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Students attracted to quantitative disciplines of study can be reluctant to devote much attention to the critical task of communicating, and previous research (Hostager, 2018) has identified statistically significant differences in learning approaches by major among undergraduate business students. This paper presents results of learning assurance for writing skills (direct measures) even when the course content relates to the highly quantitative topics of data analytics and finance. The approach combines various pedagogical methods in an undergraduate, writing-intensive setting: traditional testing in an iterative framework, "flipped classroom" intensive work using spreadsheet software, repeated submission of brief papers incorporating analytical finance work, and student research presentations (including at an undergraduate research conference). We present quantitative and qualitative data demonstrating assurance of learning for evaluation purposes, including the recently announced (2020) competency-based Assurance of Learning standards from the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). To assess the robustness of our findings, we also report results using alternate learning resources (old and new) and delivery methods (in-person, hybrid, fully online), taking advantage of the pandemic natural experiment. We found that learning progress was assured in each context for hybrid and fully online delivery; however, learning was not as monotonic as for fully in-person implementation.

The aim of the study is to examine the effectiveness of blended learning in encouraging course interaction amongst first-year students studying a business communication module. The COVID19 pandemic resulted in the increased use of blended learning as a teaching approach to encourage learning regardless of the location. Existing research on blended learning suggests its value in promoting increased student engagement, ultimately contributing to positive educational outcomes. Data was collected through a cross-sectional survey whereby a questionnaire was distributed to the respondents using Google Forms. Data was analysed on the same platform. Cross-tabulation was used to understand the relationships between factors in participants' responses to the questions. Results indicate that blended learning successfully drives course interaction because the combination of class-based and online engagement positively impacts how likely students are to engage in course content. This paper makes a valuable contribution in the form of underscoring a pressing need for research that is aimed at understanding how blended learning shapes the experiences students have with their modules, as well as how these factors may shape current practices in blended learning. Most students indicated that they would recommend blended learning as it increased participation and engagement with their course content.

The field of advertising has a structure that shapes consumer preferences and behaviors. The field of advertising undertakes the tasks of reflecting cultural values and norms, reinforcing or changing gender roles, and supporting social responsibility and campaigns. In addition, advertising, whose main purpose is sales, has a structure that shapes and informs society when considered in social dimensions. Artificial intelligence, which is today's developing and rising technology, is a technological tool that brings the physical and digital world together and affects many other fields such as economy, industry, social field, education. It is thought that the widespread integration of these technologies, which we use in almost every aspect of our daily lives, in the education sector has a significant potential for progress. In this context, in this study, the attitudes of students studying at universities in the TRNC towards artificial intelligence applications were analyzed in order to make sense of the impact of artificial intelligence technology used in the field of advertising, which reaches social dimensions, affects social situations and changes with the effects of developing and changing technologies, on students studying. In addition, the impact of advertisements developed with artificial intelligence on education was also analyzed.

Innovative classroom-tested approaches to cross-cultural communication--diversity, equity, and inclusion--and personal and professional development are featured. Readers can explore 10 teaching creations debuted at the 2023 "My Favorite Assignment" sessions at the Association for Business Communication Annual International Conference held in Denver, Colorado, USA.

This article presents a conceptual framework for integrating AI-enabled business communication in higher education. Drawing on established theories from business communication and educational technology, the framework provides comprehensive guidance for designing engaging learning experiences. It emphasizes the significance of social presence, cognitive load management, and constructivist learning principles. The framework is exemplified through various tasks, including role-playing with AI chatbots, analyzing nonverbal cues, communication simulations, interactive presentation assessments, and collaborative AI-supported projects. Practical considerations for implementation, including technological infrastructure, faculty training, ethics, curriculum integration, and assessment strategies, are discussed. Future directions and implications for business communication education are also explored.

