1 Introduction

With the rapid rise of China’s economy and ever-increasing trade between China and the rest of the world, Chinese language and culture have gradually gained popularity in post-secondary institutions and large multinational firms for non-native Chinese speakers. As a result, business Chinese (BC) which started since the 1980s has continued to develop, not only in mainland China, but also in countries and regions such as the USA and Taiwan. In recent years, an increasing number of colleges and universities around the world have started to offer BC courses and have even developed a standardized exam, the Business Chinese Test (BCT).

A review study is necessary for three reasons. First, a substantial amount of research has been conducted over the past decades, especially in the last 20 years; however, a comprehensive review of that research is still lacking. Second, business Chinese teachers and educators would benefit greatly from knowing which practices work and which do not. This way they would be able to apply the proven methods and approaches to their own courses. Third, understanding past research results and trends can shed light on the evolution of business Chinese, which may point out a direction for future research.

Thus, a carefully conducted literature review can help us build a comprehensive map of past and present work in the field. Ideally, this map would reveal what we know, what we have done, what works, and what does not. The study contained in this paper offers such a review.

2 Method

Most of the previous business Chinese review studies focused on academic papers published in only one country or region, for example, Mainland China (Cao 2016), or the USA (Li et al. 2013). Our review attempts to look beyond borders to construct a fuller picture of BC research. We chose to gather studies published in regions that are most active in BC research: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the USA. Through preliminary web searches, we realized that there is no single database that collects publications across all three regions. Thus, we decided to use three separate databases to gather BC research published in each region. Specifically, we used the China Academic Journals full-text database (also known as CNKI, 中国知网) for research in Mainland China, Airiti Library (華藝線上圖書) for that in Taiwan, and Jstor for that in the USA. Google Scholar was also used to cross-search BC papers published in these three regions.

2.1 Search Criteria

A number of criteria were considered prior to each search.

Keywords. For the Chinese database and Google Scholar, keywords in Chinese (both in simplified and traditional version) were used, such as 商务中文, 商业中文, 商务汉语, 商务华语, 商务汉语教学, 商务汉语研究. For the English database, keywords used included business Chinese, business Chinese instruction, business Chinese teaching, Chinese for business purposes, and Chinese for business professionals.

Language. Articles collected in our study are written in either Chinese or English.

Publication type. Only articles published in academic journals were considered for this study. Book reviews, dissertations, and conference proceedings were excluded.

Publication year. The review in this paper is based on research published in academic journals between 1997 and 2017. Two reasons inform the decision to limit the review to this period. First, formal business Chinese education began in 1996 (Cao 2016); therefore ‘97 is the first full observable year. Second, published research on business Chinese was understandably scarce before 1997. However, reviewing 20 full years of research publications should give us sufficient insights into the overall development of business Chinese research.

Representative journals. A substantial number of journals publish papers on BC teaching and research. Because journals vary greatly in terms of their review process and selection criteria, we decided to use widely recognized standards as a filter to ensure that quality is consistent. For journals from Mainland China, we used Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) as the selection criteria. Non-CSSCI journals were excluded from this study. For Taiwan journals, we used Taiwan Humanities Citation Index (THCI) as the selection criteria. Non-THCI journals were excluded from this study. Because there are only a handful of US journals publishing papers on BC teaching and research and there is no equivalent index to CCSCI and THCI, we decided to include them all into our study.

2.2 Distribution of Journals and Articles

We found a total of 50 articles that met the above criteria for inclusion in the later analyses. The 50 articles were published in 16 journals (Table 6.1).

Table 6.1 Journals that have published BC research
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Figure 6.1 shows the distribution of journals by region. As we can see, there are more journals publishing BC research in Mainland China than in Taiwan and the US combined. Mainland journals, as Fig. 6.2 show, also published more BC research than those from the other regions.

Fig. 6.1
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Distribution of journals by region

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Fig. 6.2
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Distribution of articles by region

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Figure 6.3 illustrates the distribution of articles by journal. As we can see, half of the journals have published one or two articles. About 1/4 journals have published three or four articles. Only four journals have published more than four articles.

Fig. 6.3
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Distribution of articles by journal

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In terms of language used, most of the articles were written in Chinese (82%) while the remaining articles were written in English (18%).

3 Results

This section is divided into two parts. Part one presents an overview of the journal publications on business Chinese from 1997 to 2017. Part two summarizes what key topics have been addressed by researchers and their findings.

