Business English Writing Assessing From The Perspective Of Business Knowledge

Due to the development of globalization, Business English as the dominant lingua franca in international business world has attracted increasing interest and awareness for more than 30 years. In the field of research, scholars at home and abroad talk about it with everlasting enthusiasm and made considerable theoretical and practical contributions. Some discussed and improved its teaching materials and curriculum design; others probed into its ability construct and evaluation. According to specific purpose language ability, language knowledge, strategic competence and background knowledge are three basic components in its construct. However in Business English field, though most researchers agree with the importance of business knowledge, they did not demonstrate it nor apply it in teaching and assessing practice. How does business knowledge express itself in Business English teaching and assessing? To what extent does it affect the results of teaching and assessing? These questions have not been answered yet.Writing is not only a vital output of Business English language ability, but an effective means of business communication. The study of language expressions of business knowledge in Business English writing and its influence on the quality of writing are of great value. Combining the theoretical basis of specific purpose language ability and Business English writing practice, this thesis aims to study the connection between business knowledge and the quality of Business English writing. Based on the theory that terminology is the language expression of specialized knowledge, the author chooses business terminology as the breakthrough point to carry out this research. Two research questions are derived from the research goal:1. In Business English writing, how does business knowledge express itself in the form of business terms?2. To what extent do business terms correlate to the writing scores of Business English?During the research procedure, integrated writing tasks from the second part of writing test in BEC Higher examination are used as writing assignments in this study. After data from holistic scoring and term labeling are collected, analyses are carried out by Minifac 3.7 and SPSS 22. Based on the outcomes of statistical analyses, the author answers the first two questions. Through analyzing writing samples which do not conform to the general distribution, the author finds other types of reflections of business knowledge and their ways to affect writing scores. Having come this far, the author clearly demonstrates the connection between business knowledge and the quality of Business English writing, and achieves the ultimate goal.Three major findings come out from this research: firstly, generally speaking, candidates intend to describe specialized concepts with business terms, but central tendencies occur in human resources category and marketing category. Secondly, both overall distribution of business terms and the distribution of terms in human resources category correlate to the writing scores of Business English at a highly significant level. But the correlation coefficient for scores and term using in marketing category fails to reach statistical significance for the interference of topic selection. Thirdly, connection between business knowledge and the quality of Business English writing is not limited to business terms. Writing in line with business communication principles like specific and authentic contents can improve the quality of Business English writing, while misunderstanding of business genre will lead to negative effect on Business English writing.