Danish Business Language - a case story

Ole Lauridsen
The Aarhus School of Business
Fuglesangs Allé 4, DK 8210 Aarhus V

Tel: +45 8948 6279
E-Mail: ola@lng.hha.dk

It is my pleasure to introduce a brand new programme Dansk Forretningssprog (Danish Business Language), which will be marketed this spring - probably in April. So far we have the beta version ready, and I'm going to demonstrate it for you later despite certain errors that we have not corrected so far.

The programme is one of four, developed by a working group with French, German, Spanish, and of course Danish members, and being a Lingua Project it is financially supported by the EU.
Co-ordination of the project has been taken on by Institut für Interkulturelle Kommunikation - Bayern, Berlin, Thüringen und Orenburg (the Institute for Intercultural Communication - Bavaria, Thuringia, Berlin and Orenburg), a private company, which sells language courses and carries out research within the field of Multimedia Teaching and Learning.
The title of the project is: Entwicklung und Erprobung multimedialer Fremdsprachenprogramme Wirtschaftsdänisch, Wirtschaftsdeutsch, Wirtschaftsfranzösisch und Wirtschaftsspanisch für den Selbstlern- und Fernunterricht - that is: Development and Testing of Multimedia Foreign Language Training Programmes - Danish, German, French, and Spanish Business Language for Self-access and Distant Learning.

The German version came out a couple of years ago as a sort of tester, and it was soon awarded with a second prize at the LEARNTEC fair 1995 in Karlsruhe. In 1997 the French version came out followed by the Spanish one, and as I have already mentioned the Danish CD is going to be published within a month or so.
Each team has developed their own programme au'tonomously, which means that the concepts of the four programmes are very different. But on the other hand we have had a common objective, that is to enable employees in Danish, German, French, and Spanish companies to establishing business contacts in one of the other countries. In all cases the target group are learners with some proficiency in the foreign language - we pay no attention to beginners. As to this group there are a number of good programmes on the market already.
Of course our German, French, and Spanish colleagues have wanted to train the users' oral and written proficiency, whereas we as members speaking one of less widely used and less widely taught languages in Europe - we have first of all aimed at the understanding of spoken business Danish - but I'll come back to that later on.

As this transparency (1) shows there are 4 main topics in our programme

• Job Interview
• Office Communication
• Company Presentation
• Product Presentation

The help function has nothing to do with running the programme as such - for that purpose we have the question mark function -, it is rather a lexicon and dictionary function.
As you see (2) there are encyclopaedic chapters in Danish, French, German, and Spanish on greetings, on the use of pronoun when addressing people, and connected with that problem, on the use of first name or family name. Further there is information on the complicated relations between orthography and pronunciation (3 - contraction of verbs) and there is a short grammar (4 - gender of the nouns). In the chapter on pronunciation you hear how to pronounce a number of particularly difficult word forms by clicking on them.
If you click on one of the letters you first of all get a word list with translations of the Danish words into the other three languages (5 - department), but you also get explanations of central grammatical terms (6 - adverbial complement).
You can click for help all over the programme - thus, ideally you should never get stuck running the programme.

The four main topics mentioned are presented multimedially and interactively with video clips, tape recordings (authentic and not authentic mono- and dialogues), photos and graphics.
The basis of the text reception and the further work in the sections Job Interview, Office Communication, and Company Presentation are authentic video- and tape recordings that exemplify typical situations and typical communication in business life and on the labour market.

Before choosing a section you select one of the four languages, Danish, French, German, or Spanish as the working language (7) and after that you can get information on the contents of the four sections (8).
In the Job Interview - recorded at the Aarhus School of Business, my institution - we have divided the whole recording into three parts after each of which we ask certain questions relating to the contents, but first of all you get a very brief introduction (9+10).
Then the video starts (11), and as you see, you can make pauses, you can rewind go fast forward and so on.
After each part of the video questions you can watch the video all over again, read the text or watch the video and listen to the text (12). And then follows a multiple choice exercise on the contents of the section (13), in which the programme gives you immediate response (14) - by clicking the audio button you also have the opportunity to listen to the text excerpt that contains the basis for the answer.

The language exercises of the Job Interview deal with the adverb jo which is typical of the spoken language and has several pragmatic functions. The functions are presented on a special screen (15), then the exercise begins (16).
You see a Danish sentence without the adverb jo and the same one with the adverb jo - the latter is also read in the background -, then you get an exercise sentence without the word and you are asked to insert it; you write your solution and get feed back.
Of course I said that we aim at the understanding of spoken Danish, but we believe that the understanding is well supported by writing - that's why we also use this type of exercise.
After the section on the adverb there are exercises on direct and indirect questions and on intonation in questions - fields that are often complicated for foreigners learning Danish.

In the Office Communication (17) we concentrate on telephone conversation. After af short introduction (18) we go through 11 situations in which you hear phrases typical of the situation in question (19).
Having studied these situations and phrases (all of which are spoken as well as written) (20) you participate in a telephone conversation using the recording facilities of Windows95 (21 - PS asks the sales manager to call back; 22 dial; 23 recordings start).
Having recorded your answers you can listen to the whole conversation and/or to a prototype (24).

In the final exercise you train taking notes. Having listened to a conversation you write a telephone message by filling in a form (25 + 26 + 27)
In the Company Presentation Mr. Leif Kjærgaard CEO (chief executive officer) and Mr. Frederik Gejl-Hansen deputy to the COE of Danisco Ingeredients A/S, a division and sector of the internationally well known Dansico A/S (akvavit, sugar), present their company, and so does Mr. Kaj Schmidt, CEO of the port of Aarhus, one of the largest Danish ports and the largest enterprise in Aarhus as a whole.

The three presentations are structured as the Job Interview - the whole videos are divided into shorter sections to each of which we ask a number questions as to the contents.
Each part of Mr. Kjærgaard's and Mr. Gejl-Hansen's video contributions is followed by questions dealing with special grammatical or phonetical problems: relative pronouns/adverbs, cardinal and ordinal numbers (a terribly difficult field), the use of articles, verbs, modal verbs and some pronunciation.
Let's look into the exercise on the numbers (28 + 29). And let's have a look at the exercise on pronunciation of the Danish word at that often is pronounced like the Danish word for and, og (30).

In the section Product Presentation top managers from Danisco Ingredients talk about the so-called e-numbers (the EU-classification of additives and about emulgators - the presentation is the by now well known: small sections followed by questions on the contents.
Once again we concentrate on specific Danish problems in the language exercises, in this case emphasis by pronominal repetition, the type the man, he…/in Dublin, there…, which is very frequent in the Danish colloquial speech,and finally we delve into cleft sentences and the passive voice.
In all the exercises we mix listening/speaking/writing and thus get the most out the PC facilities.

As you may have remarked we have not chosen a progressive line in our exercises - we have not concentrated on gradual learning of for instance the nouns, the verbs, the affirmative clause and so on and so forth.
First of all, this has to do with the target group - relatively advanced learners. And secondly it has to do with the fact that we have used authentic video material - of course we could not ask the participants to write their contributions according to certain linguistic demands, we had to deal with "natural language" in the most original sense of the word. But: we succeeded in finding enough material - which is highly relevant to serve our purposes. This is - at least - what we think ourselves.

So much for my presentation. I don't know if you would have any questions or comments to what I've said. Anyway we can discuss details when I demonstrate the programme afterwards.

Institut für Interkulturelle Kommunikation e. V.
Herzbergstraße 87-99
10365 Berlin

Phone: +49 30 5539 7070
Fax: +49 30 5539 7071
e-mail: info@iik.de