Business English teaching has come a long way from its early days of English for Specific purposes. It now encompasses professional skills such as negotiating and presenting, and aspects of intercultural competence, and increasingly is stretching into the arena of interpersonal skills e.g. rapport building, influencing etc.
But why is this happening? And are we going in the right direction? A first explanation of the trend is downward pressure on language teaching prices from clients, forcing smaller schools to enrich their offer in order to differentiate themselves. Secondly, there is a more interesting driver around client need – that participants in the classroom need more than English to be effective internationally. If we look at client needs, then we come quickly to the basics – to speak and listen in a coherent and effective way, to build relationships, to make decisions together, to influence and manage conflict and to use feedback in diverse contexts to ensure continuous learning. These are the core skills and these are the skills we should be training people to use … in English.
The bigger question is whether all this makes sense. Should we be teaching (and coaching) communication principles and skills in a foreign language? Does it make sense to teach skills in a foreign language which individuals don't even possess in their own language? Can teachers of one discipline (EFL) really train and coach different skills which require a different knowledge base and specific facilitation skills?
Big questions, indeed, and my single answer may be disappointing … it depends. It depends on the language level of the participant. I would argue that we need to wait to B1/B2 before we embark on interpersonal skills coaching – people simply need to be at this operational level in the language to have the mental space to work with these ideas. Secondly, it depends a lot on client perceptions. If clients continue to see their needs as linguistic, it is difficult if not impossible to try to sell them something which they don't understand. And finally, it depends wholly on teacher competence. And we need the courage as a profession to admit that we lack many of the skills and levels of business insight to credibly deliver this form of training quickly. We need to invest in our own personal development, and do it fast.
Interestingly, I don't think it depends on the communicative skills of the participant. If they have the skills already, they quickly learn to transfer them to English and gain an enriched sense of the intercultural dimensions. If they lack the skills, working in English can be a fun and non-threatening way to explore a new way of communicating and being.
What are your thoughts? Is our vocation changing? And are we really up to the job?
BOB DIGNEN is the author of Communicating Across Cultures. He is a director of York Associates. He specialises in intercultural skills programmes and international team seminars which he delivers to clients in Germany, Switzerland, Iceland and Sweden. He is accredited to use The International Profiler (an intercultural profiling tool) and is also an advanced practitioner of TMP (Team Management Profile – an international team profiling tool). As an author, he worked on English365 for Cambridge University Press and has written 50 ways to improve your Presentation Skills in English and Managing Projects. He is also co-author of Developing People Internationally, a multimedia international team training resource.
