Abstract:

While developing a matrix to map Audiovisual content, according to the needs of Business English (BE) teachers and learners, a problem presented itself while attempting to identify and organise the most relevant BE communicative skills (CS) into macro and meso categories (MMC).

Once the literature did not provide any solid categorization proposal for these CS, the plan was then to use the table of contents of BE course manuals for identification purposes. However, these manuals also showed many distinct approaches and that made finding a categorization proposal very difficult.

To achieve a conciliatory categorization proposal, the CS from the table of contents of 8 BE manuals, selected according to the year of publishing, publisher and connection to Cambridge’s Business English Certificate exam, were collected as raw data and gathered in a database. From the methodological viewpoint, data were treated resorting to content analysis technique to establish the MMC.

This data was treated and analysed qualitatively according to the methodology theorised by Miles and Huberman (1994), which is directed specifically towards the identification of categories in qualitative data analysis.

The first analysis of the results led to the proposal of 7 macro categories with a reliability index of 82,2%. In a second examination, the qualitative analysis process was repeated to identify the meso categories inside each macro category. The results of the second examination identified 3 to 7 meso categories in each macro category, and all of these categorizations passed a reliability index of 82%.

The study concludes with a legitimised proposal of MMS of CS that can be included in the mapping matrix to be developed.

Keywords:

Business English, Communicative skills, qualitative analysis, manuals, adult learners.