Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Language training
There is a growing perception that English has become the international 
language. According to Eurostat (2009), English was studied as a foreign lan-
guage by 94.6 per cent of EU secondary school pupils in 2009. In addition, 
there has been a large increase in the number of people studying English at 
different levels in Eastern Europe and, significantly, in China. In total, it is 
estimated that there are over 1.5 billion speakers of English as either their 
first or second language.
However, in recent years, there has been a reduction in foreign- language 
teaching in the UK, both in schools and universities, particularly in the case 
of German. In addition, a number of universities have stopped including 
the one-year overseas component as an integral part of a language degree. 
Nevertheless, there has been an increasing trend to include a foreign lan-
guage as part of many business degrees.
If a high degree of fluency is required, a formal structured course should 
begin well before the departure date and the commencement of the foreign 
appointment. As such language training is expensive and time- consuming, it 
is essential to carry out a thorough needs analysis to identify the individual’s 
requirements and expectations. If time is, of necessity, limited, the emphasis 
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Teaching Cross- Cultural Communication 277
should initially be on teaching survival elements and building confidence 
to encourage further learning on arrival overseas. This initial approach is 
sometimes called ‘guerilla linguistics’, which involves learning some useful 
everyday phrases in the local language. Tuition should, whenever possible, 
be carried out by native speakers and, ideally, both the expatriate working