An Introduction to English for Specific Purposes

Course Material: Developments in English for Specific Purposes

Lecturer: Maryam Farnia
Payame Noor university
Chapter 4
  BP is concerned mainly with adult learners,
 It is working or preparing to work in a business context,
 It deals with business English in an occupational, not an academic context.
The academic business English required by students on courses in disciplines such as business,
finance, accounting and banking has more in common with the study of other EAP disciplines.

Adult learners
students
 Users of Business English
NS
need to learn NNS
to use
International
English like
‘Offshore
English’
want to
communicate
effectively, but
not necessarily
like NS
 English has become the international language of business.
 Most English-medium communications in business are non-native speaker to non-native speaker
(NNS-NNS), and the English the use is international English, not that of native speakers (NS) of
English-medium countries such as the UK and Australia.
 Offshore English (Guy & Mattock, 1993)

 One of the consequences of the role of English as the international language is that non-British
managers may be able to understand each other more easily when speaking English together than
they can understand a native speaker, and the non-native speakers may understand each other
more easily than the native speaker understands them.

 People who share a first language, may share a common use of English which is not the NS use. The
NS may have to learn to move from a literal understanding to a contextually based one. (e.g. to
resume our ideas)
 International English is about effective communication.
 We come from different cultures and ways of thinking: if my language
sounds too good, people won’t remember that.
 NNSs want to communicate effectively, but not necessarily like NSs, and
NSs of standard English also need to learn to use international English.

 There are aspects of NS language which are unhelpful to NNSs. For

instance, phrasal verbs are generally less transparent that alternative
phrases.
 Pickett (1986) suggest two particular
aspects to business communication:
communication with the public and
communication within (intra) a company
or between(inter) companies.

 The purpose of interactions, the topics

covered and the professional relationship
will affect the choice of language.

Pickett’s (1986) diagram

 EGBP: for pre-experience learners/
those at the very early stages of their
career.
 EGBP is similar to general EFL
courses with the materials set in
business contexts.
 Many learners attend these courses
at a language school and groups will
usually be formed on the basis of
language level rather than job.
 EGBP courses are Extensive ones: one
or two sessions a week.
 Focus of EGBP: on the traditional four skills plus specific grammar and vocabulary
development: presentation, through listening and/or reading, followed by exercises to
practice grammar and vocabulary; emphasis on accuracy and have correct answers.

 In contrast, ESBP courses: for job-experienced learners who bring business knowledge
and skills to the language-learning situation. These courses focus on one or two language
skills and specific business communicative events.

 ESBP Courses are frequently intensive, groups are small, a maximum of 6-8, and senior
staff may opt for one-to-one tuition. Learners are from different levels of language
proficiency.

 Settings and carrier content for ESBP are taken from learners’ own business context.
 Needs analysis is more fundamental in EBP as learners have
different language proficiency and skills.
 It depends on the situation and context.
 Pilbeam (1979): Needs analysis should be based on:
1. Target Situation Analysis: to establish a target profile of language
skills which sets down the actual activities that the participants
have to carry out
2. Present Situation Analysis :to establish a profile of personal
ability in which the participant’s proficiency in these activities is
evaluated
 Holden (1993): three stage analysis to the needs analysis:
1. To tabulate information through which target language needs
are identified,
2. To conduct an interview (or questionnaire) to establish learners
perceptions of communication within their corporate culture,
3. to administer a questionnaire to establish preferred learning
styles.
 LANA: another multi-stage approach which uses interview and
communication modeling along with computer questionaire
 For short intensive EGBP courses: less time and fewer
resources available but the EBP teacher can obtain some pre-
course information: participants may be willing to complete a
short form and supply examples of commonly used
documents.

 In one-to-one situations vs. twos or threes groups

 For extensive EGBP courses: less effort may be put into
establishing individual learners needs.
 Personality, knowledge and experience are important to a Business English teacher.
 Successful business English teachers is flexible and adaptable like any ESP teacher.

 Most ESP/EBP teachers have only language teaching background and no first-hand
experience of the content and context of other disciplines.
 They need to acquire this knowledge by reading, talking to business people, and
shadowing them at work.

 Being an effective business communicator requires both verbal language proficiency and
personal and interpersonal skills. So, ESP practitioners who work in-company or on
company-specific courses are delivering both language and skills.
 Those involves in company training should have knwledge of
the five areas:
1. The communicative functioning of EBP
2. The business people’s expectations and learning strategies
3. The psychology of personal and interpersonal interactions
4. Management theories and practice
5. First-class training skills
1. The communicative functioning of English
in business contexts
a. Discourse communities (macro-level)
b. Business genre (macro-level)
c. Key communicative events (macro-level)
d. Functions, grammar and lexis (micro-
level)

2. Learners’ expectation and strategies

3. The role of cross-cultural communication
4. Management theory and practice
5. Communication skills training
 A concern for Business English research is to discover how the language and
discourse used in business communication relate to the context – the business
relationship – in which it takes place.