Although power manifests as a form of social behavior through language, how it contributes to business English lingua franca (BELF) discourses remains underresearched. This article problematizes how perceptions of power dynamics manifest through choices of BELF discourses as practiced in the Bangladeshi ready-made garments (RMG) industry. Data for this study were collected from interviews with three levels of business professionals. Findings show that perceived power is embedded in everyday business discourses to both empower and disempower speakers and influence differences in their language use. Specifically, perceived organizational position, business position, linguistic ability, and sociocultural identity impacted language differences.

Supervisor communication competence was used to predict both beneficial (Study 1) and detrimental (Study 2) employee outcomes across remote, hybrid, and in-person work experiences. In both studies, there were no differences in perceived supervisor communication competence based on remote, hybrid, and in-person work experiences. As predicted, effective and appropriate supervisor communication were related to employee outcomes across work experiences. In Study 1, regression analyses indicated that effective communication was the best predictor of beneficial employee outcomes (engagement, empowerment, and accomplishment), whereas appropriate communication was the best predictor of detrimental employee outcomes (burnout, stress, alienation, and turnover intentions) in Study 2.

This article offers a content analysis of technical and professional communication articles related to user experience (TPC-UX) published between 2013 and 2022 in six TPC scholarly journals. This analysis reveals that TPC-UX primarily focuses on product and process topics and illustrates the terminological comingling of "user experience" and "usability." Specific TPC-UX topics identified include "theory," "multimodality," "health and medicine," "localization," "web design," "mobile applications," "accessibility," and "content strategy." These topics suggest that TPC-UX's key affordances are its attunement to networked power dynamics, its theoretically rich treatment of multimodality, and its strategies for navigating contextual complexities.

In this discussion, we consider how the use of scenario-based assessment (SBA) can provide students with a way of developing the digital communication skills that business communication research has found they will need for the workplace, alongside other aspects of professional competence. This is because SBA can be employed to engage learners in the same types of authentic performance tasks in a situated context that they will likely encounter in their professional lives. In addition, SBA can also be used to maximize the integrity of an assignment by harnessing the positive effects of using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, while simultaneously mitigating against the misappropriation of AI by students. SBA allows learners to practice both their digital, and other, communication skills as well as contributing to their understanding of professional practice, and it also provides instructors with a powerful form of formative assessment. Our aim is to put forward a motivating and effective way of helping our students to develop the skills that they will need to become successful communicators in a postpandemic professional world.

Many experts project generative AI will impact the types of competencies that are valued among working professionals. This is the first known academic study to explore the views of business practitioners about the impacts of generative AI on skill sets. This survey of 692 business practitioners showed that business practitioners widely use generative AI, with the most common uses involving research and ideation, drafting of business messages and reports, and summarizing and revising text. Business practitioners report that character-based traits such as integrity and soft skills will become more important. Implications for teaching business communication are discussed.

This My Favorite Assignment (MFA) article features 11 teaching innovations first presented at the 2023 Association for Business Communication Annual International Conference held Denver, Colorado, USA. These assignments are designed to boost students' writing, persuasion, crisis management skills, and personal and professional development.

Virtual teams have been adopted by organizations and studied for decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of technology-supported collaboration more than ever. This growing importance of virtual teamwork suggests that business education related to virtual team collaboration and communication is critical for students today, and universities play a significant role in equipping students with the knowledge and skillsets necessary to work in a digital world. This work reviews the literature on virtual teams and educational approaches used for teaching virtual team collaboration and communication and presents a framework for virtual team education. Survey findings and illustrative cases are gathered to demonstrate current virtual team education practices. The study concludes with recommendations for the education of virtual team knowledge and skills.