3.1 Overview of the Literature

A review of the past 20 years of business Chinese research reveals a number of findings that can inform us on BC’s overall development.

First, the total number of BC research projects is very limited. On average, only two or three papers were published each year. There were five years during which no BC research was published at all, and there were seven years during which only one or two articles were published. This finding is consistent with the findings of a previous review study (Cao 2016).

Second, the number of journals that published business Chinese research is also limited (Table 6.1). In the USA, there are only four journals that have published BC research, two of which only published one article. In Taiwan, there are two journals that have published BC research. In Mainland China, there are ten CSSCI journals that have published BC research, and four of these published only one article.

Third, most of the BC research (>92%) was published after 2003, with a substantial peak occurring in 2011 and 2012 (Fig. 6.4). It appears that BC research has become a more popular research topic only in the past ten years although BC course offering started in 1988 (Zhang 2006). It should be noted that BC research has not shown a steady growth in recent years, which is evident by the low number of journal publications in 2015 and 2017.

Fig. 6.4
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BC articles published by year

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3.2 Key Research Topics

The following paragraphs describe and discuss the research that has been published from 1997 to 2017. Drawing on Lu’s framework (1992), the research topics are categorized into four groups: Curriculum Design, Textbook and Materials Development, Instruction, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Evaluation.

3.2.1 Curriculum Design

A clearly defined planning stage should be a precursor to any curriculum and/or course. At this stage, the instructors need to make decisions as to what and how students ought to be taught while taking into consideration the available resources. This is a fundamental component of BC research and teaching because many important issues arise.

The research of BC curriculum design consists of two major topics: need analysis and instructional goals. The needs of learners determine what the instructional goals ought to be, which subsequently affects what is to be taught and how.

Need Analysis. Need analysis refers to the “systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to satisfy the language learning requirements of the students within the context of the particular institution involved in the learning situation” (Brown 1995). Need analyses have been considered as the “pre-condition and foundation” for language teaching for special purposes (Zhang 2006). There are five articles specifically addressing the needs of BC learners.

In Zhang (2006), the author suggests two aspects of need analyses based on a survey of 22 graduates majoring in economics and trade: target situation analysis (TSA) and learner intention analysis (LIA). TSA aims to understand what learners need by analyzing their working and social communicative acts in target situations. TSA consists of work-related communication situations such as attending meetings and conferences, and life-related communication situations such as shopping or speaking to an in-house nanny. To meet the needs of target situations, Zhang proposed a tri-dimensional communication competence set of skills that business Chinese learners should develop—skills to communicate in Chinese, subject knowledge in business, and cross-cultural awareness and competence. LIA considers learners’ educational backgrounds, goals, as well as the amount of time and money they are able to invest. Zhang categorized the respondents using various criteria, such as degree pursuers versus non-degree pursuers, full-time versus part-time learners, in-house versus in-class learners. Zhang made several interesting observations. For example, he noted that the elementary level BC learners had not been given enough attention and that speaking was the skill most in need of improvement. Zhang (2006) deserves our recognition because of his endeavor to raise BC instructors’ understanding of learners’ needs. This type of awareness can facilitate course planning and instruction.

Akin to Zhang (2006), Xin (2009) and Zhang (2012) exemplify how to collect and analyze students’ needs through surveys. Xin (2009) sought to develop a course (called Biz Chinese) specifically for 18 MBA students enrolled at Kaist Business School. The survey consisted of a series of questionnaires and interviews, covering learners’ learning styles, preferred topics, motivation, goals, and future plans. It should be pointed out that Xin (2009) emphasized understanding what factors could predict learners’ motivation strength and potential success in taking business classes. The findings extended the scope of need analyses from teachers’ perspectives, as proposed by Zhang (2006), to learners’ perspectives.

In 2011, two articles on BC need analysis were published. They not only aimed to better explain BC students’ needs but also attempted to find the gap between learner needs and existing BC textbooks. For clarity reasons, we will focus on the need analysis portions for now and save the textbook discussion for the following section.

