There are two ways of thinking about what it can achieve. The first is called "dealing with diversity" or "culture-general" approach, encourages learners to understand what culture is, gain awareness of how their own culture works, and appreciate that the way they do things is not necessarily the only way. The idea is to break down prejudices, look at the pros and cons of stereotyping, and to recognize that people have points of view that are as valid as your own. The aim is to provide learners with strategies that they can use to cope with diversity, and ultimately to create value of that diversity.
The second approach focuses on preparing people to work with specific cultures/contexts and is often called culture-specific training. Sometimes learners will only need to deal with one or two cultures. This is typical for expatriates who are abroad for a period of time, and need some understanding about how a specific culture works, and what behaviour is or is not acceptable.
There are several approaches to identifying different dimensions as a method of analyzing and describing the nature of culture. One of them is High context vs Low Context, e.g. in a high context culture members use the context itself as means of communication. Often they use non-verbal
GESJ: Education Science and Psychology 2012 | No.1(20)
International Scientific Conference: "Education in the Era of Globalization - XXI Century Challenges''. Materials
ISSN 1512-1801
behaviour, value long term relationships, and work with spoken, rather than written agreements. In low context cultures, things need to be communicated much more explicitly - people often appear direct and dislike ambiguity.
Another dimension is time. In monochronic cultures, time is seen as linear, with one event following another. Members of polychronic cultures, on the other hand, are able to manage different activities at once.
One more dimension is Power distance - this refers to the distance or equality between individuals in a hierarchy. In a low-power distance culture people find it easy to approach their leaders to discuss issues, and even to criticize them. In a high-power distance culture the opposite happens. Subordinates are likely to do what they are told and there is little discussion.
Researchers also speak about dimension of Masculinity vs Femininity. In masculine cultures achievement is often measured in terms of power and wealth ,and emphasis placed on work goals and assertiveness. Feminine cultures see personal goals, human contact and relationship building as more valuable.
In order intercultural training be successful in their classrooms, teachers must also consider the notion of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Perhaps the most influential models have been based on work done by Canale and Swain in the 1970s.The first is grammatical competence which refers to the Chomsky's concept of linguistic competence - accuracy in performance. The second competence deals with social rules of language usage, culture-specific context embedding the norms, values, beliefs and behaviour patterns of a culture. Next comes discourse competence which is the ability to deal with the extended use of language in context. The last is strategic competence, which is defined as the ability to cope with an authentic communicative situation (C. Alptekin,
2002).
linguistic,
discourse,
intercultural
E. Frendo
divides
communicative
competence
into
competencies. Linguistic competence includes lexis (words and patterns of words) and its relationship with grammar (the way the words and patterns of words). Discourse competence deals with interaction between speakers, also register, genre. Intercultural competence deals with different attitudes, behaviour, beliefs and values. It is influenced by a multitude factors including environment, gender, family, age, ethics. It is arguable whether it is learned or inherited through genes. Culture is manifested in interaction between people and is continually changing. the problem is that cultural differences are not always obvious. E. Frendo gives us the Iceberg model to demonstrate how much of culture is hidden. He also talks about National culture (politically bounded nation state),which is not the same as Ethnicity (groups having the same language, history, religion or race);Organizational or corporate culture (specific behaviours and values established in organizations). Professions also have their own distinct cultures (e.g. a CEO of Georgian company may share many values of other employees in the same organization, but in
some ways has more in common with his counterpart in an Italian company than, say, a secretary
in the other Georgian firm).
Stereotypes are generalization which are often used to simplify and categorize other cultures and people in those cultures. The major problem here is that stereotypes do not allow for exceptions to the norm, which is the wrong approach. And lastly intercultural competence includes the ability to deal with and be sensitive to differences in how other cultures do things. From a business point of view, the aim might even be to recognize and utilize those differences in order to create something which adds value for the business or its customers.
Considering all these when moving from theory to practice, among many others we can refer to two modern books in Business English: "Market Leader" (Longman, 2008) and "The Business" (Macmillan, 2009) which are used by us with Adult learners at Universities as well as Language Centres in Georgia.
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GESJ: Education Science and Psychology 2012 | No.1(20)
International Scientific Conference: "Education in the Era of Globalization - XXI Century Challenges''. Materials
ISSN 1512-1801
The objective of "The Business" is "to help you learn two things: how to do business in English and the language you need to do it". The modules of Student's book are: about business, grammar, vocabulary, management skills, writing and case study. Management skills and Case study modules are the core parts for intercultural training. With management skills learners can develop important skills and techniques together with relevant language. Case studies provide an opportunity to apply all the language, skills and ideas of the covered book unit. Also they present authentic intercultural problem-solving situations similar to those in real business.
As for "Market Leader", it has been developed in association with the Financial Times, of the world's leading sources of professional information to ensure the maximum range and authenticity of business content. Due to its international coverage the Financial Times has been a rich source of business information. The strong task -based approach of this book encourages students to use their own experience in order to maximize involvement and learning. A typical unit sections are: Starting up, Vocabulary, Reading, listening, language focus, skills, case study. Here in terms of intercultural training we can focus on Skills and Case Study sections. Skills section helps learners to develop their communication skills in the key business areas of presentations, meeting, negotiations, telephoning and social English. Case studies are based on realistic business problems or situations and learners can use the language and communication skills they have acquired while working through the unit.
To sum up we can say that language of BE depends on the general and specific contexts and communication skills play a major role.
We admit a significant role of communicative competence in learning process and that there are many different ways to approach intercultural issues. We discussed theory that culture can be analyzed using a number of different dimensions.
Intercultural training should be an integral part of the Business English teacher's job as business English learners will use the language to communicate in an intercultural setting. We can improve our learners' intercultural competence by using various activities to facilitate understanding of their own culture, increase their awareness of cultural differences and analyze critical incidents.
And finally - Business English is far more than talking about business - it is about communicating and doing business in English.
