ESP : THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN EBP TEACHING MATERIAL

BY : KHALIQ BASHAR

STUDENT OF POST GRADUATE PROGRAM, HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY MAKASSAR

THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN EBP TEACHING MATERIAL

A.      INTRODUCTION

In language teaching, the culture plays an important role, as we know that language reflects culture and culture can shape language (Evans,1998). The same thing happen to English for Business purposes teaching, culture has  even more important role because, the use of English is not only for communicating to the people of the English speaking culture but also to the people where English is not the official language

                                The culture in EBP itself, not only the culture of the English speaking countries but also the culture of Non-English speaking countries, this is because the function of business English is mainly for intercompany, in international conglongmerates, and intra-company dealing (Nickeson,1998 in Evans 1998). This makes the cultural knowledge from various part of the world is very crucial in teaching EBP, to give the students enough knowledge about the business world and avoid misunderstanding, based on this  the writer interested to see To what extent the culture is important in English for business purposes teaching materials?.

B.      DISCUSSION

To start the discussion, we have to know the essence of communication; communication is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It means that we can use any means of communication to deliver our message.

There are two types of communication, verbal and non verbal communication. Non Verbal communication is the Nonverbal communication is the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages, and verbal communication is the communication that use sound, words, , and language to deliver the messages to the others.

So what is the relation between these types of communication to the culture in EBP teaching material? To see the relation, lets see what Meharbian (1987)(in Evans, 1998, page 71 ) found in his research about communication skills, he stated that only 8 percent of the listeners’ believe in a message came though words, 37 percent came through how they were said and 55 percent through the body language. From this statement we can see that the communication that use words, sounds and language or the verbal communication is not very effective in establishing interface communication. But see the impact of how the words said or the intonation (37%) and the body language (55%) in the communication process, it has the biggest portion in the communication, 92 %. And as we know that  Gesture, body language, intonation, that categorized as non verbal communication are really influenced by the culture, so culture is very determining in the non verbal communication.

What about the teaching material for EBP? From the explanation above, we can see clearly that the portion of culture in is dominating the whole communication process. So in selecting the teaching materials for EBP, the culture, especially the culture where the business would be taken place should be highly consider to be the part of EBP teaching material.

C.      CONCLUSSIONS

As the conclusion of this paper, the writer can say that the teaching materials should cover at least 92 % the knowledge about non verbal communication, where culture undeniably has big influence to the non verbal communication where this type of communication dominate almost the whole of communication process.

REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication

http://cobweb2.louisville.edu/faculty/regbruce/bruce//mgmtwebs/commun_f98/Verbal.htm

Evans, tony Dudley. 1998. Developments in English for specific purposes. Cambridge university press. United kingdom  

Wilson ,John F.business cultures and business performance: a british prespective