Keynote address IATEFL Poland 9 September 2011 (sponsored by EDI)

Transcription

1 Challenges in business English teaching Evan Frendo Keynote address IATEFL Poland 9 September 2011 (sponsored by EDI) Business English teachers face some tricky challenges when it comes to deciding what and how to teach. This is especially true when we look at recent research into how people interact in business contexts, which is questioning a lot of what teachers have been taking for granted. For example, how do we teach English if we don't have a standard model to follow? How can we take advantage of learning in other ways, such as via communities of practice within organizations? How do we deal with soft skills and intercultural training? How should we approach specific lexis and genres? And how do we test our learners, if at all? This talk will look at these and similar questions, and discuss possible options. Research into English as a lingua franca (ELF) and Business English as a lingua franca (BELF) continues to raise interesting questions. The research reveals that BELF communication is seen as content-oriented (rather than focusing on form) and requiring domain specific knowledge. (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011, p. 298). BELF is also highly contextual, so that a standard model of English, however defined, is not necessarily the best way to prepare our students to deal with the situations they will come across. Success comes from a number of factors, including business competence, relationship between the interactants, knowledge of the particular genres being used and how they interact with each other, communicative competence, and so on. Language competence, in particular grammatical correctness, seems to play a small part, yet we spend a lot of time as teachers focusing on it. If we take ELF and BELF research into account such traditional approaches may not be the most effective. The end result is what matters, not whether interactions contain mistakes when measured against some standard variety of English. Firth (2009) makes this point very clearly: To restrict our focus to language (in its standard manifestation) or indeed restrict it to lexico-grammar, would be to make ourselves blind to the complex reality of actual processes of communication. (p. 150). Handford (2010) makes a similar point: the most important issue in business is not language ability, but the experience and ability to dynamically manoeuvre within the communities of practice which business people inhabit. (p. 145).

2 This brings us on to the topic of communities in business English teaching. The notion of discourse communities (Swales, 1990) is now fairly well established in ESP. The practical challenge for teachers, however, remains: how to get to know and understand the learners target discourse community. If the learners are not familiar with their target discourse (which is normally the case) then the teacher must make use of resources outside the classroom, including other stakeholders, experienced members of the target discourse community, investigation of genres, and so on. It is not a major step to move from bringing the target language into the classroom, to thinking about moving the learners out of the classroom into the community. This is effectively what happens in communities of practice (Wenger, 1999), and indeed we know from research into language use in companies that language learning does not necessarily only take place in the classroom (Ehrenreich, 2010; Firth 2009). Indeed it seems probable that the classroom is not necessarily the best place to learn languages, particularly if we take a BELF approach. We need to start taking advantage of all the learning opportunities that are available to our learners, and not think only about our own safe classrooms. For example, it makes sense for teachers to accompany their learners when they go to meetings with their clients, and then provide feedback on language use this feedback will be inevitably be much more focused than anything which can be done in the classroom. In fact this already happens in a number of companies, who can see the benefits of such an approach, but it is not commonplace. The need for soft skills and intercultural training is also becoming more recognized in companies, and language trainers are being called to integrate these into their training programmes (Hayman, 2010; Rost-Roth, 2009). This is also reflected in the content in business English course books available today, where such topics have become familiar. Yet many teachers are still not comfortable with dealing with them in the classroom. Spitzberg (2000) echoes the BELF arguments above when he says communication will be competent in an intercultural context when it accomplishes the objectives of an actor in a manner that is appropriate to the context and relationship. (p. 380). Approaching communicative competence is this way might mean that many business English teachers will have to adopt a different mindset, or as Seidlhofer, Breiteneder, & Pitzl, (2006), writing in an ELF context, put it, a considerable effort of adjustment of attitudes and long established concepts of just what a language is. (p. 24).

