The Future of Education

Globalization and computer-mediated technologies bridged the gap between nations and altered the nature and the role of culture in language teaching.  They also denationalized English and turned it into a lingua franca.  This phenomenon resulted in adjustments in EFL classrooms such as the change in teaching goals and the re-evaluation of cultural awareness especially with the rising tone of hate speech today. Business English teaching is not an exception to all these changes.  In fact, it is no longer considered as a mere transmission of infinite lists of vocabulary, diagrams, tables, and figures.  In their future career business students will need business jargon as well as intercultural communicative competence (ICC) to cope with multicultural situations and be part of the global citizenry.  Based on field research, this paper will be more about practice than theory.  After enumerating the factors behind the necessity of including ICC in business English teaching, I will report back my pedagogical experiment on a class of Tunisian MA business students.  It was a qualitative action research intended to explore whether multicultural literature, specifically short stories, together with inquiry-based learning (IBL) can enhance their ICC.  Data were collected through class observations, journals and semi-structured interviews.  Findings showed that using multicultural literature may improve business students’ ICC, the short story may be a motivating material for them to read, and inquiry-based learning being enjoyable and autonomous can be an effective approach to teaching literature.