English for (very) Specific Business Purposes: A pedagogical framework

Over the last decade there have been a number of studies into English for Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) drawing on genre based theories, on discourse analysis and on corpus linguistic approaches (Paltridge, 2009; Bhatia, 2009; Flowerdew & Wan, 2010). However, dealing with the practical questions of how, and in what circumstances, this research can be applied to workplace communications syllabus planning, implementation and evaluation remains unanswered due to a lack of research at the applied level of training and education. This has presented a problem for the English for Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) syllabus writer in making informed decisions about training design in the workplace sector. There are a plethora of ‘ESBP courses’ ranging, for example, from a 100-hour program for ‘English for Business’ developed for bank employees and aimed at reaching an internationally determined language proficiency benchmark level (e.g. Business English Certificate–Cambridge ESOL) to a highly tailored short support course ‘English for Collections agents at Bank A’, aimed at enhancing business quality performance in a specific call centre worksite. These courses are vastly different. The overarching label of ‘ESBP courses’ in the workplace context needs to be reframed in a way to ensure the different 100 categories of ESBP courses are first identified. Once this is achieved, systematic approaches to planning, implementation and evaluation can be recommended to ensure well-targeted offerings in the workplace.
This article will describe an ESBP syllabus planning framework which emerged from my doctoral studies entitled “Language Training Design and Evaluation Processes in Hong Kong Workplaces” (2002). This syllabus framework has been useful in determining what differentiates the many ESBP courses from each other and how to categorise them. I propose a typology, based on the empirical study of over a hundred ESPB courses in Hong Kong workplaces, that has a horizontal continuum from ‘generic ESBP’ to a ‘tailored and highly focused ESBP’ and a vertical continuum from ‘education’ (meaning long- term language proficiency development) to ‘training’ (meaning short-term language performance development). As the axes intersect, four distinct course types emerged. The ESBP course types from my study were then plotted onto the framework and the implications for course planning and evaluation, drawing on applied linguistic, educational and business management theories, were then suggested. This article will conclude with a discussion on further areas of research that are required to test the efficacy of this model.