Planken Hooft Korzilius 2004 BCQ interculturality

8/13/2019 Planken Hooft Korzilius 2004 BCQ interculturality

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perceived in another cultural context (p. 3). FL courses involving thelarger global lingua francas, such as Spanish or English, also need topromote thedevelopment of this intercultural componentas it is likely that graduateswill end up using theFL primarily with fellownonnativespeakers of different nationalities. Courses need to provide students

with the opportunity to analyze materials and critical incidents involv-ing business professionals with various backgrounds (native and non-native, different nationalities) who use the FL as a shared code(Schnitzer, 1995). By consistently exposing learners to the potentialotherness of FL communication in a lingua franca business context (involving different accents, pragmatic expectations, discoursal pat-terns, and the like), FL courses have the potential to make a consider-

able contribution to achieving an importantgoal of IBCprograms: thedevelopment of (a degree of) intercultural communicativecompetence in the target group.

THE IBC PROGRAM AT NIJMEGEN UNIVERSITY

Within the IBC program, content from other courses (interculturalcommunication, management, marketing, IBC research, document design) is integrated into theFL curriculum. FL teaching is facilitative,andproject-basedcourses arepresented in a student-centered environ-ment where learnersare required to become actively involved in recur-ringcommunicativeaction in theFL in various (intercultural) businesscommunication settings. Although the main goal of FL instruction isfacilitating FL awareness and acquisition, assignments also heightenstudents cross-cultural awareness and encourage them to develop thebeginnings of a professional identity as communication specialists who

will need to be able to operate in a multiculturalbusinessenvironment.The underlying assumption of the FL courses at Nijmegen is that a

learning environment involving participation is more likely to pro-mote intercultural learning than an environment that focuses primar-ily on internalizing knowledge. Becoming a member ofa given profes-sional discourse community (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000) includeslearning to communicate in the language of the relevant socioculturalcommunityand to actaccording to itsparticular norms(Sfard,1988, ascited in Lantolf, 2000). In the FL courses we attempt to create circum-stances that allow students to become comfortable with using the FL

with counterparts, in activities and genres (see, e.g., Louhiala-Salminen,1996; Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997)thatare relevant to theglobalized business environment they will become part of upon

2 BUSINESS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / XXX XXX


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graduation. Participation is seen as part of a longitudinal process that should be reinforced throughout the program, not just in the first yearor in a single dedicated course.

The IBC program (a 3-year BA and a 1-year MA) incorporates fourcomponents: a foreign business language (Spanish, German, French,or English), intercultural communication theory and research, busi-ness communication research and methodology, and communicationand organizational management. Since 2001-2002, an effort has beenmade to integrate, horizontally on a year-by-year basis and vertically throughout theprogram, thecourse content of the latterthreecompo-nents into the FL component in an attempt to create FL teaching con-tentin communication tasks framed in relevantbusiness-related con-

texts and businessprojects that centeraroundthemesthat are linkedto the business, theoretical, research, and (inter)cultural knowledgethat students are internalizing simultaneously in other programcomponents.

BUSINESS PROJECTS

In their first year, students follow four business projects (see Table1), each lasting 7 weeks (two 2-hour workshops per week) that centeron experience andpracticewith relevant tasks in theFL (e.g.,presenta-tions, meetings, negotiations, telephone calls, e-mails, business letters,reports, questionnaires, and thelike).The tasks aredirectly relevant toeach of the four project themes (see Table 1). The projects are sup-ported by language skills workshops (2 hours per week) that deal withthe mechanics (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, business

writing conventions in the FL, and the like) required for the tasks. AsSpanish is a starter language formost students, theSpanish program,although parallel in content to the other FL programs, starts at an ele-mentary level. Background reading and instruction are partly inDutch,and assignments areadapted to the students level of mastery of Spanish. All the FL projects are supported by BlackBoard, an elec-tronicworkspace that functions as an intranet and is used to communi-cate, conduct online discussions and peer reviews, write collabor-atively, and create Web pages.

