Listening Comprehension for 'Business English' Students: Obstacles, Needs, and Strategies

This study investigates the communication and learning needs of Master of Business Administration (MBA) business English students and their perceptions of effective curriculum design. The research instruments are two-stage surveys of 99 MBA students from a public university in China. The results of the study show that English is not extensively used in the workplaces of MBA business English students, and that the majority of them use Chinese. Most English usage occurs in foreign businesses. The most difficult skills for MBA business English learners are found to be oral communication and listening comprehension. However, there are still very strong needs for further improvement in English communication. For the MBA business English courses, oral communication activities, especially with expatriate teachers, are particularly needed. The MBA business English courses should connect with real-world practice and be relevant to job and business needs. This study has significant implications for MBA business English curriculum reform in both Chinese and international contexts.

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Fostering learning and collaboration through computer-supported collaborative inquiry among Chinese tertiary business English students

10.5353/th_b4490192 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Ke Zhao

Keyword(s):

Collaborative Inquiry ◽

Business English ◽

Learning And Collaboration ◽

English Students

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Business English students learning to write for international business: What do international business practitioners have to say about their texts?

English for Specific Purposes ◽

10.1016/j.esp.2013.01.002 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 144-156 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Zuocheng Zhang

Keyword(s):

International Business ◽

Business English ◽

Business Practitioners ◽

English Students

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LISTENING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES APPLIED BY ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

ELT-Lectura ◽

10.31849/elt-lectura.v5i1.1074 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 38-47

Author(s):

Sitti Hadijah ◽

Shalawati Shalawati

Keyword(s):

English Language Learners ◽

Language Learners ◽

English Learners ◽

Listening Comprehension ◽

English Language ◽

Cognitive Strategies ◽

Monitoring And Evaluation ◽

Comprehension Strategies ◽

Mixed Method Research ◽

English Students

This paper depicts a part of a research project, focused on exploring three listening comprehension strategies applied by the English learners in interpretative listening subject; (a) meta-cognitive strategies consist of directed attention, selective attention, planning, monitoring, and evaluation; (b) cognitive strategies include listening for gist and detail, inference, prediction, visualization, summarizing, and note-taking; (c) Social/affective strategies, such as cooperation. Hence, mixed-method research was employed to describe what listening comprehension strategies used more often by English Students at Universitas Islam Riau. Thirty-seven fresh year learners taking interpretative listening subject were encouraged to participate in this research by filling out questionnaire adopted form Cross (2009). The data collected will both qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. Thirty-two statements included in the questionnaire were categorized intro three groups; cognitive (15), meta-cognitive (15), and socio-affective (2). The finding reveals that the learners had been familiar will the strategies and frequently apply them based on their needs in listening processes, such as before, while, and after listening.

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Collex-Biz

ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.1075/itl.155.04bla ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 155 ◽

pp. 77-93

Author(s):

Kristin Blanpain ◽

Liesbet Heyvaert ◽

An Laffut

Keyword(s):

First Year ◽

Business English ◽

Web Based ◽

News Reports ◽

Course Materials ◽

Business News ◽

Learning Platform ◽

Exercise Design ◽

English Students ◽

Selection Of

This paper reports on the development of Collex-Biz, a corpus-driven web-based learning platform for general economic English. The design of this platform was informed by a number of research-based principles, particularly frequency and collocation, which are insufficiently incorporated in existing Business English course materials. Following Sinclair & Renouf (1988) and Nelson (2000), we first developed a ‘lexical syllabus’ for first-year Business English students on the basis of frequency data from a self-compiled 6 million word corpus of business news reports. A didactically inspired selection of the most useful single words and collocations was then thematically classified. On the basis of concordances, finally, exercises were created in which lexical items were maximally contextualised and systematically recycled. In this article, we discuss the criteria that guided our selection of items and elaborate on the principles behind the exercise design.

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