Teaching Business Communication Skills: A Clarion Call

Abstract

English is an international business communication tool and it transcends cultures. The teaching of business English is different from that of General English in the sense that it is neither teaching just the four macro-skills nor enhancing mere business vocabulary. In fact, business English is taught on the assumption that general English language skills have already been acquired. Business English learners are prospective entrepreneurs, managers and leaders of industries at national and international levels and teachers face a huge challenge of helping them acquire an international communication skill-set through English as the medium. Most people who use business English are non-native users of English. They use it frequently not only among themselves, but use it occasionally with native speakers as well. Native speakers of English, of course, control world economy, science and technology, and trade and commerce. Moreover, business English is fast moving from the planet Earth to other planets since it is the only communication tool for international space research that involves billions of dollars from across the globe in its competition to explore other planets. Thus business English is used in different cultural environments and does not represent one culture that is often tied to it nationally or internationally. It transcends cultures and at the same time it respects them all. Hence, business English teachers need to recognize the paradigm shift in its cultural metamorphosis, to design trans-cultural English language learning materials, to identify communication skill-set, and to adopt appropriate teaching- learning methods. This paper interrogates constituent parts of international communication skill-set and argues that a task-based approach of ‘learning by doing’ is the need of the hour since it exploits essential and result-oriented andragogy and heutagogy of self-directed and self-determined learning processes lifelong.