The concepts of 'graduateness' and graduate attributes became contested terrain before COVID-19 destabilised even the most assured of shared learning constructions. Indeed, for those of us immersed in the delivery of work-based learning (WBL), this has long been the case. Promotion of reductive notions of 'skills' acquisition to comply neatly with an employability agenda holds little relevance for those students already engaged in full time careers, and with a wealth of professional experience. What can hold influence and interest, however, is the opportunity to engage in meaningful, agentic, professionally-aligned reflective practices as a scaffolded route to promoting self-awareness and developing confidence in mapping competences from the professional domain to the academic (and vice versa). This paper shares an account of taking an embedded approach to supporting the development of academic literacies amongst work-based learners in one UK HEI. In particular, it will consider the use of reflective pedagogical tools and values in supporting work-based learners to become confident and adaptable writers. Discussion considers how work-based pedagogies and approaches may have far-reaching relevance in a post-pandemic landscape, where reskilling and professional agility are likely to become more prolific aspects of education and work. Writing itself is framed as an integrated communication practice that encompasses literature retrieval, reading, evaluation, synthesis and articulation of argument. The paper will describe pre-pandemic academic support activities and share qualitative survey data in which students consider their confidence as both professional and academic writers. It concludes with consideration of how some of the approaches outlined may have relevance for the wider academic community.

The Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) is a promising project which aims to elevate the living standards of the Thai people. Large numbers of skilled workers with a good command of the English language are urgently needed. The present study aims to examine the English proficiency of Thai employees and explore the expectations of employers in the EEC. The instruments used in the study include an English proficiency test, interviews, and a survey of employees. The findings indicate that employees working with the top management level, (e.g., managers and supervisors) are expected to be more proficient in English than those working at the operational level. Among four modes of communication, the performance of most participants in reception and production were in the same range (A2-B2). On the other hand, the performance in interaction and mediation fell into the lower range (A1-B1). New employees are expected to be able to communicate in English at a good level and then learn to use technical English in their fields.

The popularity of short-messaging formats, like text and chat, is on the rise in the workplace with many employees preferring this style over long-form options like email. While many businesses expect employees to communicate using short messages, students may be ill-equipped to effectively use these methods due to a lack of formal training. This study sets out to understand students' experience, confidence, and education related to professional short messaging. Results indicate a correlation between confidence and experience levels in writing text and chat messages. Further, the participants who indicated they had training in writing short messages indicated they learned it in a business communication class. Thus, this study highlights a need for education on short messaging in the business communication classroom to increase student experience, and thus, their confidence in writing these messages.

In second language acquisition, grammar is important in enhancing skills and language ability. Freshmen who majored in English at university are required to study grammar as a specific subject along with other skills like reading, speaking, listening, and writing. At the tertiary level, students learn grammar differently from at lower levels, so it requires new methods to engage and encourage them in this subject. This qualitative research investigates the effectiveness of using presentation software as the main method of learning grammar in two classes at a university. The study employs classroom observation and interviews with a teacher and some students to explore the attitudes and influences of this method of learning grammar as a separate subject at university. The results show that students are engaged in learning grammar, and they are more confident to explain different grammar knowledge and improve their grammar better. Both the teacher and students have positive attitudes toward learning grammar with this method, and they also hope that presentation can be applied to improve other subjects actively and effectively, like in grammar subject.

Globalisation poses a challenge for businesses with linguistically diverse staff, prompting the choice of English as the default corporate language. Although many studies extensively explored the role of corporate language policy in large corporations, employees' perceptions of such policy has not been explored adequately. Fewer studies investigate the trends in such perceptions in social media texts. This study fills this gap; it examines the barriers in multinational companies that have adopted a foreign language and analyses employees' attitudes. The study uses computer-assisted text analysis to investigate changes in employees' perceptions of an English-only policy in Rakuten, a Japanese company. It analyses a corpus of 704 social media posts on OpenWork from 2010 to 2018. The study finds some trends in employees' attitudes such as the inconsistency between expectation and reality in terms of 'Englishnization' and the popularity of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). The findings suggest that Rakuten is not global in the true sense; the value of the TOEIC score is overestimated and the neoliberal employment system affects employees in complex ways. This study contributes to international business language with a bottom-up, employee-centred, and diachronic perspective on language management.

