ENG2012 / GEN2010

English for Business

Contexts
Unit 1
Introduction
Course Intended Learning 2

Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
 read critically a given piece of business article;
 listen critically a given piece of business news;
 summarise the main points of a given piece of business
text;
 critically analyse and evaluate the content of a given
piece of business reading/news;
 speak and write with correct business terminologies for
different business contexts.
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Assessment details
 Attendance
 Students are required to attain 80% attendance to be eligible to sit
the Final Examination.

 Assignments
 Assignments include summary writing, practice exercises, announced
and unannounced quizzes, and speaking activities completed in and
out of class. Students should do their own work and submit their
assignments by the due dates as specified by the instructor. Late
submissions without approval from the instructor will result in a
lowered grade. Any assignment submitted more than three days late
will automatically incur a Failure.

 Students are required to submit a hard copy of their work to the

instructor. Assignments submitted through email will NOT be
accepted.
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 If you miss an in-class assessment, no make-up assessment

will be arranged for you. If you provide adequate proof of
legitimate reasons for absence on the assessment day, you
may be allowed to sit a supplementary assessment with a 30%
deduction from the total mark. All supplementary
assessments must be completed within seven days from the
date of the assessment, after which no further requests will
be entertained.

 NOTE:
 Plagiarism is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be subject
to a penalty of grade deduction or even failure in the
course.
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Course intended learning outcomes to be

% assessed
Specific assessment methods/tasks
weighting
a b c d e f

1. Participation: Log sheet 10%      

2. Individual written assignment:

10%     
Summary of business news article

3. Individual written assignment:

10%      
Summary of business news clip

4. Group presentation:
10%      
Analysis of business report

5. Group written assignment:

20%     
Analysis of business report

6. Written examination 40%     

Total 100%
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 Participation

 You are required to print the Participation Log Sheet on the

last page of this course outline. You are required to record
their reflections on the topics covered by filling in at least
one row in the log sheet each week. You are required to
show the log sheet to the instructor in a weekly tutorial so
as to obtain his signature. You are required to submit the
signed log sheet in L13.
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 Individual written assignments

 There are two individual written assignments.

 You are required to write a short summary (50 – 100 words;

font size 12) of a business news clip retrieved from YouTube,
Facebook, Bloomberg, Reuters, or any other news database.
The URL of the source has to be listed in the assignment.

 You are also required to write a short summary (50 – 100

words; font size 12) of a business news article extracted from
well-known business news magazines, newspapers or their
websites, for example The Economist, The Guardian, The
Telegraph, Bloomberg, Reuters, and South China Morning Post.
A copy of the news article has to be attached to the
assignment.
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 Group presentation

 You are required to form groups of a maximum of four people

for the purpose of presenting their analysis of a business
report, e.g. HSBC Annual Report, MTR Annual or Interim
Report.

 Presentation, being a part of communication skills, is crucial

for all students in their future career. Being at ease when
speaking in front of a group of people is of fundamental
importance to one’s career pursuit. Through this, your ability
in speaking with the correct business terminologies will be
assessed. Your description and explanation of the language
features, semiotic resources and organisation at both
sentence and text levels of the business report are amongst
the components being assessed.
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 Group written assignment

 After the group presentation, each group is required to

submit a write-up of their presentations. In the written
assignment, you are required to present their analysis of
the business report chosen for the presentation. You are
required to submit the written assignment of 1,500 – 2,000
words (font size 12) on the language features, semiotic
resources and organisation at both sentence and text levels
of the business report.
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 Written examination

 The duration of the examination is three hours. Your ability

in overall achievement for the course according to the
intended learning outcomes will be assessed by
examination.
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A. Why business communication matters?

Study of Business Reports

 Common types of Business Reports

 Adapting to your audience

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Common types of Business Reports

 Information reports

 Offer data, facts, feedback, and other types of

information, without analysis or recommendation

 Provide the information that employees, managers, and

others need in order to make decisions and take action
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 Analytical reports

 Offer both information and analysis and can also include

recommendations

 Analyse, understand, or explain a problem or an

opportunity and figure out how it affects the company and
how the company should respond

 Make a recommendation based on your analysis

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Common types of Business Reports

 A
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Adapting to your audience

To ensure your own success with

reports –
 Be sensitive to audience needs,
 Build strong relationships with your
audience, and
 Control your style and tone.
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 Maintain a strong sense of etiquette (sets of rules and

customs that control accepted behaviours in social
settings).

