10.1177/1080569904268095 BUSINESS Planken et al.

COMMUNICATION / INTERCULTURAL QUARTERLY COMMUNICATIVE / XXX XXX COMPETENCE

ARTICLE

INNOVATIVE ASSIGNMENTS

PROMOTING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE THROUGH FOREIGN LANGUAGE COURSES

Brigitte Planken Andreu van Hooft Hubert Korzilius
Radboud University Nijmegen

LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE is important in intercultural business communication (IBC) studies. But equally important is developing intercultural communicative competence, that is, a recognition of the cultural factors influencing behavior in business encounters around the globe (Beamer, 1992; Bennett, 1986; Varner, 2001). This article suggests how tertiary-level foreign language (FL) courses can be contextualized to promote intercultural learning geared to achieving an awareness of cultural diversity and an understanding of different modes of living and behaviour (Krck, 1992, p. 299). It describes the learning projects and tasks incorporated into the first-year IBC program at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands, where an integrative approach to course programming was introduced in 2001-2002.

INTERCULTURAL LEARNING

Byram (1997) assumed a direct relationship between FL teaching and the development of intercultural communication competence. In his view, FL courses should not only teach students the language needed to communicate but also confront them with the experience of otherness, as the effectiveness of communication in the FL depends on their ability to decentre and understand how messages will be
Business Communication Quarterly, Volume 67, Number 2, June 1DOI: 10.1177/1080569904268095 2004 by the Association for Business Communication 1

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perceived in another cultural context (p. 3). FL courses involving the larger global lingua francas, such as Spanish or English, also need to promote the development of this intercultural component as it is likely that graduates will end up using the FL primarily with fellow nonnative speakers of different nationalities. Courses need to provide students with the opportunity to analyze materials and critical incidents involving business professionals with various backgrounds (native and nonnative, different nationalities) who use the FL as a shared code (Schnitzer, 1995). By consistently exposing learners to the potential otherness of FL communication in a lingua franca business context (involving different accents, pragmatic expectations, discoursal patterns, and the like), FL courses have the potential to make a considerable contribution to achieving an important goal of IBC programs: the development of (a degree of) intercultural communicative competence in the target group.

THE IBC PROGRAM AT NIJMEGEN UNIVERSITY

Within the IBC program, content from other courses (intercultural communication, management, marketing, IBC research, document design) is integrated into the FL curriculum. FL teaching is facilitative, and project-based courses are presented in a student-centered environment where learners are required to become actively involved in recurring communicative action in the FL in various (intercultural) business communication settings. Although the main goal of FL instruction is facilitating FL awareness and acquisition, assignments also heighten students cross-cultural awareness and encourage them to develop the beginnings of a professional identity as communication specialists who will need to be able to operate in a multicultural business environment. The underlying assumption of the FL courses at Nijmegen is that a learning environment involving participation is more likely to promote intercultural learning than an environment that focuses primarily on internalizing knowledge. Becoming a member of a given professional discourse community (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000) includes learning to communicate in the language of the relevant sociocultural community and to act according to its particular norms (Sfard, 1988, as cited in Lantolf, 2000). In the FL courses we attempt to create circumstances that allow students to become comfortable with using the FL with counterparts, in activities and genres (see, e.g., LouhialaSalminen, 1996; Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997) that are relevant to the globalized business environment they will become part of upon

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graduation. Participation is seen as part of a longitudinal process that should be reinforced throughout the program, not just in the first year or in a single dedicated course. The IBC program (a 3-year BA and a 1-year MA) incorporates four components: a foreign business language (Spanish, German, French, or English), intercultural communication theory and research, business communication research and methodology, and communication and organizational management. Since 2001-2002, an effort has been made to integrate, horizontally on a year-by-year basis and vertically throughout the program, the course content of the latter three components into the FL component in an attempt to create FL teaching content in communication tasks framed in relevant business-related contexts and business projects that center around themes that are linked to the business, theoretical, research, and (inter)cultural knowledge that students are internalizing simultaneously in other program components.

