English Language Needs of Business, Economics and

Accounting Students

Miriam SymonBESIG 2010, Bielefeld

BUSINESS ENGLISH

In what ways are these disciplines similar (intersection) and how do they differ?

Business

EconomicsAccounting

Can a Business English course cover the needs of Accounting and Economics students too?

BusinessAccounting

Economics

Implications for the English course?

Overview

My Study Business English and

Globalisation Business as a Discipline? Practical Aspects for the

Business English course

MY RESEARCH

Needs analysis The context: EFL Method:

Semi-structured interviews Triangulation of sources rather than method

Participants Lecturers

Business (4) Economics (3) Accounting (3)

Students 3rd year Business (11 including 2

specialising in Accounting)All have taken courses in Economics

(continued)

Participants (continued)

Workforce representatives / trainers Careers Adviser and Placement officer

for Business students Presentation Trainer in Companies Business Consultant

EFL Course Coordinators (3)

GLOBALISATIONHas globalisation affected these three

disciplines equally?

I think even this word 'globalisation' is meaningless at this point, because everything is global. (business lecturer)

Well in the world of business today, it's an international world; we live in a globalisation world. Without English, you are dead.

(economics lecturer)

Not even a topic of discussion a starting assumption Global working environment for everyone Can we differentiate its effect between the disciplines? YES!

English and the Global Work Environment

Need English to be “a player”

The global arena is there for the players who know the rules of the game, and language is an essential element of the rules and in the everyday life of the players.(Louhiala-Salminen and Rogerson-Revell 2010: 92)

Even greater importance in more senior positions

Use of English in the Global Workplace

Intra-corporate communication conducted in English – even when workers share same L1

Use of English technical jargon even when lecture is in first language.

Why?- Comes to mind more naturally than first

language equivalent- often no equivalent in first language

Local/ global distinctionException? =

The IFRS - it's an international language actually(accounting student)

Adoption of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)– if country wants international investment http://www.ifrs.org/Use+around+the+world/Use+around+the+world.htm -> effect on accounting profession

GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) -> IFRS

IFRS- free access (need to register) http://www.ifrs.org/IFRSs/IFRS.htm

What is a discipline?

… identified by a broadly agreed set of common public goals (Swales 1990: 24)…human institutions that reflect diverse ways of constructing knowledge

(Hyland 2006)Communication practices are not uniform across academic disciplines

Boundaries? Differences between disciplines?

Can we call Business a DISCIPLINE?

Divisions/specialisations/ sub-sets of business

How is Economics related? You can know economics without knowing finance

or accounting, but there is no way you can learn accounting and finance without knowing economics (business lecturer)

Theories & assumptions vs. applications

Soft/ Hard Sciences Continuum

Soft disciplines Harddisciplines

Business?

Economics?

Accounting?

Gross National Product (GNP) In tertiary level Economics

textbook Theoretical treatment of the concept, GNP

– emphasising the numerical calculation

In tertiary level Business textbook Practical application to assist in

understanding the concept(Bhatia 1999)

Working with numbers? >- The linguistic level required for students was lowest in

finance and accounting since students in these sub-disciplines devoted more time to working with numbers and equations. (Jackson 2005: 298)

Is this true today?Accounting is mostly about numbers; there are accountants

that all they do is crunch numbers – for that they don't need English, but like in many other professions, the more senior you become, the more you need English.

(accounting lecturer) The Financial Statement Analysis … you take a company

and you analyse it, and you have the numbers, but the question is – what do those numbers mean?

(accounting lecturer)

Accounting vs. Finance (business major)

PRACTICAL ASPECTS for the English course

1. TOPICS

2. VOCABULARY3. GENRES4. TASKS

- PROJECT

VOCABULARY- how specialised?

In accounting … it's a language…for instance, you have to know what …is long-term debt … etcetera. So these are more of the technical terms that they have to know, on top of the finance kind of terms like present value concepts etcetera. So the accountant has additional needs, in the sense that he has to know the accounts name, and the explanations for the financial statements etcetera.

(accounting lecturer)

Accounting is a language of its own, ok? It's got only two verbs – debit and credit – and it's got some nouns… and that's it …economics and business is not like that. Economics and business is a regular language that you use. (a different accounting lecturer)

Should English for Accountant course be technical?

I would say accountants…focus on the numbers without understanding the story behind the numbers. Every number has a story – tell the story behind the numbers or make numbers come to life…Accountants think that once I've got my numbers right, that's enough.

(workplace)

Not just the “what”, but also the “how"

What constitutes Business English?

Not just “a list of specialized lexical, syntactic, and discoursal features …it has its own subject matter, interpersonal relations, choice of media and channels of communication, and patterns of organizing messages.”

(Zhang, 2007:406)

TASKS - Project

COMMON CORE + Business (practical) Economics (theoretical) Accounting (technical)

Not just what -> what does it mean?

How specific should we be?

Ideal world …BUTInterdisciplinary nature of academic

studies and professional lives

Thank you

Any questions?

msymon@idc.ac.il

ReferencesBhatia, V. (1999), 'Disciplinary Variation in Business English'. In M. Hewings

and C. Nickerson (eds), Business English: Research into Practice. Harlow: Pearson.

Hyland, K. (2006), English for Academic Purposes: An Advanced Resource Book. Oxon: Routledge Applied Linguistics.

Jackson, J. (2005), 'An Inter-University, Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of Business Education: Perceptions of Business Faculty in Hong Kong'. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 293-306.

Louhiala-Salminen, L. and Rogerson-Revell, P. (2010), 'Language Matters: An Introduction’ (editorial) Journal of Business Communication, 47 (2), 91-96.

Swales, J. (1990), Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressZhang, Z. (2007), 'Towards an Integrated Approach to Teaching Business

English: A Chinese Experience'. English for Specific Purposes, 26, 399-410.