Developing effective oral business English (OBE) curricula requires clearly understanding student needs. This study evaluated the speaking needs of Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduates majoring in business English for specific purposes (ESP), aiming to inform the design of a teaching module that bridges the gap between…

Business professionals and instructors often view writing skills as one of the most important qualifications that employees should possess. However, many business employees, including recent college graduates, have serious writing deficiencies, especially in their ability to use standard English. As a result, American businesses spend billions of…

Deals with the provisional grammar known as Learner's Language that foreign language learners develop in the learning process. Data derived from observing Learner's Language have two major implications for foreign language teaching: the reordering of learning sequences, and the need for providing a full communicative context throughout the…

Argues that a major cause of the inconsistent use of the past tense even by very advanced learners of English as a second language is an inadequate understanding of its actual meaning and discourse function. Suggestions are offered for teaching and practicing this tense in context. (SED)

The interlanguage hypothesis stresses that errors are a normal part of the language learning process. At the same time, in the view of many, the teacher has a responsibility to provide short cuts for the learner through appropriate corrective feedback. Conventionally, this has been taken to imply correction of expression by requiring repetition of…