3 Specific lexis and genres have always played an important role in business English teaching, yet it is only in recent years that we are really beginning to understand how business English is different to general English. For example, Nelson (2000) compares a business English corpus to the British National Corpus, and notes that business English tends to be more positive and non-emotive. Frequent collocations and keywords are different. O Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (2007) use the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Business English (CANBEC) to show that phrases containing need are extremely common in business English. On the other hand Koester (2010) reports that I disagree is extremely rare (p. 60). O Keeffe et al (2007) also demonstrate that common combinations of words, metaphors and idioms used in workplace talk are often reflections of the way particular communities of practice have learned to deal with particular issues or problems. The challenge for teachers is to become more aware of such research and understand what makes business English different. The same goes for publishers and authors. Several researchers have compared the language found in business English textbooks with the language found in the real business world, and found significant discrepancies (Auguri, 2009; Bargiela-Chiappini, Planken, & Nickerson, 2006). Some publishers already make specialist business corpora available to their authors (eg. McCarthy, McCarten, Clark & Clark (2009)), and it is not unreasonable to expect all major publishers to follow suit in the not too distant future. Perhaps teachers will also be granted access at some point. Genres pose a particular challenge, particularly as there are so many different perspectives for teachers to think about. (Bhatia 2008; Koester, 2010). At one level genre can be seen as text type, with sub-genres sharing certain characteristics. So we have letters of enquiry which all share particular characteristics, and letters of enquiry to hotels as a sub-genre sharing other characteristics, and so on. The problem is that these genres are dynamic; they change over time and depending on the other genres they come onto contact with and who is using them. For example, a written might prompt a long telephone discussion between two people, which might lead to a meeting with several other people, and so on. Genres cannot be seen in isolation: they are part of a process. Clearly it is our job to become familiar with the different genres our learners will need, but they are not easy to pin down. Spoken genres in particular can be very slippery. For example, Koester (2010) identifies three macrogenres: unidirectional, collaborative and non-transactional (p. 25), which is a useful distinction. But

4 how do we see meetings? Koester (2010) argues that they are not a genre, but points out that Handford (2010), who defines genre in a slightly different way, does (p. 26). Finally, it is worth mentioning testing and assessment, which is becoming increasingly common as companies strive for accountability, but which also provokes debate when it comes to deciding how to do it in a business English context. Elder (2006), for example, discusses possible models for assessing ELF, and O Sullivan (2006), shows how the notion of degree of specificity is central to any definition of a specific language test. Spencer Oatey and Franklin (2009) look at assessment instruments within an intercultural context, concluding that only rarely that they have been shown to have the degree of validity and reliability which applied linguists require of language tests. (p. 197). The challenge for teachers is reflected in the number of commercial tests in the business English market, ranging from bestselling products like ETS s TOEIC, aimed at a wide range of business English contexts, to much more smaller products like EDI s recently introduced English for Accounting, which is specifically designed for a niche market. So what options do teachers have when they come to deal with these challenges? As we have seen, there are a range of things to think about, depending on the particular teaching context. Needs analysis has always been a fundamental principle in business English, but is becoming even more important as demands increase for teachers and training to be more effective and efficient. Teachers need to spend much more time understanding the contexts that their learners need to operate in; paying lip service to needs is no longer enough. Teachers also need to consider working more outside the classroom, taking full advantage of communities of practice to understand the target discourse and to encourage learning in context. In addition, learners need to be made more aware of what it is they are attempting to do, and to understand that traditional approaches to language learning which may be appropriate in a school situation may be less relevant in a workplace context. Coursebooks which are based on research and reflect real language use (as opposed to an author s intuition) are becoming available and should be used. And finally, teachers should never forget that their learners will be using English in an intercultural context, and that therefore intercultural training is part and parcel of any language training programme.

5 References Angouri, J. (2010). Using textbook and real-life data to teach turn taking in business meetings. In N. Harwood, (Ed.), English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice. (pp ). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bargiela-Chiappini, F., Planken, B., & Nickerson, C. (2006). Business Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bhatia, V. K. (2008). Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice. English for Specific Purposes, 27(2), Elder, C., & Davies, A. (2006). Assessing English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 26, Firth, A. (2009). Doing not being a foreign language learner: English as a lingua franca in the workplace and (some) implications for SLA. IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 47(1), Handford, M. (2010). The Language of Business Meetings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayman, J. (2010). Talking about talking: Comparing the approaches of Intercultural Trainers and Language Teachers. In G. Forey & J. Lockwood (Eds.), Globalization, Communication and the Workplace: Talking Across the World. (pp ). London: Continuum. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A., and Dewey, M. (2011) Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), Koester, A. (2010). Workplace Discourse. London: Contimuum. Louhiala-Salminen, L., Charles, M., & Kankaanranta, A. (2005). English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: Two case companies. English for Specific Purposes, 24(4), McCarthy, M., McCarten, J., Clark, D., & Clark, R. (2009). Grammar for Business. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, M. (2000). A corpus-based study of Business English and Business English teaching materials. University of Manchester: Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. O Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From Corpus to Classroom: Language Use and Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O Sullivan, B. (2006). Issues in Testing Business English: The Revision of the Cambridge Business English Certificates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rost-Roth, M. (2009). Intercultural Training. In H. Kotthoff & H. Spencer-Oatey (Eds.), Handbook of Intercultural Communication. (pp ). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A, & Pitzl, M-L. (2006). English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: Challenges for Applied Linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 26, Spitzberg, B. H. (2000). A model of intercultural communication competence. In L. Samovar & R. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural communication: A reader (pp ). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing. Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.