Within the projects, a conscious attempt has been made to moveaway from the more traditional FL classroom. In the workshops stu-dents are encouraged to coconstruct quasi-naturalistic business com-munication events in which they produce and participate in relevant communicative action involving business-related content. Communi-

Planken et al. / INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE 3


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cative action here is seen as incorporating speech acts but also engag-ing in different types of discourse and participating in speech eventsof

varying length and complexity (Kasper & Rose, 2001, p. 2). Each com-munication event contributes to the overall goal of a given task or pro-

ject. Although the projects are fictitious in the sense that students arenot commissioned by real-life organizations, students are expected tomake useofauthentic informationand materials from existing compa-nies as the basis for their analyses. For example, in Project 2 (see Table1), students investigate a potential market in the relevant target coun-try using secondary sources, supposedlyforan existingDutchcompany that wants to export its products to the target market. To carry out thestudy, students need to collect up-to-date information about the orga-

nization in question (from its Web site or annual report or by contact-ing the organization directly) and relevant information about the tar-get market (political, economic, demographic) from tradeorganizations, government institutions, and chambers of commerce.


Table 1. Courses in the First-Year Program, 2002-2003, InternationalBusiness Communication (IBC) Program, Nijmegen Univer-sity, the Netherlands

Term (Four Foreign Language Courses Courses in the Remaining Components

per Year) (Taught in the Foreign Language) of the IBC Program (Taught in Dutch)

1 1. Business Language Project 1:Cultural Analysis: Own vs. Target Country

2. Language Skills

1. Introduction to BusinessCommunication

2. Introduction to Marketing3. General Communication Skills 1

(speaking skills in the first language [L1])

2 1. Business Language Project 2: Study

of Macroeconomic Aspects of Relevant Target Market 2. Language Skills

1. Introduction to Information

Sciences2. Introduction to Organization &Management

3 1. Business Language Project 3:Investigating a Joint VentureBetween a Dutch Company and aCompany in Relevant Target Country

2. Language Skills

1. Introduction to InterculturalCommunication

2. Introduction to Statistics 3. GeneralCommunication Skills 2 (writingskills in the L1)

4 1. Business Language Project 4:Organizing an InternationalTrade Fair in Relevant Target Country

2. Language Skills

1. Introduction to Informatics for Arts Students


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In the first-year FL course, participants gradually develop a clearidentity within their peer group and within each of the projects. Theteachers role also changes; he or she is not the main initiator of com-munication and a corrector but instead a gatekeeper, facilitator, andeditor. From the very beginning, students are required to independ-ently initiate and experience and to practice using the FL in relevant activities and contexts. In this way, they gradually create a temporary sociocultural community in which they can begin to at least approxi-mate some of the professional identities they aspire to (e.g., marketer,communications advisor, or project manager).

During the workshops, evaluation and feedback are not dominatedby the teacher. Although the teacher periodically provides feedback

and evaluates students verbal and nonverbal communication perfor-mance both at an individual and team level (studentswork on projectsin groups of two to four), students also evaluate each other as fellow practitioners in training.

PEDAGOGIC INTERVENTION:AWARENESS-RAISING AND PRODUCTION TASKS

Activities that help students develop intercultural awareness and FLcompetence in the projects can be divided into broadly two types:awareness-raising and production tasks. Awareness-raising tasksrequire students to observe and analyzepreferably authenticinstances of business communication conducted in the FL by nativeand nonnative speakers and to describe and interpret specific aspectsof that communication, using their first language (L1) or everyday communication practicesas a baseline forcomparison. As such, aware-ness-raisingtasksmay focus on specific areas of FL pragmatics, relevant areas of business pragmatics, or both. As part of English Project 3 (seeTable 1), forexample, studentsarepresentedwith a video recording of a business negotiation (in English as a lingua franca, involving partici-pants with different nationalities) about an international jointventureandareasked to consider how different types of communicative action(offer, rejection, introduction, greeting, interruption, and thelike) arerealized linguistically in the FL and how these types of action areresponded to verbally and nonverbally by the hearers. Simultaneously,students are sensitized to broader discourse aspects, such as turn-tak-ing and back-channeling and culture-related idiosyncrasies in thebehavior of the differentparticipants. In this way, an attempt is made toraise students awareness of factors that may play a role in



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communication in intercultural contexts. As such, the project curricu-lum is linked directly to content offered simultaneously in theintercultural communication course in the third term (see Table 1).