Wang (2011) is the first article that looked at Chinese use in business and at the workplace. To get a holistic picture of BC use, the author distinctively used “triangulation” approaches to collect data, for example, methodological triangulation (survey questionnaire, video recording, face-to-face interviews, and telephone interviews); interdisciplinary triangulation (respondents from diversified disciplines); and location triangulation (using three cities in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Honolulu, Hawaii). A total of 20 employees from diverse industries and over 50 students enrolled in a MBA program participated in the study. The employees were interviewed, and the MBA students answered questionnaires. By comparing the results from interviews and questionnaires, the author found out that MBA students seemed to be much more concerned about their general social and personal language skills than the currently employed staff did. This suggests that participants’ current employment conditions might affect how they perceive the need for business Chinese study.

Unlike Wang (2011) targeting BC learners’ work experiences, Li (2011) gave attention to “pre-experience learners”. Li surveyed 77 Chinese learners whose proficiency ranged from intermediate to advanced (indicated by their scores on TOP 4, equivalent to HSK 7). The participants responded by choosing from the given options on questions such as what motivated them to learn BC, what content should be included in BC classes, and what differentiated BC classes from regular Chinese classes. By analyzing their answers, Li found the gap between the published BC textbooks and students’ needs and generated specific suggestions for future BC textbooks (which will be further discussed in the later section).

It should be noted that both studies found that job-interview-related skills were deemed important by participants, but this topic seems to have been neglected in most BC textbooks.

Comparatively speaking, Li’s study produced more specific topics that could be translated into book chapters, whereas Wang’s study allowed us to gain a fuller picture of what could potentially be incorporated into BC instruction.

Also based on surveys, research conducted by L. Zhang (2012) presented by far the largest need analyses of business Chinese use. A total of 232 participants from 26 countries and regions responded to the survey designed by the author. All participants were employed, non-native speakers of Chinese, and had taken Chinese classes. Unlike Xin (2009), Zhang aimed at gaining a clearer picture of how Chinese was used in business settings across industry, profession, position, situation, etc. The findings might not apply to any specific course or learner group, but there were many insightful results that could be of great help to BC instructors. For example, respondents rated colleagues, rather than customers as the most communicated target, but the current BC textbooks placed an excessive emphasis on customer-related topics and content. Another finding concerns what language skills were most used at work. It turned out that listening and speaking were considered much more important than reading and writing, but this need clearly was not met by most textbooks which demand more reading than speaking or listening. As a conclusion, Zhang proposed that business Chinese instruction should be “individualized” and “precisely segmented”, instead of being comprehensive and universal.

Instructional goals & BC course definition. What is business Chinese? How is it different from Chinese courses for the general purpose? Questions like these are important because the answers solidify BC’s “legitimate status” (Chen 1998) in academia. Many researchers discussed the necessity of BC courses in the context of China’s fast-growing economy and increasingly important role as a trade partner with the rest of the world (Chen 1998; Wang 2011; Zhu 2003; Yuan 2004). While it is true that the economic reason provides an indispensable impetus for BC courses, researchers have looked for other inherent features to set BC apart from regular Chinese courses.

For example, some scholars (Zhou and Gan 2008; Zhu 2003) attributed BC’s uniqueness to the specialized terminology which is more often than not most applicable in business settings. Some (Yuan 2004) argued that business-related knowledge, such as trading, commerce, investment, merger and acquisition, and corporate management should all be integrated to BC curriculum as they are often not taught in regular Chinese classes. Some other scholars proposed that BC classes should be more “communicative” (Zhu 2003) and have more “meaning-oriented tasks and activities” (Wan 2004) than regular Chinese classes. In addition, BC culture and etiquette has also been mentioned as one of BC course features (Wan 2004; Zhu 2003).

These early discussions of BC features present a diverse understanding of what BC should include, which consequently leads to different opinions being formed about BC’s status in relation to other academic subjects.

Most researchers (Wan 2004; Zhang 2006; Yuan 2004; Chen 2012) agree that BC is a Chinese language course with a special purpose (CSP, 专用汉语 or 专业汉语). While this common-sense description can be agreed on, researchers’ overall understanding does not align. For example, Chen (2012) argued that BC should not be viewed as a “variation” of Chinese because BC does not have any special grammar rules, linguistic features, or pedagogy that are beyond those of standard Chinese. L. Zhang (2012) argued that BC has traditionally been thought of simply as a collection of specialized Chinese terminology for special purposes when in reality it should be considered as something broader and more comprehensive.

Other scholars seemed to believe that BC should be elevated to an academic discipline (学科). Cited in (Chen 2012), BC was thought to be “a rising discipline” (Liu 2009), “a discipline consisting of multiple curriculums” (Guan 2006), or “an interdisciplinary subject grounded in business and linguistics” (Li 2005).

