Teaching Decision-making: Using

Research in Workplace Discourse for Business

English teaching materials

Almut KoesterUniversity of Birmingham

The Gap between research and practice

Most teaching materials for Languages for Specific Purposes are not based on research and may not always accurately reflect the language and content of actual workplace communication.

Nickerson (2005): A survey of teaching materials for English for Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) found few books that made reference to research into the field.

The Gap between research and practice

Williams (1988) compared real meetings with the language of meetings taught in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks:

10 of 17 ‘functions’ (speech acts) taught in textbooks did not occur in the recorded meetings.

Only 7 of 135 ‘exponents’ (ways of expressing the functions) from textbooks were used in the recorded meetings.

The Gap between research and practice

Williams (1988) compared real meetings with the language of meetings taught in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks:

10 of 17 ‘functions’ (speech acts) taught in textbooks did not occur in the recorded meetings.

Only 7 of 135 ‘exponents’ (ways of expressing the functions) from textbooks were used in the recorded meetings.

The Gap between research and practice

Cheng and Warren (2005 and 2006) compared agreeing, disagreeing and ‘opine markers’ in HKCSE-bus* with EFL textbooks in Hong Kong:

Strategies used for agreeing and disagreeing were more indirect than those taught in textbooks

Only four of the ‘top 10’ forms of opine markers in the corpus, and only 1 of the ‘top 5’, occurred in the textbooks.

*business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English

The Gap between research and practice

The research gap is particularly pronounced for spoken workplace genres (e.g. meetings, presentations)

Language doing business (Nelson 2000)

Language about vs. language doing

Nelson (2000): Language about business:

language used (e.g. by business experts, journalists) to talk about business

Language doing business: language used to perform business and

workplace activities (problem-solving, planning, briefing, training etc.)

The Gap between research and practice

Recent business textbooks include authentic language about business: business texts interviews with business experts

Handford (2010): Survey of over 20 best-selling business textbooks found no lessons based around real spoken business interactions (e.g. telephone conversations, meetings)

Applications of Research to teaching

Incorporating findings from discourse analysis

Incorporating findings from corpus-based analysis

Using transcripts from professional interactions

Corpus research

Corpus of American and British Office Talk (ABOT): 34,000 words 41 encounters, 66 generic

episodes

(Koester 2006, 2010)

Corpus research

CANBEC (Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus)1 million words spoken data Meetings: 912,734 words64 meetings from 26 companies(Handford 2010)

Part of the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC) - 800 million words

CANBECCANBEC has information about: Purpose of meeting Topic Relationship of speakers:

External meetings (EM) Internal meetings (IM)

Colleagues from the same department

Colleagues from a different department

PeersManager(s) – subordinate(s)

Business Discourse

Decision-making and problem-solving are key activities in spoken business communication ABOT Corpus: Decision-making

is the most frequent genre – over ¼ of corpus

(Koester 2006, 2010)

Handford 2010, p.13

Keywords in CANBEC

Keywords = significantly frequent words compared to a spoken corpus of General English

Among top 50 keywords in CANBEC need issue problem“problem” 3x more frequent in business

corpus

(Handford 2010)

Frequent ‘chunks’ for decision-making

a problem with not a problem/not an issue we need to/we have to I think we need to so we can we should be able to we could do that

Modal verbs: need to/have to, should, can, could

Pronouns: we

Frequent ‘chunks’ for decision-making

a problem with not a problem/not an issue we need to/we have to I think we need to so we can we should be able to we could do that

Modal verbs: need to/have to, should, can, could

Pronouns: we Top keyword(Handford 2010)

Decision-making

Decision-making conversations follow a Problem – Solution Pattern (Koester 2006, 2010):

1. Raising a Problem : problem, difficult

2. Proposing a response or solution: figure out, come up with

3. Evaluating the solution: good, works

(Hoey 1983, 1994)

Raising a problem

S2: Right. Erm I won't talk about /?/ Liverpool the excess space issue. That's not critical. Erm what I do need to get a decision on today really is is the progress /?/ on the marketing suite. Erm (2 secs) I'm coming from sort of limited informationso if you can help me out here /?/.

Proposing a solution

SM: You think you can deliver it downstairs?S6?: I think we could deliver not a room but we could deliver+SM: Yeah.S6: +an environment where people actually felt incentive as to come and have a look. No pressure. I think that's a big thing. Going upstairs to somewhere where there literally is a closed door approach I think will actually switch quite a few people off rather than on. I think we can do something downstairs but it has to be much more open and much more er - much less pressurized. And I think we could do something with bookings. We could certainly do something with vouchers to come and look on the day...

