Abstract:

Following the increasingly stringent requirements for specialist proficiency, there emerged a need to define the content of training and instructional techniques designed to develop future experts’ competences. Since the language of business functions as one of the components of a business strategy, written business communication assumes ever greater importance in the framework of foreign language teaching.

This study aims to outline possible paths towards optimizing the learning process, define the stages of written utterance composition, and develop a system of exercises to be applied at each stage of instruction in teaching written business communication.

The main research methods included are:
(1) analyzing linguo-didactic approaches to teaching writing,
(2) selecting and systemizing instructional material in order to develop a system of exercises, and
(3) monitoring and summarizing the results of students’ productive speech activity in order to identify the effectiveness of the proposed system of exercises.

To achieve the stated goal, the paper identifies the key competences required to develop writing skills, and selects language and speech material consistent with the professional orientation of students in order to develop learning tools to be applied in teaching written business communication.

The study revealed that mastering written foreign language business communication involves fostering the skills of adequate punctuation and style; the ability to determine the communicative intent and purpose when creating a written message; the ability to collect and analyze information; the ability to make a plan of written statements; the ability to build coherent speech, perform mental operations, and reflect at the phase of self-control. Thus, it is about a complex of communicative competences including linguistic, discursive, methodical, sociolinguistic, intercultural, strategic and subject-specific competences.

The declared tasks were addressed by developing a set of exercises incorporating linguistic, semi-communicative and communicative exercises. The follow-up survey and testing at the final stage of training proved the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

As a result, the study analyzed the pragmatic and speech components involved in the process of teaching business professional communication. Based on the analysis, the paper highlighted the topics and settings of written professional and business communication, singled out the types of communicative tasks and speech actions relevant to these types of settings, and considered the texts demonstrating the solution of communicative tasks reflecting the subject-informative plane of communication.

Thus, the article is an important addition to the research in the field of teaching written business communication. The obtained results are of practical importance for improving the efficiency of foreign language teaching at the university.

Keywords:

Teaching methods, business communications, writing skills.