Challenges in Teaching Business English – Understanding Media Messages

Business English Teaching is primarily focused on understanding students' needs and, consequently, on creating a curriculum targeted at enabling them to communicate successfully, both in writing and orally, in business contexts and not only. It has long been argued that the main purpose of business English teaching is fluency acquisition rather than language accuracy. Sooner or later, depending on a number of factors, Business English learners generally succeed in acquiring both linguistic and intercultural communication skills. However, one of the greatest challenges for Business English learners occurs when they are actually immersed in a genuine English communication context. One of the most eloquent examples of such a context is the media, particularly headlines in English which very often prove quite difficult to understand due to their extensive use of jargon, wordplay, word omission. Undoubtedly, proficiency may be assumed to have been acquired once learners are able to grasp the meaning of headlines in English newspapers. This paper will discuss the major challenges that learners of Business English have to deal with in general and, based on our practical experience with second-year Economics and Business students, will further debate on how media headlines could become more accessible both to them and to the general public.