Evaluating the solutionS9: It'll be an operating environment so it's a much more appealing environment for people to come up and-S6: And we've got something to sh-S9: have a lookS6: Exactly. We've got something to show them in that way. SM: Mm. S6: Hopefully if we can get them up we can start to show themSF: We will. We will. Treatment etcetera.(1.5 secs)SM: So (1 sec) just erm (2 secs) I'm reluctant to to drop the concept and I I think using downstairs is great.SM: Mhm.

Idioms and problem-solving

Problems It's it's all (0.5 sec) mats are being

used day in day out by adults (0.5 sec) and you know taking a lot of abuse.

Going upstairs to somewhere where there literally is a closed door approach I think will actually switch quite a few people off rather than on

Idioms and problem-solving

Solutions The suggestion of (0.5 sec) a

generic procedure is very very good because it means we can kill two birds with one stone.

I've gotta try and er [inhales] figure out what we can do about this…

cos er we'll have - well this afternoon it'll be and I'm just gonna sit down and go through everything and see what I can do.

3 Which word or phrase a–f is closest in meaning to each of the idioms 1–6? There may be more than one possibility.

Business Advantage Intermediate 13.3: Language Focus 2

1 mess up a difficult

2 a bit tricky b make a mistake

3 figure out c find

4 go wrong d take time (to do something)

5 come up with e find a solution

6 sit down (and) f fail

Idioms, Metaphor and Evaluation

Evaluating (judging/expressing opinion) is important at all stages of decision-making/problem-solving.

Idioms and metaphors are useful for evaluation because they: can evaluate indirectly can express a strong

judgement/opinion can encapsulate an idea with few

words (esp. metaphors)

Idioms and Metaphors for evaluating

Well it's always a bit - I mean er there is there's some physical limitations like there's no space upstairs. There's there's no power. It's a bit tricky that's all.

It it's something that really sticks in the throat.

So it's kind of more like - a a - just of pair of the right hands isn't it really.

It's the chicken and egg cos we have spoken about it and it's (0.5 sec) it's an embarrassment going out (0.5) getting work in and then having it sat on the (0.5 sec) side for three or four weeks…

Teaching decision-making

Skills involved in decision-making (Handford 2010, p. 255): raising an issue discussing the issue discussing solutions reaching a consensus postponing or evading decisions

Teaching decision-making

Skills involved in decision-making (Handford 2010, p. 255): raising an issue* discussing the issue* discussing solutions* reaching a consensus postponing or evading decisions

Teaching decision-making

Skills involved in decision-making (Handford 2010, p. 255): Also: planning and making arrangements exchanging information evaluating dealing with conflict hypothesizing

Teaching decision-making

Skills involved in decision-making (Handford 2010, p. 255): Also: planning and making arrangements exchanging information evaluating* dealing with conflict hypothesizing

Conclusion

Findings from research on workplace and professional discourse can and should inform Business English teaching materials.

Transcripts from professional interactions can be adapted for pedagogical purposes

References

Cheng, W. and Warren, M. (2005), ‘//well I have a DIFferent//THINking you know//: A corpus-driven study of disagreement in Hong Kong Business Discourse’, in F. Bargiela-Chiappini and M. Gotti (eds), Asian Business Discourse(s). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 241-70.

Cheng, W. and Warren, M. (2006), ‘“I would say be very careful of…”: opine markers in an intercultural Business corpus of spoken English’, J. Bamford and M. Bondi (eds), Managing Interaction in Professional Discourse. Intercultural and Interdiscoursal Perspectives. Rome: Officina Edizioni, pp. 46-58.

Handford, M. (2010). The Language of Business Meetings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koester, A. (2006). Investigating Workplace Discourse. London: Routledge.

Koester, A. (2010). Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum.

Nelson, M. (2000), Mike Nelson's Business English Lexis Site. http://users.utu.fi/micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm [Accessed 14 September 2009].

Nickerson, C. (2005), English as a lingua franca in international business contexts. English for Specific Purposes 24, 367-380.

Williams, M. (1988), ‘Language taught for meetings and language used in meetings: Is there anything in common?’, Applied Linguistics 9 (1).