Málfríður - 15.09.1995, Blaðsíða 18

Terry G. Lacy:
BUSINESS LANGUAGE AS A
KEY TO FUNCTIONING
Nobody is going to approach
business letters or international
terms like FOB and CIF for the
beauty of the language. It does
nothing for the soul. Flowever,
from the point of view of teach-
ing there are some very practi-
cal reasons for combining busi-
ness usage with other material
at lower levels of learning, as
well as offering a special course.
Like everyone else, business-
men and -women must cope
with the basics of dealing with
time and space: when and
where. They must know how to
greet people, speak on the tele-
phone, and thank their hosts for
a fine evening. Incompetence in
these ordinary language tasks
weakens their ability the same
as it frustrates anyone listening.
In business the emphasis is
on functioning. But I fohnd that
our students also want an
emphasis on functioning, espe-
cially on being able to carry on
a conversation. The business
students at the university are
quite definite about needing
more speech practice, and over
the years the students in
English have also clamored for
more. Business language is a
good excuse to expand oppor-
tunities for speech practice.
As to the question as to why
the Icelandic educational sys-
tem requires studying a foreign
language, and specifically, why
English, surely the answer is its
utility, the need to know English
to function more widely and
effectively in the modern world
- to help put Iceland on the
map. The points I want to raise
about the language of business
are not limited to English, how-
ever. In fact, the Viðskiptadeild
at the University now offers
courses in business French and
German as well as English since
the faculty feel that the stu-
dents should graduate able to
function in a variety of contexts.
Teaching business language
has two aspects, both of them a
challenge to the teacher. One is
opening a new world to our stu-
dents: how to order a product,
agree on payment and shipping
terms, and complain if the order
is shortshipped. If this seems
too cut-and-dried, remember
that most of the pop records,
the clothes we wear, much of
the food we eat, and a great
deal else are available to us pre-
cisely because enough Ice-
landers have taken the trouble
to learn a language other than
Icelandic, at least enough to
write an adequate letter and not
háve a heart attack answering a
phone call from abroad. To
open this new world is, then,
worthwhile. To do this requires
learning new terms and the con-
cepts the words stand for, like
L/C, B/E, CIF and FOB. Even the
university business students
taking business English find
they are Iearning about con-
cepts that are new to them.
Such terms are not difficult to
learn but are specific to the
worlds of business and banking.
The second aspect of teach-
ing business language is the
usual problem of teaching lan-
guage difference. This is the
problem of getting the students
to accept the fact that a foreign
language is not Icelandic and
that the different rules for gram-
mar and pronunciation are
valid. It always feels as if the
students can't quite believe
that a different grammar struc-
ture or different use of words is
still human. This is the part I
always find most interesting,
but also often the hardest to
teach. Who wants to bother to
remember that information
never has an s on the end or
that hús usually means building
and not house in English?
The goal of business lan-
guage, correctly used, is to
build one’s own and one’s firm’s
credibility. The interim goal in
teaching is simpler: to give the
students more knowledge and
to increase their competence.
The teaching itself and all the
projects the students carry out
should be aimed at helping
them to achieve these goals.
Full competence in business
language means a knowledge of:
enough business and banking
vocabulary, the correct format
for letters, the right tone for the
message. Though correct gram-
mar is certainly pleasanter for
the reader or listener, it is
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