Current approaches and methods in teaching business English. Potential perspectives

Authors
Diana Christine Zelter - Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse different approaches to business English teaching in order to find solutions to an existing situation: a course in specialised language for second year students at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration which has to be finalised with the evaluation of the students’ linguistic competence according to CEFR. The question arising is how to combine different language teaching approaches such as CLT or TBLT and CLIL with CBI and CEFR? How to correlate the assessment of content with the assessment of linguistic competence? How to correlate linguistic levels with grades? We are trying to provide a few answers to these questions through a comprehensive literature review and personal assumptions based on teaching experience.

Keywords
Business English; Communicative approach; Specialised language; Linguistic competence.
References

Allen, J.P.B. (1980). A three-level curriculum model for second language education. Mimeo, Modern Language Center, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

 

Brumfit, C.J. (1980). From defining to designing: Communicative specifications approaches to teaching proceedings of a European-American seminar. Special issue of Studies in Second language Acquisition, 3(1), 1-9.

 

Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics1(1), 1-47.

 

Candlin, C.N. (1976). Communicative language teaching and the debt to pragmatics. In C. Rameh (Ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable 1976 (pp. 237-256)Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

 

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

Council of Europe (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Frendo, E. (2011). How to teach business English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

 

Howatt, A.P.R. (1984). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293)Hamrmondsworth: Penguin.

 

Jupp, T.C., & Hodlin, S. (1975). Industrial English: An example of theory and practice in functional language teaching. London: Heinemann.

 

Popescu, T. (2011). Developing business students’ mental lexicon in English. In T. Popescu, R. Pioariu, & C. Herţeg (Eds.), Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice (pp. 19-30). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Google Scholar

 

Prabhu, N.S. (1983). Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Richards, J.C., & Rodgers, T.S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Ur, P. (2012). A course in English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Van Ek, J., & Alexander, L.G. (1980). Threshold level English. Oxford: Pergamon.

 

Widdowson, H.G. (1979). The communicative approach and its applications. In H.G. Widdowson (Ed.), Explorations of Applied Linguistics (pp. 251-264)Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Wilkins, D.A. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.