 Emphasise the positive, and using bias-free language.

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 Help your audiences navigate through your reports by

providing clear directions to key pieces of content.
 E.g.
 Headings
 Subheadings
 Transitional expressions
 Previews
 reviews
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 Transitional words and phrases connect ideas by helping

readers move from one through to the next.
 E.g.
 The phrase “As you can see” alerts readers to the fact that
they are reading something.
 The words “first, second, and third” help readers stay on track
as the three alternatives are introduced.
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 Previews help readers prepare for upcoming

information.

 Reviews help them verify and clarify what readers have

just read.
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 Both can be written in sentence format, bulleted lists,

or using a combination of the two

 Both are effective, but bullets can increase your

document’s readability by adding white space to the
document design
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 Sentence format:

The next section discusses the advantages of online

advertising. Among them are currency, global reach,
affordability, and interactivity.
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 Bulleted list:

As the next section shows, online advertising has four

advantages:

 Currency
 Global reach
 Affordability
 Interactivity
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 Adjust the level of formality to match the situation and

your audience’s expectations.
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B. Language and visual features

 Linguistic form is independent of meaning

 For some people, grammar and grammatical

rules exist independently of the meaning and
function of utterances.

 In this paradigm, grammar consists of an autonomous

system of abstract, mathematical rules that generate
acceptable/grammatical strings of words that can
account for syntactic constructions of all languages of
the world.
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 Meaning rests at the level of each

individual word filling a particular slot for
a particular category of grammar.

 Form and structure remain uninfluenced

by conceptual meaning
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 However, our view of grammar considers

linguistic meaning not as something that is given,
static, or objectified.

 Rather, meaning requires context. It’s fluid and

emergent.

Each
 Words used in discourse mean something.
word conjures up (produces) a series
of concepts and images.
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 When we hear/read words like ‘kill’ we want to know

more. What happened? Why? How? Who is involved?

 E.g. ‘The farmer kills the duckling.’

 A basic conceptual structure presented here –
 Who is involved? – One farmer and one duckling
 What is happening? – He (or she?) kills it.
 Why? – No idea. No clues are provided there.
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 What kind of message(s) does the picture convey to you

at your first sight?

Guilty of Romance
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 Then how about this picture?

Ju-on
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 Visual resources –
 Colour, shape and imagery (the use of
words/pictures in books, films, paintings, etc to
describe ideas/situations)

 Typefaces (letters and numbers in a particular design

used in printing)

 All elements of expression and communication that

accompany our words and ideas – or that replace
them, complement them, contrast them, or situate
them in contexts
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 Language
 Some form of language
occupies nearly every
moment of our working
lives –
 Letters, words, sentences,
signs, symbols, and
 Thoughts – printed, spoken,
computer-generated, flashed
on screen, finger-spelled,
imagined and recalled
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 Language –
 We are constantly surrounded by and immersed
in language.
 Our lives are jam-packed with language in its
multiple forms, accompanied by the unlimited
semiotic resources that combine to shape
language into discourse.

 It so completely fills our lives that we typically

pay little attention to it.
 We may even take it for granted.
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 It is not the language that we are attending

to when we notice words and phrases and
tones of voice and attitudes.
 It is not the language itself that moves us
or angers us or inspires us to act (or react).
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 Communication is –
 More than letters and words
 Appearing one at a time or strung together
 Reflecting bits of thought and bits of meaning

 Communication is –
 The composite process whereby elements of language
combine with other elements like gestures, eye gaze,
fluctuations in voice (rhythm, intonation, rate of speech,
spates of silence)
 Visual and aural
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“reach out further

 We should
than language itself in the
forms as well as meanings that
can be the focus of analysis”
(Jaworski and Coupland: 2006:6)
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 When studying communication skills, we –

 Locate and understand meaning through various
analytic lenses and using a variety of units of
analysis –
 Grammar and grammatical units
 Genre, register
 Intonation units
 Social construction of ideology and power
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Visual information in texts

 Based on the previous slides, the organisation of a text
lies primarily in its language – i.e. words and clauses

 But, in reality, when we consider paragraphing in a

text, we also pay attention to the use of white space
to indent the text.
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 Leaving white space is just one of the means available

for making a text visually informative.

