18, no. 2 (January 1987): 34-37 To the Editor Search

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IN A recent Berlitz radio advertisement, listeners were reminded that “the most important language in the world is the one spoken by your client.” While this message has not always been heard, let alone promoted, in the United States, the survival and growth of many businesses is beginning to hinge on the ability to compete on a worldwide basis. Currently twenty percent of US employment is in the import-export and related sectors. In a 1983 report, the American Society for Training and Development projected that by the year 2000, the United States will need to market more than twenty percent of its domestic products abroad, as compared to eight percent in 1980. Leaders in American government and business have emphasized the national importance of foreign language study for American business professionals. The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business has for the past ten years given increased attention to the international dimension of the educational offerings at its accredited institutions. Over two-thirds of the 126 US corporations recently surveyed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) reported an increase in the number of Americans involved in cross-border and cross-cultural interactions during the past decade (Kobrin 43–44). Many US-based jobs that were previously considered domestic now entail international responsibility and interaction.

At the same time, Americans in the work force will have less occasion to live and work abroad for extended periods. Half of the 126 US corporations surveyed by the IIE had reduced the number of American managers working overseas during the past decade, while only twenty-three percent had experienced an increase (Kobrin 43). ¹ As the expatriate manager becomes less visible on the foreign scene, the American tradition of on-site, hands-on training in international business disappears as well. The new business professional working for a multinational firm or even for a small or medium-sized company will be called upon to deal with the world from his or her own desk, to be well versed in foreign affairs, and to communicate and cooperate well with others, without having spent a significant amount of time abroad. From where will this savoir-faire come?

Stephen Kobrin, the author of the IIE report and a professor at the New York University Business School, underscores the leadership role that could be played by the American educational establishment in meeting the need for international expertise:

We shall have to make use of methods to develop an interest in and an understanding of the world outside of the United States, that do not depend on direct experience. A major burden will fall on the educational system, both formally in undergraduate and graduate courses, and informally through a variety of continuing education and inservice programs. Educational institutions and companies will have to find new ways to substitute education and training for experience. The sink-or-swim approach of the past will not meet the needs of the future. (53)

This challenge represents an exciting opportunity for foreign language teachers at all educational levels. The question of how and where to provide training in cross-cultural communication skills relevant to today's “global village” provides impetus and inspiration for thoughtful classroom pedagogy. Through meaningful curriculum design begun in secondary schools and carried through in colleges, universities, and business schools, we can provide students with the skills, insight, and enthusiasm to make the most of the international opportunities and responsibilities that will later come their way.

Charged with building such a program for the modern language department at Bentley College, the ninth largest undergraduate college of business in the United States, I asked business executives in the Boston area and business faculty members at Bentley to identify the areas of foreign language study they considered most important for business students. They repeatedly mentioned basic communicative ability, cross-cultural understanding, an introduction to basic business language and, wherever possible, experience abroad. A survey undertaken by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry more explicitly details the frequencies with which business workers other than linguists use language skills:

I found this skills breakdown useful in planning curriculum and developing teaching strategies appropriate in an institution that seeks to combine specialized knowledge and skill in a professional business field with a broad background in the liberal arts. The observations and suggestions that follow are based on my own experience in French classes at Bentley College and are designed to help students become “operational” at all levels of proficiency. They provide a change-of-pace supplement to the traditional study of foreign language, culture, and civilization through business-related activities that are simple, effective, creative, and fun.

The standard elementary-level foreign language textbook presents a predictable, quasi-universal plot. The young American student goes abroad to study, arrives at the airport, finds his or her suitcase, lives with a family, makes numerous friends, talks a lot about going to the movies, window shops, tours the country, either catches cold or breaks a leg, and always recovers in time for the big farewell party in the last chapter. He or she usually does not enter a bank to ask about the exchange rate, to cash a traveler's check, or to open an account, let alone answer or speak on the telephone, make an appointment, prepare for an internship interview, write a formal letter seeking information from a hotel or a business firm, seek out or rent an apartment, or explore in any depth the professional life of his or her host family. If we wish to provide relevant training for students who will acquire international responsibilities, these are important situations to cover, and they warrant extra attention from the instructor. Communication skills and grammar—and even a favorite traditional elementary textbook—can be enhanced by supplementary activities that develop the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, while building on the professional's need to give and ask basic information (Kobrin 53).

