Good to talk — but difficult!

In recent years, there have been two strong themes within the world of business English (that is, the English people need to do their jobs).

The first theme is a move away from thinking of native speakers as the font of all wisdom. Although learners are still typically taught a native-speaker model of English — and many of them aspire to talk "like native speakers" — there has been a backlash against native-speaker dominance.

Non-native speakers often say that they find native speakers difficult to understand, for example, because they speak too quickly and unclearly, and use too much idiomatic language. These findings were confirmed in a recent Business Spotlight survey of participants in international conference calls.

The second trend within business English has been towards English for Specific Purposes (ESP), although some people regard this as a separate field. The key point here is that many learners want to concentrate on English for their particular job (medicine, law, technical fields, etc.), rather than general business English.

So what happens if you put these themes together? Right — you get native speakers who can't communicate well when talking about their own job.

That was the summary of a recent report in the Financial Times about British barristers, those lawyers who represent their clients in court.

A report in 2008 found that trainee barristers — both native and non-native speakers — had communications deficiencies in English, including an "inability to speak fluently with close attention to grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and an inability to write clear, correct and well-structured English prose". Ouch!

As the Financial Times reported, pilot tests will be started this month for trainee barristers to prove that they have the "linguistic ability to be good courtroom advocates".

I won't make any cheap jokes about the fact that many people think lawyers deliberately speak and write so unclearly so that no one can understand them. I promise I won't...