BUSINESS PROJECTS

In their first year, students follow four business projects (see Table 1), each lasting 7 weeks (two 2-hour workshops per week) that center on experience and practice with relevant tasks in the FL (e.g., presentations, meetings, negotiations, telephone calls, e-mails, business letters, reports, questionnaires, and the like). The tasks are directly relevant to each of the four project themes (see Table 1). The projects are supported by language skills workshops (2 hours per week) that deal with the mechanics (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, business writing conventions in the FL, and the like) required for the tasks. As Spanish is a starter language for most students, the Spanish program, although parallel in content to the other FL programs, starts at an elementary level. Background reading and instruction are partly in Dutch, and assignments are adapted to the students level of mastery of Spanish. All the FL projects are supported by BlackBoard, an electronic workspace that functions as an intranet and is used to communicate, conduct online discussions and peer reviews, write collaboratively, and create Web pages. Within the projects, a conscious attempt has been made to move away from the more traditional FL classroom. In the workshops students are encouraged to coconstruct quasi-naturalistic business communication events in which they produce and participate in relevant communicative action involving business-related content. Communi-

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Table 1.Courses in the First-Year Program, 2002-2003, International

Business Communication (IBC) Program, Nijmegen University, the Netherlands

Term (Four per Year) 1

Foreign Language Courses (Taught in the Foreign Language) 1. Business Language Project 1: Cultural Analysis: Own vs. Target Country 2. Language Skills

Courses in the Remaining Components of the IBC Program (Taught in Dutch)

1. Introduction to Business Communication 2. Introduction to Marketing 3. General Communication Skills 1 (speaking skills in the first language [L1]) 1. Business Language Project 2: Study 1. Introduction to Information of Macroeconomic Aspects of Sciences Relevant Target Market 2. Introduction to Organization & 2. Language Skills Management 1. Business Language Project 3: 1. Introduction to Intercultural Investigating a Joint Venture Communication Between a Dutch Company and a 2. Introduction to Statistics 3. General Company in Relevant Target Communication Skills 2 (writing Country skills in the L1) 2. Language Skills 1. Business Language Project 4: 1. Introduction to Informatics for Organizing an International Arts Students Trade Fair in Relevant Target Country 2. Language Skills

cative action here is seen as incorporating speech acts but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity (Kasper & Rose, 2001, p. 2). Each communication event contributes to the overall goal of a given task or project. Although the projects are fictitious in the sense that students are not commissioned by real-life organizations, students are expected to make use of authentic information and materials from existing companies as the basis for their analyses. For example, in Project 2 (see Table 1), students investigate a potential market in the relevant target country using secondary sources, supposedly for an existing Dutch company that wants to export its products to the target market. To carry out the study, students need to collect up-to-date information about the organization in question (from its Web site or annual report or by contacting the organization directly) and relevant information about the target market (political, economic, demographic) from trade organizations, government institutions, and chambers of commerce.

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In the first-year FL course, participants gradually develop a clear identity within their peer group and within each of the projects. The teachers role also changes; he or she is not the main initiator of communication and a corrector but instead a gatekeeper, facilitator, and editor. From the very beginning, students are required to independently initiate and experience and to practice using the FL in relevant activities and contexts. In this way, they gradually create a temporary sociocultural community in which they can begin to at least approximate some of the professional identities they aspire to (e.g., marketer, communications advisor, or project manager). During the workshops, evaluation and feedback are not dominated by the teacher. Although the teacher periodically provides feedback and evaluates students verbal and nonverbal communication performance both at an individual and team level (students work on projects in groups of two to four), students also evaluate each other as fellow practitioners in training.

PEDAGOGIC INTERVENTION: AWARENESS-RAISING AND PRODUCTION TASKS

Activities that help students develop intercultural awareness and FL competence in the projects can be divided into broadly two types: awareness-raising and production tasks. Awareness-raising tasks require students to observe and analyzepreferably authentic instances of business communication conducted in the FL by native and nonnative speakers and to describe and interpret specific aspects of that communication, using their first language (L1) or everyday communication practices as a baseline for comparison. As such, awareness-raising tasks may focus on specific areas of FL pragmatics, relevant areas of business pragmatics, or both. As part of English Project 3 (see Table 1), for example, students are presented with a video recording of a business negotiation (in English as a lingua franca, involving participants with different nationalities) about an international joint venture and are asked to consider how different types of communicative action (offer, rejection, introduction, greeting, interruption, and the like) are realized linguistically in the FL and how these types of action are responded to verbally and nonverbally by the hearers. Simultaneously, students are sensitized to broader discourse aspects, such as turn-taking and back-channeling and culture-related idiosyncrasies in the behavior of the different participants. In this way, an attempt is made to raise students awareness of factors that may play a role in

