IATEFL BESIG 2010 Annual Conference talk by Miriam Symon

1. English Language Needs of
Business, Economics and
Accounting Students
Miriam Symon
BESIG 2010, Bielefeld

2. BUSINESS ENGLISH

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

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

5. Implications for the English course?

6. Overview
 My Study
 Business English and
Globalisation
 Business as a Discipline?
 Practical Aspects for the
Business English course

7. MY RESEARCH
 Needs analysis
 The context: EFL
 Method:
 Semi-structured interviews
 Triangulation of sources rather
than method

8. 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)

9. Participants (continued(
 Workforce representatives / trainers
 Careers Adviser and Placement officer for
Business students
 Presentation Trainer in Companies
 Business Consultant
 EFL Course Coordinators (3)

10. GLOBALISATION
Has 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!

11. 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

12. 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

13. Local/ global distinction
Exception= ?
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+wo
-> effect on accounting profession
GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) -> IFRS
IFRS- free access (need to register) http://www.ifrs.org/IFRSs/IFRS.htm

14. 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?

15. 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)

16. Soft/ Hard Sciences Continuum
Soft disciplines Harddisciplines
Business? Economics
?
Accounting?

17. 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)

18. 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

19. Accounting vs. Finance
(business major)

20. PRACTICAL ASPECTS
for the English course
1. TOPICS
2. VOCABULARY
3. GENRES
4. TASKS
- PROJECT

21. 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)

22. 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"

23. 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)

24. TASKS - Project
COMMON CORE +
 Business (practical)
 Economics (theoretical)
 Accounting (technical)
Not just what ->
what does it mean?

25. How specific should we be?
Ideal world …
BUT
Interdisciplinary nature of academic
studies and professional lives

26. Thank you
Any questions?
msymon@idc.ac.il

27. References
Bhatia, 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
Press
Zhang, Z. (2007), 'Towards an Integrated Approach to Teaching Business
English: A Chinese Experience'. English for Specific Purposes, 26, 399-
410.