294.
Pullin, Patricia. “Small Talk, Rapport, and International Communicative Competence. Lessons to Learn from
BELF.” Journal of Business Communication 47.4 (2010): 455-476.
Reed, Bill. ”Recent Business English Publications.” ELT Journal 61.2 (2007): 67-78.
---. “Recent Business English publications.” ELT Journal 65.3 (2011): 326-345.
Ren, Wei. “Pragmatic Strategies to Solve and Preempt Understanding Problems in Chinese Professionals’
Emails when Using English as Lingua Franca Communication”. International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism 21.8 (2018): 968-981.
Soucek, Roman, and Klaus Moser. “Coping with Information Overload in Email Communication. Evaluation of
a Training Intervention.” Computers in Human Behavior 26.6 (2010): 1458-1466.
St. John, Maggie Jo. ”Business is Booming: Business English in the 1990s.” English for Specific Purposes 15.
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Trabelsi, Soufiane. “Developing and Trialling Authentic Material for Business English Students at a Tunisian
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Language Learning. Evidence for Best Practice. London/New York: Continuum, 2010. 103-120.
Vettorel, Paola. “BELF Communication Strategies and ELT Business Materials.” (2019): this issue.
Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
Widdowson, Henry. Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Björkman, Beyza. “Pragmatic Strategies in English as an Academic Lingua Franca: Ways of Achieving
Communicative Effectiveness.” Journal of Pragmatics 43.4 (2011): 950-964.
---. “An Analysis of Polyadic English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Speech: A Communicative Strategies
Framework.” Journal of Pragmatics 66 (2014): 122-138.
---. “English as a Lingua Franca in the Business Domain (BELF).” Investigating English in Europe: Contexts
and Agendas. English in Europe, Volume 6. Ed. Andrew Linn. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2016: 89-92.
Chan, Clarice S.C. ”Forging a Link between Research and Pedagogy: A Holistic Framework for Evaluating
Business English Materials”. English for Specific Purposes 28.2 (2009):125-136.
Cogo, Alessia. “Accommodating Difference in ELF Conversations. A Study of Pragmatic Strategies.” English
as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Eds. Anna Mauranen, and Elina Ranta. Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. 254-273.
---. “ELF and Super-diversity: A Case Study of ELF Multilingual Practices from a Business Context.” Journal
of English as a Lingua Franca 1.2 (2012): 287-313.
Cogo, Alessia, and Marie-Louise Pitzl. “Pre-empting and Signalling Non-understanding in ELF.” ELT Journal,
70.3 (2016): 339-345.
Ehrenreich, Susanne. “English as a Business Lingua Franca in a German multinational corporation.” Journal
of Business Communication 47.4 (2010): 408-431.
---. “English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in International Business Contexts: Key Issues and Future
Perspectives.” Exploring ELF in Japanese Academic and Business Contexts: Conceptualization,
Research and Pedagogical Implications. Ed. Kumiko Murata. London: Routledge, 2016. 135-155.
Ellis, Mark, and Christine Johnson. Teaching Business English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Evans, Stephen. “Designing Tasks for the Business English Classroom.” ELT Journal, 67.3, (2013): 281-293.
Flinders, Steve. “Business English Materials.” ELT Journal 59.2 (2005): 156-176.
Franceschi, Valeria. “Plurilingual Resources as an Asset in ELF Business Interactions”. Journal of English as
a Lingua Franca 6.1 (2017): 57-81.
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Gerristen, Marinel, and Catherine Nickerson. “BELF: Business English as a Lingua Franca.” The Handbook of
Business Discourse. Ed. Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini. Edimburgh: Edimburgh University Press, 2009.
180-192.
Holden, Nigel. “Economic Exchange and the Business of Language in the Ancient World: An Exploratory
Review.” The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language. Ed. Victor Ginsburgh, and Shloma
Weber. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 290-311.
Ilie, Cornelia, Catherine Nickerson and Brigitte Planken. Teaching Business Discourse. London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2019.
Janssens, Maddy, and Chris Steyaert. “Re-considering Language within a Cosmopolitan Understanding
toward a Multilingual Franca Approach in International Business Studies.” Journal of International
Business Studies 45.5 (2014): 623-639.
Johnson, Christine, and Cath Bartlett. “International Business English–What Should we be Teaching?” (1999).
https://www.wordflair.com/Articles/ibearticle.html. Last accessed January 19, 2019.
Kalocsai, Karolina. Communities of Practice and English as a Lingua Franca: A Study of Erasmus Students in
a Central European Context. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013.
Kankaanranta, Anne, and Leena Louhiala-Salminen. “Business Communication in BELF.” Business
Communication Quarterly 70.1 (2007): 55-59.
---. ‘“What Language Does Global Business Speak?’- The Concept and Development of BELF.” Ibérica 26.26
(2013): 17-34.