This study explored communication apprehension at the beginning and end of a business communication course. Nearly 200 students completed pre-class and post-class assessments of their communication apprehension in speech situations, class discussions, and group discussions. This study showed that a single business communication course significantly reduces oral communication apprehension. Yet, many students still hold communication apprehension at the end of the class. Thus, an approach that is strategic and program long could better address communication apprehension. The confidence gap between women and men is the most striking aspect of this study, with women possessing much more communication apprehension. Business educators should consider interventions to reduce or eliminate this gap.

Artificial intelligence assignments lead this article's 11 teaching innovations selected from the "My Favorite Assignments" presented at the 2023 Association for Business Communication's (ABC's) 88th Annual International Conference held in the Mile-High City: Denver, Colorado, USA. Pedagogy presented here also includes ideas to enhance student engagement and techniques to transform learning via gamification. Classroom-ready teaching tools provided by this article's contributors are waiting on ABC's site, including instructions to students, stimulus and exercise materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sample student work products. Materials are also available on DePaul University's Center for Sales Leadership page: https://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments and https://salesleadershipcenter.com/research/business-professional-communication-quarterly-my-favorite-assignment

Currently, the analysis of rhetorical moves is extensively applied to business genre conventions. This paper adopts a corpus-assisted genre approach to compare three major rhetorical moves in corpora of students' and professionals' project proposal abstracts to elicit evidence-based recommendations for the pedagogy of business communication. The findings indicate that, while overall features in the proposal abstracts written by actual business professionals and those by students of business vary quantitatively but not qualitatively, students focus more on the aim of the project, and professionals tend to evenly highlight all sides of the project and position it within the context.

Despite management theorists' decades-long attention to the robust sustainability of complex organizations, adaptive management practices remain undertheorized. Management is evolving from a hierarchically organized effort in pursuit of strategically determined goals into a facilitation of layered, distributed, autonomous agents able to learn from their errors and ensure the entire system's long-term survivability. A rhetorical perspective on pedagogy allows us to better prepare our students for success in the 21st century's adaptive organization as well as contribute to theoretical scholarship of effective organizations.

This article provides instructions for an engaging classroom activity when discussing the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Students are asked to consider how to approach pay decisions when hiring a new employee for their business. Issues arise when the new hire asks for a higher wage than a current employee of a different sex. Legal Environment of Business/Business Law, Business Communication, and Business Ethics are all tied together in a discussion of what it means to pay someone more or less money based on their sex.

This activity offers students a way to engage in cover letter writing, familiarizing themselves with the style and content of these documents in a creative, fictional scenario. Students will both prepare letters and evaluate them, with options to vary the gamification of the activity included. During the debrief, students assess their experience and identify practices they can emulate in their own letter writing. Courses: Business Communication, Organizational Communication. Objectives: Students will learn how to write descriptively and precisely through the preparation of mock cover letters. Students will learn how to evaluate professional documents through peer critique.

The rapid growth of social media popularity and consequently social media marketing is creating a challenge in terms of the appropriate teaching strategy. Advances in technology are racing ahead of clear terminology. The definitions of Public Relations (PR) and Advertising are being widened to encompass more digital activities and this turf war is causing confusion within the industry, the academic world, and the classroom. This article addresses the need for more research on teaching social media marketing from a strategic perspective based on Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) objectives. It explores the use of the Paid/Owned/Earned Media (POEM) framework as a form of engaged pedagogy and part of the Active Blended Learning framework. Adopting a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, 40 student applications of the POEM framework were analyzed, and the results indicate that it enables students to identify activities within an integrated campaign and their impact on the customer journey. These results were supported by a qualitative analysis of the views of three experienced educators in this field. It is proposed that the application of classifications, such as Paid, Owned, and Earned media, are more useful when teaching social media marketing within IMC than the classifications of Advertising and PR.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a career management program embedded within a business module, with a specific focus on enhancing the employability of students. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved five one-hour workshops based on the DOTS model, covering aspects like resume writing and professional communication. Surveys, using a structured questionnaire and a Likert scale, measured participants' perceived employability. The pre-survey included demographic details, while the post-survey evaluated the effectiveness of the Career development learning workshop. Incentives and QR codes were employed to boost participation, and data were collected at the semester's start and end, with responses linked through students' phone numbers. Findings: The results confirmed a positive connection between the perceived effectiveness of skill programs and students' employability. Integration of career management into the curriculum cultivates a heightened professional mindset and boosts employability. Validation through a paired-samples t-test demonstrates a substantial increase in perceived employability after program participation, affirming the program's role in fostering psychosocial empowerment and elevating students' confidence in job seeking. Originality/value: This pioneering research integrates a career management program into a business module, addressing employability challenges in Industry 4.0. It provides empirical evidence of the program's positive impact on students' perceived employability.