It is not necessary to wait until the intermediate or advanced level to introduce professionally oriented language training. Short dialogues that involve making a telephone call, arriving for an appointment, making formal introductions, or reading a telex can be written and even videotaped by the instructor and presented to students in the first semester of language study. It is also easy to complement standard textbook grammar exercises with short vocabulary supplements and a few extra transformation drills. After all, the grammatical distance from je fais mon travail to je fais un chèque is minimal and, in this instance, there is also closely related cause and effect. For that matter, check writing is one of the few activities for which numbers really do need to be fully written out. Why not photocopy a blank sample check from a French bank and have students write out checks à la française when they are learning numbers? Or have them stage a stock-holders' meeting during which officials read off the numbers from their company's annual report? Or pass around and trade stock and bond certificates when teaching double-object pronouns? Why not complement j'étudie le français with j'étudie l'informatique, la gestion, la comptabilité ? That is precisely what many students are or will be doing today, and they need a working vocabulary that is appropriate to their interests and their need to converse about themselves and their work.

Another useful complement to a traditional beginning language course is a list of questions that might be asked during a job interview: what is your name, address, phone number? where do you come from? what's your profession? where do you work? how long have you worked there? where does your family live? what do you like about your studies and your work? what do you like to do in your free time? Depending on their level of ability, students can be asked to first listen to and then imitate the instructor's sample answers, write out answers at home, and then practice asking and answering these questions in pairs, improvise answers on the spot in the classroom, or make a tape or video recording of their responses and receive specific coaching in pronunciation, intonation, and the use of “pause” words. Another useful variation, which works especially well with shy students, is to ask them to work in small groups and to assume other, entirely different identities such as tycoons, managers of rock stars, or new lottery winners in need of financial counseling. With the threat to their ego lessened—for after all, they are now someone else—they are freer to use more imaginative prose in developing the vocabulary they are given.

Listening comprehension can be further developed by recording a variety of native speakers who answer interview questions. Cultural commentary could be added as students compare their own answers to these questions and others: what do you like to eat? when do you eat it? what do you do after work? on weekends? Finally, the “interview sheet” questions could be used for written or oral testing. The written version of these questions constitutes the base for a personal profile sheet, a document that may well be required as part of an internship or study-abroad application. The oral test could be set up as a simulated interview with the instructor or with two students participating and the instructor observing. This oral entretien is not only an important part of business communication but also an essential part of the admissions procedure for American students wishing to study at a business school abroad, either independently or as part of a joint MBA-foreign diploma exchange program.

Another way to ensure the relevance of foreign language training, especially as an integral part of a business curriculum, and to keep open the channels of communication with business faculty members or practitioners in the community is to cooperate on joint projects containing both a foreign language component and material relevant to another business discipline. The student gains the best of two worlds: the expertise of a business professional and the linguistic and cultural insights of the foreign language teacher. A student interested in marketing might wish to write to a foreign company and request specific promotional material and information on the company's marketing objectives. An accounting student could ask an overseas company for information on differences in auditing procedure or for annual reports and balance sheets. In all these cases, the student must first write a letter of request in the target language. He or she then reports back to the class and describes the material received. The same material could also serve as a useful resource for an international business project focusing on how publicity produced abroad is adapted for American markets, how American publicity is presented in a foreign language for a product to be marketed abroad, how and why financial reports differ from country to country. A guest visit or an interview tape would be an excellent complement to such a project for upper-intermediate or advanced students. Class members interested in international management could be asked to interview American business professionals returning from management rotations abroad or foreign employees working in the United States. Business students hear of the legal and financial problems involved in establishing multinational enterprises; what better way to complement these issues than by adding human and cultural factors, impressing on students the need to listen and communicate effectively, inviting a foreign intern or trainee into the language classroom to speak about the differences and difficulties encountered in a new country?

Finally, an exchange with business institutions abroad would allow us to share instructional material for mutual benefit. How interesting it would be to study and discuss a French business case focusing on a communication, negotiation, or cultural problem, then send an audio-taped report back to France in exchange for a taped report from French business students studying the same case or for their reactions to the American students' tape! The process could then be reversed and a case presented and discussed in English at an anglophone business school and taped for an English language class abroad. Or what about an exchange of videotapes demonstrating sales techniques or communication skills in different countries? Such activities would not only enrich advanced language courses but also give American business students increased self-confidence and encourage them to consider study or internships abroad.

