TEACHING FUTURE PR-SPECIALISTS INTERCULTURAL AND BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS USING ENGLISH BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS

Abstract

The present paper concerns the issue of teaching future PR-specialists “Intercultural and business communications” in a foreign language. The problem consists in a cardinal differ-ence between the two fields of business communication: written and oral communication. The former follows strict, sometimes archaic rules, the latter meets the modern norms of oral communication. As the practice of PR suggests establishing both formal and informal business relations, a PR specialist must recognize the nature of a communicative situation and correctly use either official or unofficial style of business communication. A wrong choice can threaten the success of a PR-campaign or event. As practice shows, the main difficulties arise when studying and correctly using the norms of written business communication. The author suggests focusing on the two main aspects of the written business communication: business correspondence and business documents as the stage of written business communication, as a rule, precedes oral business communication. An in-depth view on business correspondence helps the students to understand the realia of the English-language business writing, the style of business communication and English culture in general. It is especially important for the future PR-specialists who use business style in their everyday practice. The author suggests using the method of “three Ps”(PPP - presentation, practice, production) which includes the presentation of the new material, training and creative use of the new knowledge and skills in written practice.

Keywords

• business correspondence
• business communication
• written communication
• intercultural communication
• business letter