While societies struggle with the implications of text-based generative artificial intelligence (TGENAI), businesses are embracing the technology. Using framing, this original activity unit prepares business communication students for professional TGENAI use. Activities emphasize the need for an effective cognitive frame, as well as introduce advantages and disadvantages to using TGENAI- generated output. This unit can be used as a stand-alone introduction or as an additional unit to existing communication theory assignments. Preliminary results suggest improvement in responsible TGENAI framing use, business communication self- efficacy, and equity. Courses: Business Communication, Public Relations, Advertising, Organizational Communication, Corporate Communications, and Social Media. Objectives: Students will be able to (1) explain the importance of cognitive framing in business communication, (2) identify positive and negative aspects of using TGENAI in business communication cognitive framing, and (3) demonstrate the ability to create and edit TGENAI-generated messages for effective business communication.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lecturers of higher learning institutions had to pivot quickly from face-to-face classes to online classes. The new normal of online teaching and learning challenged lecturers in keeping their students engaged, especially when teaching a language course that heavily focuses on the writing component. The purpose of this study was to examine students' perception of using Padlet as a learning space to simulate real-life business communication. At the end of a 14-week semester language course, a cohort of 38 diploma students responded to a self-administered online survey with a 79% response rate. Findings from the descriptive analysis indicated high mean values for most survey items measured, implying that the students were generally favourable towards the use of Padlet and the simulation approach in learning business communication. Curriculum designers and lecturers of other courses could consider the potential of using Padlet as a learning space for simulation. Recommendations, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed in this paper.

Africa is a potentially rich continent due to its considerably rich resources endowment. It is believed that if there is a synergy between these resources, that is if these resources are properly harnessed with a clear vision on the part of our leaders, there is the prospect of growth leading to the development of the continent. The basis of any meaningful development and the bedrock of a breakthrough whether in technology, industry, economy or communication in education. Therefore, language is also a good instrument of synergy toward growth. In African universities especially in Nigeria, dissemination of knowledge is done through bilingualism or multilingualism which is used to attain the broad goals of education. In a multilingual classroom, setting, students will commonly face difficulties in thinking in the largest language (English) because they are influenced by their native language and cultural patterns.

Shannon and Weaver's communication process model is a dominant model used to understand communication between a sender and receiver. The model is used to explain communication in management and organizational behavior textbooks. Despite its proliferation, few studies have examined this model's role in introductory management and organization behavior texts or critiqued its use in foundational business courses. This paper investigates the role that transmission models such as Shannon and Weaver's play in communication textbooks and argues that this model, and the way it is used, can be limiting for students when they are trying to understand the dynamic nature of communication in organizations. The authors call for more critical reflection on teaching communication to management students.

While there are many measures of anxiety, there are few measures or descriptions of confidence. This study considers students' perceptions of what it means to be or to look confident during undergraduate presentations. Findings show students placed high value on effective posture as the most common behavior that was causally connected to a presenter's confidence, as well as ensuring that their vocal delivery is audible and includes minimal pauses.