 Visual aspects of the text can be ways of imposing

organisation on it, or highlighting an existing
organisation.
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 The following graphic devices are within reach of most

of us –
 Choice of font
 Use of bullets
 Importing of graphs
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 In the past, linguists often insisted that the

spoken language, with features like stress
and intonation, speed variation, rhythm,
voice quality, is much richer than the
written language.

 This is only partially true.

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 A range of graphic resources, e.g. a desktop publisher

will have to decide on when he/she comes to creating
printed text, and which give an extra layer of textual
meaning.
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 The publisher has to decide the following –

 At the global level, he/she will decide if he/she is going to
import graphics, e.g. pictures, graphs, pie charts.
 He/she will consider how these can be integrated with
global layout features, e.g. page size, number of columns,
use of white space or colour.
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 At slightly more detailed level, he/she has the opportunity

to use graphics for making textual organisation clear, e.g.
by bullets, dashes, numbering or lettering.
 More locally, he/she has the choice of text
features/highlighting –
 Font type, font size, capitalisation, bolding, italicisation,
underlining, outlining, shadowing
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 Visual informative-ness
 A scale of visual
informative-ness –
 Ranging from, e.g. the
homogenous text of the
average novel, whose only
visual features are
paragraph indentation and
chapter headings,
 To instructions for self-
assembly furniture, which,
unfortunately, are often
almost entirely visual in the
information.
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 Degrees of visual informative-ness are likely to match

reading styles.

 Texts that are not visually informative tend to reveal

their structure through reading in their entirety.
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 Assured and non-assured readers

 When deciding on how much visuality is
appropriate for a text, we have to take account
another factor –
 How motivated or assured our readers are.
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 Assured reader
 A reader looking through a telephone directory for a
number, or reading the latest novel by their favourite
author, does not need to be encouraged to continue
reading.
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 Non-assured reader
 Someone flipping through a magazine, looking at the
adverts, or glancing at flyers in a travel agent, needs to
have his/her attention sustained.

 The non-assured reader will need to be attracted by the

visuals, so one would expect texts designed for him/her to
be more visually informative.
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C. Textual, conceptual and interpersonal

meanings

 Nouns, or ways of naming entities and ideas, reflect

conceptual schemas (drawings that represent
ideas/theories) in terms of singularity or plurality,
degrees of concreteness or abstractness.

 The noun ‘snow’ typically denotes a mass of frozen

precipitation, as it falls or as it has covered the
ground.

 Pluralised, ‘snows’ refer to repeated cycles of

snowfall.
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 A simple ‘-s’ at the end of the word makes a conceptual

stance.

 Verbs like ‘suffer’ versus ‘experience’ or ‘undergo’ convey

differing points of views of events and the entities involved
in them

 Adjectives like ‘classic’ and ‘signature’ and ‘adverbs’ like

‘now’ or ‘more than ever’ underscore qualities of things
and time frame for events
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 Every element of language is loaded with meaning

beyond what we know as ‘literal (plain/word-for-word)
meaning’
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 Communication necessarily involves words and

grammar and other features of language whose
meanings are linked to our experiences, our
cultures, our situated contexts and conventions
of practice

 Words combine with other words and parts of

words, such that all elements of language express
meaning well beyond literal meaning and well
beyond structure-based meaning.
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 Sometimes the same word can refer to –

 A concrete thing, like ‘school’ (the building)
 An abstract concept, like ‘school’ (education, the institution
of schooling)

 The distinction between concrete nouns and

abstract nouns is a conceptual one.

 Depending on the context and the

communicative intent of the
speaker/writer, the same noun might be
used to express a concrete thing or an
abstract idea.
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 Reference involves –
 The relationship between words and the
things, ideas, entities, states, and people
that such words designate.

 Two broad types of reference –

 Highly specific, where the referent is easily
identifiable and specific
 E.g. “Prince William and his wife,
Catherine”
 Generic, where the referent itself is not
actually identifiable
 E.g. “A prince must be a man of
courage.”
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Prince William, Catherine Visit Prince Edward Island in

Canadian Tour

1. Prince Edward Island, Canada (CNN) – Prince William

and his wife Catherine will tour Prince Edward Island
on Monday, the fifth day of their Canadian tour.

2. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will start the

day with a visit to Province House, the second oldest
active legislature building in Canada.
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3. Later, Prince William will emphasize the Canadian

military’s contribution to the training of search-and-
rescue pilots by taking part in a “waterbird”
emergency landing exercise in a helicopter at Dalvay-
by-the-Sea.

4. On Monday evening, the royal couple will travel to

Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, for the next
phase of their trip.
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5. William and Catherine are expected to visit four

provinces during their nine-day tour – their first
official foreign trip as a married couple. After the
Northwest Territories, they are scheduled to visit
Alberta.

(CNN News, 2011)

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 William and Catherine are mentioned in the news story

using seven different terms of reference
1. Prince William and his wife Catherine
2. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
3. Prince William
4. The royal couple
5. William and Catherine
6. A married couple
7. they
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 These reference terms involve the following types of

noun phrases
 Proper nouns with and without titles (specific) – William,
Catherine, Prince William, the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge
 Relationship term (specific) – his wife
 Collective noun (specific) – the royal couple
 Collective noun (generic) – a married couple
 Subject pronoun (specific) - they
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 The use of the definite article "the" implies that it does not
generally mean any royal couple in the world but the royal
couple which is previously mentioned in the text. Such
explanation helps explain why "a married couple" is a generic
reference. The choice of an indefinite article "a" means that
"a married couple" is not identifiable.

 "They" is still considered a specific reference, as the text only

mentions two persons, namely Prince William and his wife
Catherine. Therefore, the justification for the use of "they" is
similar to that for the use of the definite article
"the". Pronouns are often used to refer to a noun that has
already been mentioned, so "they" is specific.
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 The types of reference terms make different aspects of

each individual’s identity prominent – their names,
titles, and their relationship to each other

 These types of word choices also point to the

individuals’ gender, nationality, and royal family
membership
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 Reference involves –
 The relationship between words and the things, ideas,
entities, states, and people that such words designate

 Two broad types –

1. Highly specific, where the person/thing mentioned (the
referent) can be identified –
 through the use of proper nouns (e.g. Prince William) or
 with definite noun phrases that enable a listener/reader to
actually identify the thing/person (e.g. the royal couple)
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2. Generic, where the person/thing mentioned (the referent) is –

 a member of a class (e.g. a duke is a member of royalty, apples

are good for your health); and

 not identifiable on its own

 That is, with generic reference, there isn’t a particular

apple, or duke that is being discussed – rather, reference is
being made to that thing/person/entity in general
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 Does critical reading simply mean the

ability to see logical flaws in
arguments or weigh up the evidence
for explicit claims?
 65

 We take a wider view instead.

 Resisting the assumptions on which
rational arguments are based by
explaining and questioning how
common sense logic establishes its
categories
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 There are 3 levels at which we understand and

analyse what we read and write.

 First, we decode the surface forms and meanings

of a text.

 By text, we mean –
 The physical form which the writing (speaking)
takes on the page (in the air) and the meanings
this physical form encodes
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 Second, we have to interpret what we have

decoded, e.g., to whom it refers and guessing
what inferences we are expected to make.

 We mean –
 the act of communication in which the writer
intends to affect a reader, and the reader
attempts to work out the writer’s intentions
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 Third, which we often ignore, is explanation,

showing why the discourse and text are the way
they are.
 E.g. ‘What social and ideological forces
underlie or determine text meanings?”

 By ideology, we mean –
 The ways of thinking which (re)produce and
reflect the power structures of society, or more
briefly ‘meaning in the service of power’
(Thomson, 1984)
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 The following example will make the three

levels of analysis clearer

 The news report ‘‘Superman’ may never

walk again’ from the International
Express, 1-7 June 1995
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‘Superman’ may never walk again

1. SUPERMAN star Christopher Reeve is in
hospital with a suspected broken back.
2. His family ordered hospital officials not to give out any
information – but sources say he is partially paralysed.

3. The actor’s publicist was plainly upset as she revealed

that horse-mad Reeve was hurt show-jumping in
Virginia.
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4. Witnesses saw him hit the ground hard as his horse

shied.

5. As doctors evaluated his condition in the acute-care

ward at the University of Virginia’s Medical Centre, it
was not known whether he will walk again.

