Aims:
• to develop core skills in speaking and writing for professional business communication

Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of this course of study students should be able to:

• know professional concepts, terms and clichés;
• employ negotiation skills in a foreign language to solve professional tasks in education;
• use dictionaries and reference books to draft and translate documents in a foreign language;
• differentiate between different types of business writing and identify their functional and stylistic characteristics.

CONTENT

Cultural differences of business communication. Small talk at the first meeting. Acceptable topics and conversation stoppers. Business communication style.

Business writing. A simple business letter and its parts. Standard expressions for business letters. Sending and receiving a fax. A business letter layout. A letterhead and a stamp. The recipient and source address, the subject of the letter, the content of the letter, closing the letter. Signature, enclosure, mailout notice.

Types of business letters. Request, offer, order confirmation, job application, financial correspondence, purchase and sales contract, cooperation and partnership, bills and payments, claims, advertising messages.

Financial correspondence. Bills and payments. Parts of bills: type of merchandise, gross price and nett price, value-added tax, payment terms, claims, packaging, address, reservation of property rights, performance venue, place of arbitration.

Looking for a job. Advice how to find a good job, job interviews, organizations, career ladder, salary and wages.

Telephone conversations. Specific features of telephone conversations. Standard clichés used in different telephone communication situations. Telephone communication styles.

Business communication at work and in free time. Rules of communicating with employees at workplace. Politeness. Communication with employees outside workplace.

Business meetings. Specific features of business meetings communication. Standard clichés used by the Chairman and participants of the meeting. Behaviour rules.

Negotiations. Cultural negotiation differences. Verbal communication and nonverbal communication.

Business internet correspondence Linguistic aspects of writing business letters in the Internet. Official and neutral communication styles in the Internet. Business correspondence between suppliers and customers.

Economics, money, market. Profit and losses, trading, corruption, innovations in economics, starting a business, business leaders.