An Exploration of the Treatment of Teamwork in Business English Textbooks

This study investigates the treatment of teamwork in advanced business English textbooks. More precisely, it addresses the extent to which teamwork is treated in advanced business English textbooks and discusses the language presented as typical of / useful when working as part of a team. In order to answer the research questions previously formulated, three business English textbooks were chosen. Then, analysis grids were built based on the literature review of this MA thesis. Last, the three selected textbooks were scrutinized. The analysis shows that the treatment of teamwork takes less than 15% of each textbook’s content. Out of the three textbooks, Business Result deals with teamwork and teams to the largest extent across various types of exercises. Aspects of teamwork that were too specific were not mentioned in any of the textbooks. However, negatively connotated aspects such as handling conflict, problem-solving and disagreement were brought up in all of them. The language presented as typical of / useful when working as part of a team was usually presented in the form of expressions or useful grammatical points. Moreover, useful language related to handling conflict and problem-solving were highlighted in all textbooks. It was concluded that advanced business English textbooks do deal with teamwork but only focus on widely known aspects of it. They also do not dedicate a large amount of space to teamwork or teams in general. However, a few limitations to the study need to be addressed. The data chosen (Business Result, Business Advantage and Keynote) is made of business English textbooks of the advanced English level. Therefore, the results are not representative of textbooks of all English levels. Moreover, there are more textbooks than the three selected ones and those might address teamwork in vastly different ways. Therefore, further research could for example analyze the same textbooks but of different levels or focus on entirely different business English textbooks of the advanced level.