6. Reeve, 43 and 6ft. 4in. was flown to the hospital by

air-ambulance after doctors at the competition
decided he needed special care.
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7. Reeve, who starred in 4 Superman movies, lived with

his British lover Gael Exton for 11 years.

8. They had two children.

9. Reeve then began a relationship with singer Dana

Morosini.
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 At the first level, description, we could

note that the first two lines of the report
and the headline are in a larger point
size, and that almost every sentence takes
up a whole paragraph.
 These are features that help us to place
the text in the genre of news report.
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 We might note a shift in formality between

sentence 4 and sentence 5, with 92 per cent
single-syllable words in sentence 4, and
only 60 per cent in sentence 5

 We could also analyse the phrases used to

refer to and to describe the named
characters in this text.
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 At the second level, we have to make several

inferences in order to understand this passage.
 E.g.
 We would infer that the events described in the last
two paragraphs took place before those in the first
six;
 Or that Reeve’s hitting the ground hard (sentence 4)
was the cause of his suspected broken back (sentence
1), since this is not actually stated.
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 The two inferences on the last slide are

quite uncontroversial.

 But inferencing is a risky business and a more

controversial inference may be suggested by
the information in sentence 8 and sentence 9.
 Implying that Reeve somehow deserved this
‘punishment’ for abandoning his British lover
and their two children and striking up a
relationship with Dana Morosini
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 The description and interpretation levels of

understanding and analysis lead to ideological
explanation.
 E.g.
 The actor’s publicist is depicted as ‘upset’ – This fits
neatly into the stereotype of women as prone to
emotions or unable to hide them
 The only nationality adjective used in the passage is
‘British’, used to describe Gael Exton – We can explain
this if we know the ideological position of the
newspaper.
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 International Express
is nationalistic,
featuring the Union
flag and a medieval
crusader as masthead
adjacent to the
paper’s title.
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 So the mentioning of Reeve’s former lover as British might –

 Be in line with the proposition of the paper that British

is somehow more important; or

 At least enable its British readers to relate more

closely to the story; or

 Provide an ideological explanation for the doubtful

interpretation – i.e. Reeve’s accident was deserved as a
punishment for disloyalty
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 At the level of analysing ‘text’, we analyse

the forms and meanings that the text
explicitly gives us.
 Look at ‘text’ from 3 perspectives –
 Textual meaning
 Conceptual/ideational meaning
 Interpersonal meaning
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 Textual meaning –

 To do with the ways in which texts

can be organised, both in sentences,
paragraphs and according to the
structures of a genre

 E.g. the headline and paragraphing of the

‘Superman’ news report
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 Conceptual/ideational meaning –

 In which the language of the ‘text’

represents, sorts and classifies the
outside world and the mental world

 E.g. the descriptions which are used of Reeve,

Exton and Morosini
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 Interpersonal meaning –

 In which the ‘text’ sets up relationships

between readers and writers

 E.g. the shifts in formality between sentence 4

and sentence 5
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 The 3 perspectives on the meanings

encoded in Reeve’s news report derive from
the functional grammar of Michael
Halliday (1994)

 Grammar as designed to perform 3

functions within a social context –
textual, ideational and interpersonal
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 Texts have to be produced and interpreted by

reader and writer.

 Inferencing and interpretation are essential in

getting at the writer’s intended meaning.
 E.g.
 Reeve’s news report positions the reader as someone
interested in the private life of a show-business
personality.
 We use information from previously encountered texts
to interpret the current one.
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Summary
 Communication can involve other media besides
language.
 E.g. photography, clothing, gesture

 Communication shows the connections between

language and other non-linguistic systems.

 Not all linguistic communication is spoken/written.

There are manual languages, e.g. American Sign
Language, whose speakers use gestures rather than
sound/graphic signs
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 We tend instead to be interested in what happens

when people draw on the knowledge they have
about language, based on their memories of things
they have said, heard, seen, or written before, to
do things in the world –

 Exchange information, express feelings, make

things happen, create beauty, entertain
themselves and others, and so on.
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 To use visual information to help with the

organisation of text, in order to make texts
more attractive, so that they appeal to
non-assured readers

 The way we decode meanings is partly

contributed by the knowledge of language
that people apply