A Cross-cultural Approach to Business English

• Author: Lillians Violeta Negrea
• Position: Professor, PhD, Christian University 'Dimitrie Cantemir', Romania
• Pages: 690-695

European Integration - Realities and Perspectives 2012

690

A Cross-cultural Approach to Business English

Violeta Lilians Negrea

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Abstract: The cultural competence training is becoming a must for the Romanian professionals in economics

to get them ready to integrate the multicultural family in Europe. The article makes reference to the cross-

culture competence engineering and training t hrough business English programme carried out b y eMulticult

project (91068/2007-10) which produced an educational portal for interactive learning. The research follows

the European Commission Strategy for Multili nguism and it de velops specific cross-culture concepts and

theory. The pedagogical approach is based on the 199 0’s revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy carried out by

Anderson and Krathwohl (2000). The res ults and conclusions are drawn by surveys and case study r esearch

and dedicated to the development of a new strategy of academic applied English programmes. The key

contribution of the paper lies on the pedagogical insights of cross-cultural approach in business English.

Keywords: business English; cross-cultural competence; corporate culture; professional integration

1. Introduction

The cross-cultural competence and globalization in international cooperation are derived from

professional openness, understanding, and flexibility which make possible the development of

multinational businesses, free movement of human resources and sky-rocketing o utcomes of research,

technology and innovations in all professional domains.

It is high time for the education and instructional policy makers to focus on the need to match the

cultural competence training with the business effectiveness needs of the cross or mixed cultural

corporate groups. It is time to train the cross-cultural competence to get the Romanian professionals

ready to join the big professional cross-cultural family of European Union. This demands not only

cultural literacy, but also in-depth and application-oriented understanding, openness, tolerance to the

otherness of a new culture patterns and integration skills.

2. Cross-Cultural Competence

The cross-cultural approach in teaching business English proposed for the academic education is based

on the four perspectives model of Ulla Lundgren (Lundgren U., 2004; 2005): a) communication skills

in a foreign language, b) cultural competences specific to the foreign language, c) intercultural

competences facilitating the natural behavior in the cultural environment of the foreign language, and

d) organizational communication competences, that develop the ability to interact efficiently in a new

organizational culture, where the foreign language learned is the formal language of the organization.

The specific competences targeted are translated into the reference framework of foreign language,

cultural knowledge and organizational culture knowledge which are compared to the student’s mother

tongue and its set of cultural values, facilitating the development of a natural behavior in a different

professional culture environment.(see Table 1)

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Professor, PhD, Christian University “Dimitrie Cantemir”, Romania, Address: Splaiul Unirii, Bucharest 030134, Romania,

Tel. +4021.330.87.20; Fax: +4 021.330.87.74, Corresponding author: violeta.negrea@gmail.com.