Authentic materials in the Business English classroom: Annual Reports

Miguel F Ruiz-Garrido,Juan Carlos Palmer-Silveira

doi:10.15388/klbt.2015.8944

Abstract

International firms are interested in getting the best possible professionals, those who are able to communicate accurately at the workplace. To help them, the use of authentic materials in the classroom can enhance students’ options to succeed in their prospective working environment. From a genre-based perspective, annual reports can be useful for that purpose, as they offer a real corporate image of the companies, helping students to understand better how firms work. This paper shows a practical implementation of three activities that are carried out among three different groups of students at a Spanish public university to promote their communicative skills. To do so we have followed a multimodal approach, so that our students can experience, conceptualize and apply meaning to a genre (annual report), completing some tasks in which they have to communicate in English the information appearing in those texts. The final pedagogical recommendations enhance the benefits of using authentic materials in the English for business communication classroom. The combination of multimodality and genre-based pedagogy lead students to understand the current meaning construction in professional settings.

Highlights

English is, without any doubt, the language of international business transactions
2 Materials in the English for Business Communication classroom. This need to use those materials in the English language classroom is even higher when we have to deal with specific groups, such as those involved in the English language in professional settings, as many firms are looking for those prospective workers who could efficiently locate, manage and communicate business information
An excellent way of teaching this discourse in higher education is by means of using available material which can give an overview of the language students will need in their future career

Summary

The need to use the appropriate materials for the English language classroom

Without any doubt, the language of international business transactions. Firms all over the world point out their need to hire good professionals, people ably prepared to develop business communication in English (Babcock & Du-Babcock 2001; Crystal 1997; Kameda 1996; Nickerson 2015). One possible way of helping our English language students to be prepared for a prospective professional environment is to study and use authentic and appropriate materials in class (for example, Cook 1981; Peacock 1997; or Tamo 2009). A further reason for using these suitable materials is that they tend to increase the students’ motivation and interest (Breen 1985; Tomlinson 2001) This concept is what Peacock (1997, 144) defines as the “classic argument” for those defending authentic materials as motivating tools for learners (for example, Allwright 1979; Freeman & Holden 1986; Little & Singleton 1991). Some authentic materials may work for some specific groups of students, but not necessarily for others

Materials in the English for Business Communication classroom

Annual Reports in the business English Classroom

Methodological implementation

Findings

Conclusions