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communication in intercultural contexts. As such, the project curriculum is linked directly to content offered simultaneously in the intercultural communication course in the third term (see Table 1). Awareness-raising activities are initially presented as open tasks. Students are first asked to discover regularities in the communication they are presented with on their own or in small peer groups. In some instances, however, more guidance is provided. For example, students may be asked to look at certain aspects in greater detail or to focus specifically on what is relevant in another part of the program at a particular moment in time (see Table 1). To help students consider a feature more systematically, checklists may also be provided. Production tasks involve assignments in which students practice FL and business pragmatic ability by participating in business communication activities. These tasks involve student-centered interaction in which the participants take on professionally relevant speaker or addressee perspectives. The tasks incorporate various business genres within which students cocreate different types of communicative action in the FL. For example, longer role-play simulations provide practice in a wide range of linguistic and business pragmatic abilities. In such situations, students may initially be confronted with experiences and contexts they may be unfamiliar with and will be required to use their existing knowledge and skills to carry out a particular task (chair a meeting or write a management summary, for example) only as best they can. As part of this deep-end approach, the teacher acts as a monitor and facilitator and provides the support the students need as they work through the task. Feedback, on the basis of a videotaped performance, for example, is tailored to the need revealed by the task and geared not just to creating FL awareness but also to evaluating the outcomes and processes of the task (for the group) within the project as a whole.

CONCLUSION

Although the new program has required flexibility and improvisation from teachers and students alike, it seems to have helped us create a learning environment that is more relevantly contextualized and efficient (geared to obvious practical needs) than before. Although it is early days, one observable advance with regard to FL performance is that students now have a considerably broader business vocabulary base than before as they start their second year. They have also developed a degree of FL competence in a wider range of relevant oral and

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written business communication genres than before. There is also clear evidence of transfer from the rest of the program to the FL component. In the projects, students offer perspectives on (intercultural) business communication and organizational processes that clearly stem from knowledge gained elsewhere in the program. With respect to the student-centered approach, an observable drawback is the fact that students are expected to independently plan their study activities and to be responsible for their own progress. In other words, they are expected to do, individually, much of the project work besides the central group tasks in their own time. A proportion of students find it hard to develop the discipline to fulfill individual project requirements. This has provided us with somewhat of a dilemma: We have to find a way to provide more explicit guidance regarding project planning, on one hand, without sacrificing students independence, on the other. However, our biggest challenge is to evaluate the effect of this integrative and participative approach on the development of participants intercultural communicative competence. Although all courses in the IBC program are periodically subjected to survey-based qualitative evaluations of course content and teacher effectiveness, we are currently in the process of calibrating an instrument with which we hope to be able to specifically measure the development, over time, of students intercultural awareness (see, e.g., Hooft, Korzilius, & Planken, 2003; Korzilius, Hooft, & Planken, 2002). As a teaching institution, we feel that the only way to determine the true merits of our FL teaching for the IBC program is to measure its effect on the development of intercultural communicative competence in our target group.

REFERENCES
Beamer, L. (1992). Learning intercultural competence. Journal of Business Communication, 29, 285-303. Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10, 179-195. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: STATE/COUNTRY? Multilingual Matters. Hooft, A. van, Korzilius, H., & Planken, B. (2003). La conciencia intercultural y la adquisicin de segundas lenguas. Predice el dominio de segundas lenguas el desarrollo de la conciencia intercultural? ENGLISH TRANSLATION? In M. Prez Gutirrez & J. Coloma Maestre (Eds.), XIII Congreso ASELE. El espaol, lengua del mestizaje y la interculturalidad (pp. 52-77). Murcia: COUNTRY? Universidad de Murcia.

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Kasper, G., & Rose, K. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. In K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 1-9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korzilius, H., Hooft, A. van, & Planken, B. (2002). Perspectiefnemen in interculturele situaties: een aanzet tot het meten van intercultureel bewustzijn. ENGLISH TRANSLATION? In C. Van den Brandt & M. Van Mulken (Eds.), Een bundel Bedrijfscommunicatie. Voor Dick Springorum bij gelegenheid van zijn afscheid (pp. 145-162). Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Nijmegen University Press. Krck, B. (1992). Intercultural understanding in ELT using literary texts. In H. Prschel (Ed.), Intercultural communication: Proceedings of the 17th International L.A.U.D. Symposium Duisburg 23-27 March 1992 (pp. 299-308). Frankfurt am Mein, Germany: Peter Lang. Lantolf, J. (Ed.). (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Louhiala-Salminen, L. (1996). The business communication classroom versus reality: What should we teach today? English for Specific Purposes, 15, 37-51. Maes, J., Weldy, T., & Icenogle, M. (1997). A managerial perspective: Oral communication competency is most important for business students in the workplace. Journal of Business Communication, 34, 67-80. Pavlenko, A., & Lantolf, J. (2000). Second language learning as participation and the reconstruction of selves. In J. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 155-177). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schnitzer, E. (1995). English as an international language: Implications for interculturalists and language educators. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 19, 227-236. Varner, I. (2001). Teaching intercultural management communication: Where are we? Where do we go? Business Communication Quarterly, 64, 99-111.

Address correspondence to Andreu van Hooft, Business Communication Studies, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; e-mail: A.v.Hooft@ let.kun.nl.