The Lack of Business Experience Versus The Lack of Appropriate Linguistic Background in Business English Teaching Context

Abstract

AbstractNowadays, in effect of globalisation, the development of international trade and need for employees with Business English background and good business communication skills can be observed. As a result, greater demand for advanced Business English courses and qualified Business English teachers can be observed. This, in turn, may be perceived as a challenge for English language teachers. In order to meet their students’ expectations and fully develop their potential, the teachers do not only need to teach about “traditional” business language (e.g., vocabulary, writing, etc.), but they are also expected to teach business communication skills (Gibson, 2002) and soft skills in general (Sadaf, 2009), relevant for business purposes. The necessity to possess an appropriate linguistic background, as well as at least basic business-related knowledge, may be a great challenge for a language teacher and a school manager. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the dark challenges of Business English teaching in a specific context of post-graduate studies. In the paper, we call post-graduate students university’s strategic customers since they bring direct income and they significantly differ from regular students when it comes to their (higher) expectations and (richer) business background, as compared to regular students. This research follows an explorative approach and we applied a longitudinal case study approach to identify specific interrelations between Business English post-graduate students and their teachers (by teachers we mean here teachers teaching Business English, as well as teachers teaching business-related subjects at post-graduate studies) and to deepen the existing knowledge on the dark side of Business English teaching.KeywordsBusiness EnglishTeachingPost-graduateChallenges