COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN BUSINESS ENGLISH

Abstract

Business English, as we know it today, is a part of the field of English for Specific Purposes, having two distinct areas: English for General Business Purposes and English for Specific Business Purposes. Both these areas are facing a rapid growth, with an increasing demand for teaching materials and improvement. Nowadays teachers face the challenge of developing not only general speech habits for their students but also rhetoric skills in order for the negotiations to be effective. The complex economic and political scene worldwide requires specific abilities for sophisticated communication. Thus, the teaching of the speaking skill has become increasingly important. Two decades ago, the accuracy of the students’ language would most likely tend to be the major criterion whereas nowadays educators and researchers alike have come to the conclusion that communicative competence entails not only grammatical accuracy but also some other factors such as: sociocultural rules of appropriateness, discourse norms, and strategies for a rhetoric approach of the skills. Some applied linguists consider that the communicative competence comprises the following elements: grammatical or linguistic competence, socio-cultural competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. The present paper tries to express some of our ideas regarding the question: How can teachers of Business English improve their students’ communication skills?