This group is for anyone who has an interest in English as a business lingua franca (BELF) and its implications on language teaching and learning. It was set up by four business English teachers from very different contexts – Evan Frendo (Berlin, Germany), Hellen Haga (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Katrin Lichterfeld (Dortmund, Germany) & Virginia López Grisolía (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and later it was joined by Lucas Peltonen (Hong Kong). We all shared a concern that a lot of the discussion about BELF (e.g. articles, presentations, events) is difficult or even impossible to access. The aim is therefore twofold: to share links and resources about BELF, and to encourage a conversation about what BELF research means for language teaching and learning in a business context.
At the moment there are three places to join in the conversation – the first is by joining us in our online zoom meetings, where we might invite someone from the BELF community to do a short presentation, followed by Q&A, or where we simply get together to discuss a particular article, event, or issue to do with BELF. The second is via social media (our Facebook group, “Conversations about BELF” and Instagram, and the third is via this blog, currently hosted by Katrin Lichterfeld, which we hope will attract comments and discussion about various BELF issues.
Join our next online meeting.
On 17 February 2024, Dr. Tone Holt Nielsen highlighted how to apply research on BELF use in meetings to teaching and assessment practices. Her talk was based…
After a lively discussion of “Towards a Richer Understanding of Language and Identity in the MNC: Constructing Cosmopolitan Identities Through ‘English’”,
In his presentation on 28/01/2023, Lucas Peltonen put forward some questions:
• How can we improve the linguacultural competency of Business English
speakers?
On 26 November 2022, our continuously growing BELF community was happy to learn about a joint virtual project of two business schools using digital tools for…
The October conversation was extremely fruitful with participants from Asia, Europe and Latin America. We decided to have a quick introduction to BELF basics…
Fifteen business trainers from all over the world, this time also from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, met to have a conversation about BELF…
Ten of us met on Saturday 13 August 2022 to have a conversation about BELF-oriented materials. As always, the group consisted of a mixture of …
On Saturday 9 July 2022, we had our second session of “Conversations about BELF”. Our discussion about Miya Komori-Glatz’s paper had the following highlights…
We were extremely pleased that Dr. Anne Kankaanranta took us on an exciting journey in our first session of “Conversations about BELF” on 4 June 2022. …
4 Responses
This is a great initiative! Looking forward to your event!
Very excited in being part of this prestigious group. Thanks.
Very interesting! How relatable is this to lingua skill exam?
Hi Fatima – great question. I assume you are talking about the Cambridge Linguaskill online test? If so, I think BELF can be challenging for any standardised testing system. By its very nature BELF is context-specific and flexible, so what works in one context might not be appropriate in another. The multilingual nature of many BELF interactions is another factor. In addition, communication strategies like accommodation and using redundant language might be of primary importance. I am not sure how well Linguaskill (or any standardised testing system) can test these sorts of issues.