Bilingual Instruction of Commercial Subjects in the Context of Teaching Business English
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Date
2010-03-12T08:08:13Z
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Abstract
The book compares bilingual and non-bilingual students of international
management and marketing at the business school HAK 1 Salzburg. The
business students whose performance was assessed were all bilingual
as they had studied English as a foreign language for 7 years prior to
this research. The term ‘bilingual’ in this book refers solely to the
students who attended the bilingual track or studied business subjects
in English, their first foreign language. On the other hand, non-bilingual
students studied the business subjects in German, their native
language. The purpose of this research was to find out in what ways
bilingual students were better than non-bilingual students. In other
words, the results would reveal the biggest differences and similarities
between the two groups of business students. For this purpose, the
communicative tests were designed to assess the students’ general
language proficiency, and their speaking and writing skills. In addition,
the students’ social background was assessed by using the
questionnaires designed for this study. The findings proved that
bilingual students excelled non-bilingual students in all tests. The
biggest differences between the two groups of students were found in
the use of grammar and vocabulary. The slightest difference between
them was revealed in the ‘fluency’ criterion of the speaking test.
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Keywords
bilingualism, bilingual teaching, business English, teaching commercial subjects in English, English for specific purposes, English for business purposes, subject-specific didactics of teaching commercial subjects