Articles and Interviews

A structured approach to business English: using New International Business English in university courses

Richard Alexander

Introduction

There is now a significant set of business English (BE) students or learners for whom New International Business English can be of great value: I am referring to the growing numbers of tertiary level business administration and general business studies students, particularly in Europe, but also elsewhere. I myself am responsible for BE at a very large Austrian university of economics and business administration where 90% of the students enrolled in BE courses are pre-experience students (students with no previous experience of working in a business environment).

We find ourselves confronted with many questions in connection with this category of student. How many students in the world study English as a foreign language while pursuing business studies at university or college? How many such students have work-experience before they learn English? How do the different institutions weight the relative demands of English for study and academic purposes and English for (future) occupational purposes? These are just some of the potential unknowns which syllabus and curriculum planners, materials producers, advisers and business teachers might benefit from having answers to. For instance, what business English skills and knowledge will be needed to cater for all the potential students on such courses? What types of students are we dealing with?

What are they going to do after their university course?

When they begin their course the vast majority of tertiary level BE students have no clear idea how they will eventually need to employ their BE skills. To be sure, we have all seen 'needs analyses' from industry and commerce. These may serve as an overall index of some of the BE needs, but teachers in tertiary level institutions will know how unpredictable professional and even learning activities are becoming nowadays. If I had been told 10 years ago that my students would today be employing the Internet as a resource for their seminar papers on business matters (with all the accompanying pitfalls entailed), I would not have believed it. Similarly, many predictions being made today are unlikely to become realistic practices in the future. When tomorrow becomes today, or even yesterday, we are all much wiser.

How can curriculum planners and BE teachers cope with this degree of uncertainty? I would argue that there are a number of basics which BE students/learners cannot do without. Given the high numbers of lower to upper intermediate level students on university courses, the importance of a structured approach to business English becomes self-evident. Some of the principles that guided Leo Jones and myself in the selection and arrangement of the material in New International Business English are described below.

Need for a structured approach to business English

The rationale, which underlies New International Business English, fits in very well with the needs and requirements of those tertiary level BE syllabuses which aim to prepare pre-experience business students to use English in their future professional settings. Such courses need to try to achieve two things: to strengthen and enhance the somewhat shaky core English skills and knowledge of our learners, as well as to simultaneously build up students' BE skills. These courses should not be too demanding in terms of prior business-related knowledge and experience - otherwise they will go over the heads of many, if not most, of our students.

Business English language instruction in this setting is tightly constrained: both in terms of available time and of the prior knowledge of our students. Principled selection of material is therefore a must. This has to factor in two major elements: our students' limited business experience, and teachers' own assessments of the relative utility of differing language skills needed for business. Either way, the outcome teachers provide has to be within a framework of systematically structured learning and teaching.

We all know the disparate starting points of BE students in tertiary education, as I have already mentioned. But in view of their broad spread around the intermediate level a structured approach to business English will provide them with a support system.

I will mention some of the fairly essential basic English skills such students tend to lack and hence need practice in. These include the following: knowing how to pronounce English (words, phrases, whole utterances), knowing how to read (aloud) a whole passage in English, how to spell words in English, how numbers are spoken in English, how to count in English, how to master business-relevant words and phrases, and control business-necessary intermediate level grammar; as well as knowing the English names of letters, punctuation marks and symbols.

New International Business English provides a principled rationale for tertiary level Business English

New International Business English provides a number of natural business environments in which to situate and practise these basics. In the following summary I indicate how this principle is put into operation in New International Business English.

Spelling

Knowing how to spell words (names) out loud in English (spelling aloud) is essential. Practice is given in getting names and addresses right in commercial correspondence. Section 2.2 of New International Business English places emphasis on S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G A-L-O-U-D. In business people need to be able to use the alphabet fluently and also to understand other people when they spell words or names out loud. Section 3.3 is a further example of where spelling aloud is integrated into an exercise covering the skills of taking notes and leaving messages.

Vocabulary

In BE classes we will also clearly need to encourage vocabulary learning - but how? In order to deliver 'high-priority vocabulary' for students it is necessary to select and present relevant lexis for business English in a principled fashion. It is important to stress how vocabulary learning can benefit from contextualization and activization. New International Business English aims to do precisely this. The texts, instructions, exercises and recordings contain much of the 'business' vocabulary that students will require. The majority of this vocabulary is assimilated as students carry out a task-related activity and should not be taught 'separately' out of context. The Workbook contains exercises on the vocabulary related to the particular theme of the unit. These exercises are designed to introduce business-related vocabulary and terms which have not occurred elsewhere in exercises or tests. Unfamiliar terms and vocabulary for the pre-service students are contextualized by the New International Business English Workbook, which provides sets of helpful background information at the beginning of each unit for pre-experience students.

An intermediate level individual lexicon can usefully include items such as the ICC Incoterms which are used to facilitate the terms of a deal. (Incoterms are an internationally agreed set of rules published by the International Chamber of Commerce to facilitate the cross-border interpretation of trade terms.) These are dealt with in Unit 6 and the New International Business English Workbook too. These and other sections provide the structured input of relevant words and phrases which need to be mastered.

Writing conventions

Business writing conventions in English are often a major obstacle in intermediate BE courses. New International Business English has two basic units which focus explicitly on the major written business genres: Unit 2 Letters, faxes and memos and Unit 4 Summaries, notes, reports. It is also clearly acknowledged that, despite the spread of telephones, writing will continue to play a significant role in business. The updated edition of New International Business English includes the option to write either an e-mail or fax or letter - at the discretion of the teacher and the students.

Spoken English in core business situations

Pre-service students can benefit from being confronted with models for behaviour in core business situations. New International Business English allows this to be done in a series of integrated activities, where the real business world can be presented, anticipated and simulated. Relationships and behaviour at meetings are discussed and practised in Unit 11 as well as elsewhere. Units 13 and 14 treat job interview panels and various aspects of sales including the preliminary demonstration and the stages of commercial negotiations respectively. The principle behind integrated activities consists in allowing a mix of the four language skills to be practised in as realistic a fashion as the pedagogical situation allows. This is a key necessity for tertiary students at this level.

Conclusion

Faced with large groups of young, pre-experience students enrolled in the early stages of business administration courses, it is impossible for us to know which specific business area they are likely to end up in. Yet, the learning discipline of BE and the accompanying academic and study skills may well contribute to the broader transferable skills demanded by today's more flexible job market.

I hope the structured approach to business English which underlies the design of New International Business English can provide you with a satisfactory answer to the dilemmas that you face as a BE teacher as you deal with intermediate level business English students in college, university and related pedagogical settings.