Teaching Business English

Abstract

Teaching business English is an important growth area in English-language teaching. It involves understanding three key facets: business, business English, and teaching business English. These aspects will be dealt with in turn below. Business can be understood narrowly as commercial transactions (Zorn & Simpson, 2009). Broadly, it refers to a wide range of "economic, public, and social activities such as trade, management, fi nance, marketing, tourism, journalism, and law" (Chen & Wang, 2009, p. 5) or "a range of contexts in which members of various kinds of organisations interact to achieve business, organisational or relationship goals" (Zorn & Simpson, 2009, p. 32). As these understandings specify the wide range of business contexts in which English can be used, they may help in pinning down the scope of business English and the teaching of business English.