Bridging the Gap between Journalistic Writing and Business English Writing: Starting from Curriculum Design and Methodology

Abstract

According to Hsu (2005), it was suggested that journalistic English writing could be a method leading students to be efficient in learning how to write English business correspondence. Aiming to verify Hsu's claim, the current paper explored the relationship between journalistic and business English writing through an empirical study on the effects of attending journalistic English courses on English majors' performances in business English writing. In the hopes of providing curricular suggestions, we also carried out a large-scale survey to investigate the current situation of curriculum design regarding journalism as well as business English writing in English department of universities and colleges in Taiwan. The research design employed a single independent variable, i.e. whether students attending the business English writing course took the journalistic English course, and a single dependent variable, i.e. students' performances in business English writing. In addition, the educational system (so-called vocational universities/colleges of technology and traditional universities/colleges) was utilized as an independent variable, whereas the order of offering journalistic English courses and business English writing was regarded as a dependent variable. A t-test was used to assess the influences of taking part in journalistic English courses on business English writing; moreover, a Pearson Chi-square was adopted to evaluate the differences of the curriculum design between two educational systems. The results indicate no significant difference between performances of students with journalistic English training and of those without it. Furthermore, no significant difference on curriculum design was found between two educational systems. Different collocated orders of journalistic and business English courses exist in the curriculum design of both educational systems. The current findings do not show that Hsu's idea is problematic but may point out the pedagogical problems in these courses instead. The study thus suggests the necessity of establishing a link between teaching journalistic English and business English; likewise, the curriculum design of the two courses needs to be reconsidered carefully and precisely.