The rapid digital revolution in recent decades has transformed conventional Word-of-Mouth (WOM) into electronic WOM (eWOM). The significance of digital emotion in eWOM has been widely recognized due to its influential effect on consumer trust. There is increasing research on digital emotion contagion, which refers to exposure to emotions on digital platforms, which evokes internet users' emotions. Drawing on Spencer-Oatey's (2008) Rapport Management Model (RMM), this study investigates the stylistic domain of RMM, focusing on the affective lexical resources that express emotions used by Malaysian hotels when responding to positive online reviews on TripAdvisor. These affective lexical resources were analyzed using Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal Theory. The findings demonstrated that the five- and four-star hotels had higher frequencies of affective lexical variation than did the three-star hotels. From the perspective of RMM, the affective lexical choices used by the high-end Malaysian hotels appeared to reflect the cultural values of gratitude and respect in Asian hospitality in fostering virtual emotional connections with reviewers. This study enriches the work on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course design as digitally engaging via online business communication should be an integral part of business-related ESP courses.

Effective written communication is not only a crucial skill for academic achievement but also for business context as it could lead to individual professional career success and profitable accomplishment. To achieve these goals requires concise and correct communication. This study, therefore, aims to explore the most frequently-made errors by 30 Business English major students. From the total number of 14,118 words, the study found that the students most frequently made three types of errors: morphological (17.91%), syntactical (45.37%), and mechanical (36.72%) levels. Of all the errors that occurred, article errors appeared to be the most problematic use (17.31%), followed by punctuation (13.34%), plurality (13.43%), capitalization (9.55%), and preposition (8.96%) errors. The findings suggested that mostly-made errors by the Business English major students were influenced by the interference of their first language. Additionally, apart from explicit grammar teaching, greater exposure to the target language is also required in the classroom.

The aim of this study was to explore international university students' perceptions on future global employment opportunities and expectations with regard to workplace diversity. The study employs a qualitative approach, and the data were collected from nine study groups with thirty-eight voluntary students from twenty-one different countries studying in a private international university in North Cyprus. The thematic analyses of the data revealed that students anticipate some degrees of inequality and discrimination when seeking employment, i.e., they believe networking is more important than qualifications. Moreover, the participants maintain that overseas job experiences will provide them with better employment opportunities in their respective countries. The main implication of this study for educators is that they should evaluate their current business degree curricula allowing for more interactive communication to build confidence in students' ability to compete in the global workplace. The curricula should also aim at intercultural consciousness-raising through topics of equality and identity using English as a "lingua franca" with the objective of creating high levels of problem solving and critical thinking in students.

This article describes a four-month-long MBA course on business communication taught at NUST Business School, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan. A workshop-style approach was adopted in the course that helped the students break their emotional glass ceiling and become comfortable in their skin. The course enabled the students to work in teams to learn the art of verbal and non-verbal communication through exercises and case studies spread throughout the semester. The system was also helpful in teaching the students to develop an impactful resumé and improve job interview skills (through mock interviews). The course ended with the development of business communication case studies written and taught by students. Some of the students published their case studies in a UK-based case publishing house. The article describes a unique pedagogical approach for preparing this course and the instructor's experiences during and at the end of the course.

Delivered up-to-date news and shown authentic use, the language appeared on the digital platform is an interesting alternative in learning the English language. The present study investigates the English language written on the online logistics magazines published in Thailand by using the corpus tool called Ant-Conc to analyze the frequency of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and collocations. The findings revealed that 1) the most frequent use of nouns was "cargo," 2) the word "said" reported to be the most use of the verb, 3) the word "cargo" appeared to be the most frequent use among adjectives, 4) among the type of grammatical collocation, "noun+preposition" was shown as the most frequently used type, whereas the most three used of grammatical collocation was "cargo in," "important to," and "said with" and 5) among the type of lexical collocation, "noun+verb" was reported as the most frequently used type, whereas the top three used of lexical collocation was "said Mr.," "cargo is," and "new facility." Furthermore, the present study might have implications for the ESP study and recommend the use of authentic language in the logistics business.

Instructors face myriad competing demands for topical coverage in their courses, while navigating pressure to teach in varied modalities and meet employers' expectations for graduates. Starting from a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning framework, this article contributes to the bridging-the-gap literature by addressing local employers' needs and proposing an entrepreneurship-based approach to business communication curriculum.

