Informelle Sprachmittlung in der Geschäftskommunikation: Von Forschungsergebnissen zur Entwicklung eines Unterrichtsmoduls

During recent years, several language needs analyses concerning business communication in Finland have been conducted. The studies show that plurilingual situations, where two or more languages are used in one and the same situation, are very common, that the bilingual situation (Finnish, Swedish) in the Finnish region Pohjanmaa/Österbotten has influence on plurilingual situations and that informal mediation plays an important role in business communication. Against this background, this paper illustrates the path from research results concerning plurilingual activities in business communication to the development of a teaching module on informal mediation in business communication. The module has been developed within the project Kielivarannon vahvistaminen korkeakouluissa (KiVAKO). The B2-module in German Deutsch in mehrsprachigen Arbeitskontexten, which is available on the learning platform DigiCampus, consists of four situations in which informal mediation is trained: email, telephone, meeting and (company)presentation. In this paper, the development of the teaching module is illustrated by the situation meeting.