The Business English special interest group of IATEFL is very active and a few weeks ago put on an online webinar addressing the role of intercultural communication training in business English. I thought that there were many topics of wider interest than the target audience of teachers during the three hour event and so I attempted to gather these into a brief montage for the latest podcast.
Evan Frendo talked about the many different ways in which people around the world perceive contracts; from a starting point to build on to an exact statement of what each party promises to deliver. The funniest observation was that taking a lawyer into a negotiation was the last thing you should do if you wanted to conclude a contract.
Sabrina Gerland went through several examples where good grammar is not enough to create an appropriate tone. This field is called pragmatics and Sabrina went through several examples; the first one being an email in which a German ‘kindly asks’ an American colleague to do something. Even though that appears polite it still comes over as an order and Sabrina explained how to formulate this more as a request.
From the detail of language and contracts, Peter Franklin introduced us to the idea of mindfulness which is about retaining an overall awareness of who you are talking to and the process of communication, rather than being too goal-focused as many successful managers are.
Baoquan Liu, who trains business students in Shanghai, made the point that in their eagerness to learn about other cultures, his Chinese students need to be reminded to also be aware of their own local culture.
So many thanks to Carl Dowse for organising this webinar. You can see the full presentations and accompanying slides on the Besig website or on YouTube. And if this taster has whetted your appetitie then maybe you’d like to try attending the main Besig annual conference which this year, 19-21 November, will be streamed online as well.