Achieving Communicative Competence in Business English : A study of teacher and participant attitudes in Business English courses

The increasing globalization of trade has resulted in a growing need for Swedish corporations to ensure that their work force is able to communicate in English. In order to meet this demand, there is a growing market of companies offering courses in Business English. When English is used for communication between people from different linguacultural backgrounds in a business context it is referred to as BELF (Business English as a Lingua Franca). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not the participants and teachers in different classes of Business English are more open to the non-native speaker model, as this type of course is supposed to prepare the students for communication with people of various nationalities. This was done with the aim to explore how these attitudes can be linked to the development of communicative competence in a business context. In the study a survey was distributed to twenty-one participants of courses in Business English and four teachers were interviewed. The study showed that although the business context affects the attitudes of the participants, there is still a preference for a native-like model. However, the teachers show an open attitude towards BELF, focusing instead on promoting communicative competence in their teaching. The findings of this study support previous research in the field indicating that there exists a certain discrepancy between the perceptions of the teachers and learners as to what constitutes an effective communicator