 Three factors seem particularly significant:

1. whether the relationship is new or old;
2. where the balance of power lies,
3. and cultural values and attitudes.
1. Whether the relationship is new or old
 Charles (I996) shows that a key factor in the analysis of
negotiation discourse is whether the business relationship is a
new one (new relationship negotiation, NRN) or an old,
established one (old relationship negotiation, ORN).

 Professional saving vs. Personal saving

2. Where the balance of power lies
 The relative power of each party is related to who needs who most or who can
hurt the other most.
 Where each side has relatively equal power, there is likely to be give and take.
Where power is unequal, the party with most power will generally dictate the
outcome.

3. Cultural values and attitudes

 A business community is an international discourse, new to some countries.
 Swales (I990: 54) notes that “a discourse community’s nomenclature for
genres is an important source of insight.”
 The names used by business communities to describe their activities are
rather less useful than the names used by the academic community (i.e.
academic article, review article, letter).

 Analysis of BE texts can determine which genre exist; to understand

significant differences and specific communicative purposes (i.e. request
letters, response letters, confirmation letters, transmittal letters, etc.)
 Difference between meetings and negotiation in business
 There is more of a consensus on the key communicative events
of business.

 Some of the results of needs analysis identify seven core

events: five events require primarily oral language:
telephoning, socializing, marking presentations, taking part in
meetings and negotiating; and two events require written
form: corresponding and reporting.
 Business English has been an experience-, intuition-and materials-led movement, and
reported research findings have been slow to emerge and feed into practice.

 Earlier textbooks used elaborate gambits for functions such as taking turns, expressing
opinions and disagreeing.

 Recent textbooks use much shorter and more informal phrases, and that gambits can be
both verbal and non-verbal: topic closure markers can be verbal as in shifting paper or
taking out car keys.

 Much of the language-based research has been on written documents, yet spoken
transactions are fundamental to business.
 The expectations of business people are different from secondary and
tertiary level students and place very different demands on providers of
ESP courses.
 Expectations regarding the physical resources, the management of the
course and the learning strategies.
 Business managers expect small groups; time is a valuable commodity;
courses are short and intensive; language preparation; high standards,
quality and value for money, etc.
 These people look for practical way to build language development into
their working patterns.
 Telephone class vs. tutored self-study
 One description of culture is ‘the way
we do things round here’; another is ‘the
way in which the group of people solves
problems’.
 Culture is complex and comprises
different aspects such as national,
professional, organizational and
personal cultures.
 Language reflects culture and culture
can shape language.
Trompenaar’ (1991) dimensions of culture
1. Neutral: Emotional dimension: use of eye-contact; size of
private body space; expressing feelings through tone or body
2. Individualistic: Collective dimension: preference for
working alone, competing with others or collaborating
3. Specific: Diffuse dimension: to what extent different
cultures keep different aspects of life separate or spill over
each other.
4. Universalism: Particularism dimension: determining one
good way or attention to obligations of relationship and
circumstances.
 Hofstede’s (1980,1991) dimension, with a dichotomy of high and low:
1. Power Distance:
a. High PD: South American countries and Japan
b. Low PD: Scandinavian countries and Belgium
2. Uncertainty Avoidance
a. High UA :Greece, Belgium, Japan, France, Korea
b. Low UA : Great Britain and Malaysia
3. Individualism
a. High I (use of I): USA, Canada, Australia, Great Britain
b. Low I (use of we): Central America, South America, Asian countries
4. Masculinity
a. High M. : Japan, Austria, Switzerland
b. Low M.: Scandinavian countries and Canada
 All communication is cross-cultural in that each individual is
unique.
 A focus on how different professional cultures and gender
affect language use
 To what extent language taught is appropriate
 The role of body language: silence
 How to address different people
 Deciding what is a suitable strategy in a given situation
 An EBP teacher is not a business person and does not need to
be one.
 EBP teachers need is to understand the interface between
business principles and language.
 There is also an interface between
language and communication skills; in
some areas language and skills cannot
be separated.

 A spoken message comprises the words

themselves and the way in which they
are spoken; a face-to-face spoken
message also contains body language.

 The impact of each of these

components depends on the context.
 While the main focus of BE course for effective spoken language may be
language, pronunciation, and intonation, body language and basic
communication skills cannot be ignored.

 Similarly, a course which develop effective written language will need to

take account of audience, purpose, planning, information structuring and
layout of text, because choices at the macro-level affect the language.

 The BE teacher’s role is not teach the rules in business but to “walk the
talk”.
 Management training principles sit comfortable with ESP since the
learning process is primarily experiential.
 There is a conceptual difference that affects how those principles in EAP
and EBP are practiced: knowledge for its own sake vs. Knowledge for a
profit margin.
 Another difference between the two EAP and EBP is the language
background of users: in EAP the interaction is mostly between NNS and
NS; in EBP , it is NNS with NNS.
 Language and culture cannot be separated: In English L1 EAP situations,
the NNS generally has to adapt to both language and culture. In EBP
situations, the NNS may use the language but not adopt the culture.