While it is useful to introduce basic business vocabulary to students as part of a cultural overview, effective foreign language teaching does not mean producing walking technical dictionaries. American business professionals will most likely enlist professional translators to assist in the preparation of detailed contracts. What they need to do is represent themselves and communicate with others in a way that shows their awareness and appreciation of clients and colleagues from other cultures. How much more personable and effective they could become abroad if they understood the unwritten rules of body space, gesture, and custom, the training and educational background of their colleagues overseas, the traditions and history of other countries, and the range of values of their peoples. (See in particular Wylie, Hall, Hawkins, Davis, and Santoni.) The need for Renaissance men and women has not disappeared in our modern world. Cross-cultural curriculum design is limited only by the instructor's experience and abiding curiosity. Most elementary foreign language textbooks contain “culture capsules” in each grammar unit. There are also separate texts and even some computer software programs that present cross-cultural minidramas and situations in French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Short literary texts, slides of art and architecture, cassette recordings of music, and even cartoons can also give language students insight into the development of a country's cultural traditions and national idiosyncrasies. There are some fascinating parallels and juxtapositions for those willing to seek them out. For instance, a medieval tale of feudal loyalty adds perspective to an American consultant's surprise at low employee turnover despite general discontent in French companies. The relation between cultural codes and social class distinction in Molière's Bourgeois gentilhomme serves as an interesting contrast to the value system of today's consumers, who are bourgeois in search of a lost distinctiveness. Roland Barthes's commentaries are another invaluable source of reflection on media messages: marketing and business communication students who struggle through his essay in Mythologies on wine as a French national symbol and then view a French public service television spot cautioning against drinking and driving understand why that ad shows a glass filled with an amber-colored liquid—most certainly not a bottle of wine. They also become more sensitive and attentive to other country-specific metaphors and symbols in advertising. The ability to read cultural signs is a valuable skill, as much for the business professional as for the humanist. We need to do all that we can to encourage students to keep asking questions and to explore the cultural codes of other peoples through reading, through interviews, and, best of all, through experience abroad.

In colleges and in schools as well, we can raise questions and widen perspectives through faculty and institutional collaboration. Discussion of a case study or incident involving cross-cultural differences could be enriched through a guest visit from a foreign language staff member or international student who lived in the target country and who would be willing to serve as a resource person. A lecture series or a colloquium on the language connection in business might be a useful way to generate greater interest in international business programs and in foreign language courses, especially if such a forum was cosponsored by the business and foreign language faculty. Those of us teaching foreign languages have much to offer in terms of liberal arts training and experience abroad. By the same token, we can learn a valuable lesson in teamwork from those in the business world. Our bottom line is intellectual growth. We simply cannot afford to isolate ourselves and work alone. We need to market foreign language skills by showing students where those skills can lead and how they can enhance careers. We need to look for ways to share ideas and materials with our business colleagues both at home and abroad so that collaborative enterprise becomes an active part of our professional life and, as a Renaissance person would say, a source of renewal for us all.

The author is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Coordinator of the Modern Language Department at Bentley College. This article is based on a paper presented at the first Colloquium on Internationalizing Business Studies, held in June 1985 in Lyon, France.

¹ Useful communication activities with an operational or business focus may be found in EMC's Spanish for Business series (Kattán-Ibarra and Connell), portions of Begnini and Hempel's C'est ça, Carton and Caprio's En français, and the optional conversation sections, “Le français pratique,” included in Rebecca Vallette and Jean-Paul Vallette's Contacts .

Begnini, Claudine, and Helen B. Hempel. C'est ça: A Communicative Approach to Beginning French. Reading: Addison, 1983.

Carton, Dana, and Anthony Caprio. En français: French for Communication. 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle, 1985.

Davis, Stanley M. “U.S. versus Latin America: Business and Culture.” Harvard Business Review 47.6 (1969): 88–98.

Esnol, Armel. “Languages at ESC Le Havre-Caen.” Colloquium on Internationalizing Business Studies. Lyon, June 1985.

Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1973.

———. “The Silent Language in Overseas Business.” Harvard Business Review 38.3 (1960): 87–96.

Hawkins, S. “How to Understand Your Partner's Cultural Baggage.” International Management 38 (Sept. 1983): 48–51.

Kattán-Ibarra, Juan, and Tim Connell. Spanish for Business: Beginning and Intermediate. St. Paul: EMC, 1984.

Kobrin, Stephen J. International Expertise in American Business: How to Learn to Play with the Kids on the Street. New York: Inst. of International Education, 1984.

Santoni, Georges. Société et culture de la France comtemporaine. Albany: State U of New York P, 1981.

Vallette, Rebecca, and Jean-Paul Vallette. Contacts: Langue et culture françaises. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1985.

Wylie, Laurence. “Les français épinglés.” L'Express 1–7 Aug. 1977: 66–72.

© 1987 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 18, no. 2 (January 1987): 34-37

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