The impact of business communication case-based tasks on business English learners' oral fluency and grammatical accuracy

Abstract

Communicative proficiency is the ultimate goal most Business English learners strive to achieve in their academic courses and eventually in the workplace. To help learners effectively engage in oral business interactions of different levels of formality and compete well in the dynamic business world after graduation, Business English practitioners strive to develop instructional materials and tasks in their pursuit of optimizing authentic opportunities for oral proficiency development in business settings. The impetus for excellence in oral business communication has further motivated business schools worldwide to adapt curricula and instructional designs that embrace formal courses of instruction on and practice of oral skills to meet the versatile needs of the workplace (Dunbar, Brooks, & Kubicka-Miller, 2006). Hence, the purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of business communication case-based task design on Business English learners' oral fluency and grammatical accuracy. In this exploratory study fluency was measured in terms of speech rate (number of words per minute) and accuracy was measured by means of ratio of error-free T-units in relation to the total of T-units per oral response. A cohort of ten intermediate ESP learners constituted the sample for the study. All participants engaged in performing three cognitively complex tasks, manipulated along resource-directing â reasoningâ demands in both a pretest and a posttest. Depending on the degree of the cognitive complexity of the task, the participants were to perform individually, in pairs and in a group of five. Their oral responses were transcribed, coded, and analyzed in regards to the measures of fluency and accuracy. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis and interpretation. Results indicated statistically significant improvement in Business English learners' oral fluency and accuracy in regards to the measures used. A number of moderating variables, namely gender, familiarity with topic, interactional pattern on task, level of task cognitive complexity, interrelationship between members, and affective attitudes may have mediated the impact of the case-based design on learners' L2 oral performances in business situations. Pedagogical implications included studying the effectiveness of case-based tasks following an experimental design where both control and comparison groups are used for drawing conclusions on their inherent benefits. The joint interactional effect of task design and other intervening variables needs to be further researched in both classroom and assessment situations.