Topic: Global Communicative Competence: from EFL to BELF via ELF
Speaker: Prof. Franca Poppi,
Host: Porf. Zhang Jiarui, Faculty of International Studies
Time: Dec.11th, 2023 (Monday) 16:00-17:30
Platform and meeting ID: Tencent meeting, 606-652-190
Speaker：
Franca Poppi is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Modena and Modena and Reggio Emilia, where she is also the Director of the University Language Centre. After studying the interactional features of discourse, with particular reference to academic settings (economics and marketing textbooks) and the language of the law, she moved her research interests towards intercultural communication. In particular, she has been focusing on English as an international lingua franca, as it is used in written corporate communication and corporate web-sites as a common means of communication to address multiple and multicultural audiences. Paying attention to companies' need to balance local cultural identity and global appeal, she has investigated Business English in the aviation industry, exploring the proactivity of different airlines' (Delta, JAL and Etihad) in the preservation of the environment, as documented in their CSR reports.
Moreover, the interest towards Business English has led to a new line of research, which tries to establish whether airlines' environmental policies are actually informed by criteria of transparency rather than a mere embellishment of the company's activities.
She is on the Advisory Board of the Profile Journal, Issues in Teachers' Professional Development and is also a member of the review team of other international Journals, such as, for instance, the Asian ESP Journal and the Journal of Linguistics and Literature Studies.
Content：
Globalization has drastically transformed the organization of human affairs, by expanding people's activities across regions and continents, The intensification of worldwide relations has inevitably highlighted the need to find a common language to be used for contacts with business partners living in widely different and distant places.
In present times, English has become the preferred contact language employed for communication purposes all around the world. Therefore, given the present situation, in ELT (English Language Teaching) it is not possible to fall back on the traditions of British or US orientation, as English, by being adopted by international speakers, is inevitably also adapted by them. In order to provide a characterization of “successful global communication”, the present lecture will focus on the different layers of competence that students have to master, in order to become efficient professionals.