Business communication teachers navigate a constantly changing pedagogical geography shaped by technology and breakthrough discoveries in linguistics, psychology, and neurobiology. "My Favorite Assignment" is designed to speed new teaching methods to the classroom. This article gives readers 11 teaching innovations on report writing, intercultural communication, and analysis and critical thinking debuted at the 2022 Association for Business Communication's (ABC) 87th Annual International Conference in Tampa, Florida, USA. Additional support materials--instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects--are downloadable from the ABC and DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership websites.

Generative AI may significantly disrupt the teaching and practice of business communication. This study of 343 communication instructors revealed a collective view that AI-assisted writing will be widely adopted in the workplace and will require significant changes to instruction. Key perceived challenges include less critical thinking and authenticity in writing. Key perceived benefits include more efficiency and better idea generation in writing. Students will need to develop AI literacy--composed of application, authenticity, accountability, and agency--to succeed in the workplace. Recommendations are provided for instructors and administrators to ensure the benefits of AI-assisted writing can outweigh the challenges.

The purpose of this study was to gauge the understanding of accessibility related to business communication material among individuals working in corporate America. Participants were asked to define accessibility, then given a definition of accessibility, and then asked to identify how to make a report and a visual accessible. A substantial number of participants were not able to define accessibility, nor identify how to make accessible changes to a report or visual. Those who could define accessibility considered accessibility goals in terms of general access to resources, usability, audience analysis, or disability-related accessibility. Business majors were less likely than other majors to be able to identify disability-related methods of making a report or visual accessible. Implications for business communication education are discussed.

Empathy is an important competence for communication professionals. This article investigates two aspects of empathy in an educational setting: the validity of self versus other assessments and the manifestation of empathy in communicative behaviors. Communication students were given a mediating role in discussions with two clients and their empathy was measured using self-ratings and client assessments. Videos of highest- and lowest-rated students were analyzed to identify empathy-related behaviors. No correlation was found between self-rated empathy and clients' assessments. Several verbal and nonverbal behaviors corresponded to empathy: body language, an other-orientation in asking questions, paraphrasing, and a solution orientation.

Data-driven decision making has now moved beyond its traditional domains--operations research, business economics, computer sciences, and business statistics--to "softer subjects," such as human resource management, organization behavior, and business communication. In this context, teaching with technology encourages students to systematically apply domain knowledge to communicate across a wide variety of stakeholders. In the era of multimodal forms of communication and multiple data sources, management students must be analytical when writing compelling reports and giving persuasive presentations. They should be well versed in using both quantitative and qualitative techniques for report writing and presentation. Drawing on authentic user-generated comments on social media, this article presents two case studies on (a) crisis communication by 30 CEOs and (b) culture shock experienced by foreign tourists sojourning in India, China, and the United Arab Emirates, to demonstrate how master's in business administration (MBA) students could derive insights from the online comments to make strategic decisions for organizational benefit and make reports based on those findings. The article asserts that this could help to cultivate a data-analytic mindset among the students by preparing them to communicate small (and big) data-driven analysis to relevant stakeholders. It attempts to suggest ways to develop MBA students' ability to analyze their potential audiences as well as to generate meaningful insights from the available information on social media websites. Finally, it hopes to nudge business communication instructors to embrace multidisciplinary perspectives for planning a technology-based business communication assignment involving the social media landscape. Instructors can not only use the two case studies to illustrate ways to integrate technology with teaching but also create their own mini cases to improve the decision-making, report-writing, and business report presentation skills of their students.

International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators' perspectives on international students' communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students' general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students' understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies.

This study examines the role of multimodality in facilitating service-learning goals. We report findings from qualitative interviews with 20 college instructors who have designed and facilitated multimodal community-engaged learning projects, identifying their motivations, goals, and the impact of these projects through reflections. Based on our qualitative analysis of these instructor responses, we discuss the technological and pedagogical implications of multimodal social advocacy projects in technical and professional writing courses.

