Eclecticism as a Key Factor in Successful Business English Instruction

The paper presents the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study in the specific context of postgraduate Business English education, which, despite the high demand for Business English courses and their profitable position in the educational services sector, still tends to be an underdeveloped research area, especially in a non-Anglophone context where Business English is most often taught. The paper's primary objective was to identify the key factors contributing to successful Business English postgraduate instruction and to discuss which aspects of Business English teaching were crucial in the eyes of students and problematic in the view of their teachers. The brief literature review, which is presented in the first section of the paper, concerns the position of Business English as a part of the profitable and challenging area of English for Specific Purposes, the specificity of Business English teaching, and its methodology. The main research methods applied in the longitudinal qualitative case study approach were a semi-structured interview and a student satisfaction survey (used mainly to validate the results of the interviews). The results revealed the most crucial factors with reference to a successful instruction of Business English in postgraduate education, its most important aspect being eclecticism, which is elaborated on in detail in the paper.