---. “ELF in the Domain of Business- BELF. What Does the B Stand For?”. The Routledge Handbook of English
as a Lingua Franca. Ed. Jennifer Jenkins, Will Baker and Martin Dewey. London: Routledge, 2018. 309-
320.
Kankaanranta, Anne, Leena Louhiala-Salminen and Päivi Karhunen. “English in Multinational Companies:
Implications for Teaching ‘English’ at an International Business School.” Journal of English as Lingua Franca
4.1 (2015): 125-148.
Kankaanranta, Anne, and Brigitte Planken. “BELF Competence as Business Knowledge of Internationally
Operating Business Professionals.” Journal of Business Communication 47.4 (2010): 380-407.
Kaur, Jagdish. “Intercultural Communication in English as a Lingua Franca: Some Sources of
Misunderstanding.” Intercultural Pragmatics, 8.1 (2011): 93–116.
Komori-Glatz, Miya. “Conceptualising English as a Business Lingua Franca.” European Journal of International
Management 12.1/2 (2018): 46-61.
Lipiäinen, Heini S.M., Heikki Karjaluoto, and Marjo Nevalainen. “Digital Channels in the Internal
Communication of a Multinational Corporation”. Corporate Communications: An International Journal
19.3 (2014): 275-286.
Lario de Oñate, M. Carmen, and María Vázquez Amador. “The Intercultural Component in Business English
Textbooks.” Ibérica 26 (2013): 171-194.
Louhiala-Salminen, Leena, Mirjaliisa Charles and Anne Kankaanranta. ”English as a Lingua Franca in Nordic
Corporate Mergers: Two Case Companies.” English for Specific Purposes. Special Issue: English as
Lingua Franca in International Business Contexts 24.4 (2005): 401-421.
Louhiala-Salminen, Leena, and Anne Kankaanranta. “Professional Communication in a Global Business
Context: The Notion of Global Communicative Competence.” IEEE Transactions on Professional
Communication 54.3 (2011): 244-262.
---. “Language as an Issue in International Internal Communication: English or Local Language? If English,
What English?” Public Relations Review 38 (2012): 262-269.
Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook. “Disinventing Multilingualism: From Monological Multilingualism to
Multilingual Franca.” The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. Eds. Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian
Blackledge and Angela Creese. London: Routledge, 2012. 439-453.
Mauranen, Anna. “A Rich Domain of ELF–the ELFA Corpus of Academic Discourse”. Nordic Journal of English
Studies 5.2. (2006): 145-159.
---. “What is Going on in Academic ELF? Findings and Implications.” New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning
English. Ed. Paola Vettorel. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 31-52.
Meierkord, Christiane. “’Language Stripped Bare’ or ‘Linguistic Masala’? Culture in Lingua Franca
Communication.” Lingua Franca Communication. Eds. Knapp Karlfried and Christiane Meierkord.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002. 109-133.
Nickerson, Catherine. “English as a Lingua Franca in International Business Contexts.” English for Specific
Purposes 24 (2005): 367-380.
Phillips, Denis Charles. Theories and Laws. The Expanded Social Scientist’s Bestiary. Lanham, Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Piekkari, Rebecca, and Susanne Tietze. ”Introduction: A world of Languages: Implications for International
Management research.” Journal of World Business 46.3 (2011): 267-269.
Poppi, Franca. Global Interactions in English as a Lingua Franca. How Written Communication is
Changing under the Influence of Electronic Media and New Contexts of Use. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012.
---. “From Business Letters to Emails: How Practitioners Can Shape Their Own Forms of Communication
More Efficiently.” The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research.
Communicating in Professions and Organizations. Eds. Glen M. Alessi and Geert Jacobs. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 272-294.
Pullin, Patricia. “Small Talk, Rapport, and International Communicative Competence. Lessons to Learn from
BELF.” Journal of Business Communication 47.4 (2010): 455-476.
Reed, Bill. ”Recent Business English Publications.” ELT Journal 61.2 (2007): 67-78.
---. “Recent Business English publications.” ELT Journal 65.3 (2011): 326-345.
Ren, Wei. “Pragmatic Strategies to Solve and Preempt Understanding Problems in Chinese Professionals’
Emails when Using English as Lingua Franca Communication”. International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism 21.8 (2018): 968-981.
Soucek, Roman, and Klaus Moser. “Coping with Information Overload in Email Communication. Evaluation of
a Training Intervention.” Computers in Human Behavior 26.6 (2010): 1458-1466.
St. John, Maggie Jo. ”Business is Booming: Business English in the 1990s.” English for Specific Purposes 15.
1 (1996): 3-18.
Trabelsi, Soufiane. “Developing and Trialling Authentic Material for Business English Students at a Tunisian
University”. Eds. Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara. Research for Materials Development in
Language Learning. Evidence for Best Practice. London/New York: Continuum, 2010. 103-120.
Vettorel, Paola. “BELF Communication Strategies and ELT Business Materials.” (2019): this issue.
Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
Widdowson, Henry. Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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