The article proves that formation of professional competence with the help of the Russian language is a daunting challenge which the professors of Russian as a foreign language often face. Professional competence is a complex construct including communicative competence. The matter is that the PR specialists' professional activity presupposes a wide range of business communications strategies, as well as different types of communication and leverage.

In this pedagogical proposal, we utilized Feminist Pedagogy and narratives to reveal women's skills that they had silenced in their cover letters for employment. Five females' narratives were analyzed using aspects of the grounded theory method to answer the question: "What do women's narratives reveal about their personal skills otherwise silenced in their cover letters?" The results showed that women find strength in their spirituality, as well as demonstrating loyalty, flexibility, respectfulness, and resilience. All of the women wrote about their decision-making abilities, which included organization, responsibility, and problem-solving. Finally, the stories revealed that women's ability to make choices defined their freedom and their future.

(1) Background: based on the constantly increasing requirements for modern university graduates, we have developed an educational model that allows us to introduce content and language integrated learning into classes with a multilingual approach, which will allow students to use several foreign languages in the process of professional communication. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the efficiency of a newly introduced integrated learning model from the perspective of students, to identify the impact of such a model on students' professional discipline learning outcomes and to determine if the learning model contributes to an improvement in foreign language proficiency. (2) Methods: for our research we used qualitative and quantitative data from students' records of professional discipline and Spanish testing, as well as surveys and interviews on proposed learning model efficiency. Two groups of students took part in the experiment (N = 23 and N = 24). (3) Results: results on students' Spanish proficiency showed that the proposed learning model had a positive influence. Students from the experimental group got higher results on Listening, Reading and Speaking. According to results on professional discipline, both groups achieved approximately equal scores. Moreover, students described such a proposed learning model as efficient and progressive, giving a lot of advantages. (4) Conclusions: the experiment conducted confirmed the efficiency of the proposed learning model. In conclusion, it can be recommended for the realization of a multilingual approach, as well as the learning of a professional discipline.

Increased trade, commerce and business transactions at the international level are placing a substantial demand upon working professionals and college students who must learn English, the lingua franca of international business, in order to thrive in a competitive global workplace. Learning English as a second language (L2) can be a daunting task for many reasons. For instance, how does a student or teacher really know which words or phrases are the most practical to focus upon when learning or teaching? With expanding technology and tech tools (e.g., computer software, apps, etc.) widely available, more modern approaches to learning authentic discourse can increasingly be developed. Lexical chunks, or bundles, i.e., the building blocks of oral discourse, may be analyzed via corpus concordance software and serve as a useful pedagogical tool for teachers and a practical learning tool for students in the L2 classroom. Anyone today can access online corpora, making it an easy resource for L2 teachers and learners to utilize. Teachers may draw content that is suitable for the unique needs of their class, and students can form novel and autonomous linguistic conclusions instead of being spoon fed fixed textbook content. Geared towards L2 educators, this paper more specifically illustrates how corpus-based tools can be utilized to augment second language learning, helping L2 college students achieve communicative competence in their academic and professional lives.

This paper reports a systematic literature review that was conducted to explore the areas of research pertaining to English language workplace communication needs in order to design courses in English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) that can better meet the demands of the industry. Articles from Scopus, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight were extracted following the five-step method of conducting a systematic literature review. In total, 133 articles were analysed. From the analysis, it was found that most studies focused on examining the needs of the learners, or the needs of the industry; very few studies triangulated the findings between different stakeholders to obtain a better picture of the needs, wants, and gaps between the target situation and the present situation. Additionally, most studies focused on language tasks required and did not pay due emphasis on the competencies required to perform the tasks well. Thus, the outcome of this review is a proposed theoretical model to develop professional communication competence among new graduates that is intended to be used in a future study to address the gaps found in this review. Practically, the review also sheds light on gaps that exist in current research that can be addressed in future research, especially for higher education institutions (HEIs) that are working to design and develop courses in EOP to improve English language communication skills for employability.