Developing Students’ Communicative Competence in Business English

Abstract

The ability to communicative in Business English (BE) is a great advantage for young specialists to become successful in the global market. Unfortunately, a lot of students lack accuracy and fluency in speaking BE. The following fact encouraged the authors of this study to carry out the research at Aleksandras Stulginskis University (ASU) from February 2014 to June 2014. The target students were 62 first year learners of the Faculty of Economics and Management who had BE as a compulsory subject. The research aims to investigate and suggest an appropriate system of effective factors, strategies, and active methods allowing students to develop the ability to produce BE terms, lexical phrases, and word combinations in impromptu situations. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been used as the main teaching strategy, which was creatively supported by active imitative and non-imitative methods based on team work. The study reveals that a creative use of imitative and non-imitative methods affects long-term memory. Consequently, learners acquire the ability to retain and recycle the necessary BE vocabulary, and grammar structures and start producing them spontaneously in speech. By involving learners in creative activities we get them to practise an important sub-skill of using a language: thinking creatively. It leads to genuine communication and prepares learners for using BE instrumentally outside the classroom. Teamwork has been encouraged because good teamwork skills are a requirement for success in more and more professional contexts. The research has confirmed that teamwork provides students with the instruments of effective self-direction as well as with the necessary skills of collaborating, cooperating, sharing, and socializing. It means that teamwork creates safe and student-friendly environment which is an important prerequisite to develop BE communicative competence.