Awareness-raising activities are initially presented as open tasks. Stu-dents arefirstasked to discover regularities in thecommunication they are presented with on their own or in small peer groups. In someinstances, however, more guidance is provided. For example, studentsmay be asked to look at certain aspects in greater detail or to focus spe-cifically on what is relevant in another part of the program at a particu-lar moment in time (see Table 1). To help students consider a featuremore systematically, checklists may also be provided.

Production tasks involve assignments in which students practice FL

andbusinesspragmatic ability by participatingin businesscommunica-tion activities. These tasks involve student-centered interaction in which the participants take on professionally relevant speaker oraddressee perspectives. The tasks incorporate various business genres

within which students cocreate different types of communicativeaction in the FL. For example, longer role-play simulations providepractice in a wide range of linguistic and business pragmatic abilities.In such situations, students may initially be confronted with experi-ences and contexts they may be unfamiliar with and will be required touse their existing knowledge and skills to carry out a particular task(chair a meeting or write a management summary, for example) only asbest they can. Aspart of this deep-end approach,the teacher acts asa monitor andfacilitator and provides thesupport thestudents need asthey work through thetask. Feedback,on thebasis of a videotaped per-formance, for example, is tailored to the need revealed by the task andgeared not just to creating FL awareness but also to evaluating theoutcomes and processes of the task (for the group) within the project as a whole.

CONCLUSION

Although the new program has required flexibility and improvisa-tion from teachers andstudents alike, it seems to have helped us createa learning environment that is more relevantly contextualized andeffi-cient (geared to obvious practical needs) than before. Although it isearly days, one observable advance with regard to FL performance isthat students now have a considerably broader business vocabulary base than before as they start their second year. They have also devel-oped a degree of FL competence in a wider range of relevant oral and



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written business communication genres than before. There is alsoclear evidence of transfer from the rest of the program to the FL com-ponent. In the projects, students offer perspectives on (intercultural)business communication and organizational processes that clearly stem from knowledge gained elsewhere in the program.

With respect to the student-centered approach, an observable draw-back is the fact that students are expected to independently plan theirstudy activities and to be responsible for their own progress. In other

words, they are expected to do, individually, much of the project workbesides the central group tasks in theirowntime.A proportion of stu-dents find it hard to develop the discipline to fulfill individual project requirements. This has provided us with somewhat of a dilemma: We

have to find a way to provide more explicit guidance regarding project planning, on one hand, without sacrificing students independence,on theother. However, ourbiggest challenge is to evaluate theeffectof this integrative and participative approach on thedevelopment of par-ticipants intercultural communicative competence. Although allcourses in the IBC program are periodically subjected to survey-basedqualitative evaluations of course content and teacher effectiveness, wearecurrently in the process of calibrating an instrument with which wehope to be able to specifically measure the development, over time, of students intercultural awareness (see, e.g., Hooft, Korzilius, &Planken, 2003; Korzilius, Hooft, & Planken, 2002). As a teaching insti-tution, we feel that the only way to determine the true merits of our FLteaching for the IBC program is to measure its effect on thedevelopment of intercultural communicative competence in ourtarget group.

REFERENCES

Beamer, L. (1992). Learning intercultural competence. Journal of Business Communica- tion, 29 , 285-303.

Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to trainingfor interculturalsensitivity.International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10 , 179-195.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence . Clevedon:STATE/COUNTRY? Multilingual Matters.

Hooft, A. van, Korzilius, H., & Planken, B. (2003). La conciencia intercultural y laadquisicin de segundas lenguas. Predice el dominio de segundas lenguas el

desarrollo de la conciencia intercultural? ENGLISH TRANSLATION? InM. PrezGutirrez & J. Coloma Maestre (Eds.), XIII Congreso ASELE. El espaol, lengua del mestizaje y la interculturalidad (pp. 52-77). Murcia: COUNTRY? Universidad deMurcia.



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Planken Hooft Korzilius 2004 BCQ interculturality