When it comes to BC instructional goals, the opinions seem even more divergent. Yuan (2004) proposed that BC classes should enable learners to master the four skills of using Chinese (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), adapt to China’s business environment, understand China’s law and regulations, and finally conduct business in China. Zhu’s (2003) instructional goals emphasized teaching students Chinese culture and developing their cross-cultural competence. The author said, it was not enough to help students understand “Why Chinese say so?”, but should make them comprehend “What was between the lines”. Chen (2012), based on his 20 years of BC teaching, argues that the fundamental goal of BC classes is to improve students’ Chinese, not to impart business knowledge. He added that one long neglected goal was to improve students’ ability to learn Chinese autonomously. In his earlier work (1998), Chen stated that the effort to explore BC instructional goals would likely lead to frustration because BC course offerings were very diverse. Therefore, it would make more sense to set up “realistic” instructional goals under the premise of available resources.

In sum, researchers have, since its inception, taken prescriptive stances (some based on their teaching experiences) as to what the components and features of BC should be. While it has not reached an agreement on questions such as what BC is about and how it is different from other Chinese courses, our understanding about this special area of Chinese instruction has improved. The above need analyses help us gain a better understanding of what should be taught in BC classes; more importantly, it potentially helps us better plan and design BC courses in the future. One interesting phenomena is that articles on instructional goals and BC course definitions were published well before those on need analysis, meaning that need analysis was not considered in goals and definitions. If need analysis were to be taken into account while discussing BC, resulting instructional goals and course definition would probably be more accurate.

3.2.2 Textbook and Materials Development

Textbooks essentially guide teaching and learning; they directly influence and guide an instructor’s teaching practice and students’ learning outcome. Thus, there have been a lot of articles addressing the issues surrounding BC textbooks, which can be organized into four categories.

The first category contains guiding principles for BC textbook authors. For example, Yuan (2004) provided four principles to be considered when creating BC textbooks: scientificity (科学性), practicality (实用性), pertinency (针对性), and interestingness (趣味性). Liu and Liu (2007) introduced Lao-Qi-Da, one of the earliest TCFL textbooks for Korean speakers, from which they generated several suggestions for current textbook writers. The suggestions included: gearing toward the learners, providing practical language, incorporating business culture to language presentation, etc. Li (1999) discussed how to create a multimedia BC textbook comprised of scripts, audios, and videos.

The second category concerns reviews of the published BC textbooks. Lu (2006) collected and analyzed about 30 BC textbooks and concluded that BC textbooks were still at the “exploring stage (探索阶段)”. Lu’s conclusion was based on the comparison of BC textbooks with non-BC textbooks. First, the quantity and variety of BC textbooks were not keeping pace with the fast-growing demands of learners. Second, the integration of teaching grammar and business-related content was not well realized. Third, the target audience was not clearly defined, and the books were not being developed in a systemic manner.

Du (2011) collected 12 BC textbooks for intermediate learners, and also pointed out some problems or weaknesses with them. First, trading-related content was overemphasized, and this finding was consistent with Wang (2011) and Zhang (2006). Second, an excessive amount of non-business topics and language were used, which could negatively impact students’ attention. Third, cultural differences were unnecessarily emphasized.

When discussing the reasons as to why BC textbooks proved unsatisfying, both Lu and Du attributed it to the textbook authors’ insufficient knowledge in relevant business industries and workplace settings. Most BC textbooks were written by Chinese language teachers, who rarely had opportunities to gain first-hand knowledge in business settings. Therefore, they had to rely on their “instinct” (Du 2011) to choose content and exercises. Consequently, some textbooks turned out to be simple compilations of business knowledge and Chinese language (Lu 2006). To address this inherent problem with textbook writing, many researchers resorted to more learner-oriented need analyses. Another common suggestion was to develop BC teaching manuals, specifying key topics such as what BC grammar and vocabulary should be taught. In the next paragraphs, we will review the research on BC vocabulary specifically.

This third research category of BC textbooks zooms in on vocabulary. BC vocabulary has been one of the most active research areas because it has been deemed the component that sets BC textbooks apart from non-BC textbooks (Zhou and Gan 2008). The articles falling into this category aimed to answer these questions: How many and what BC words should be taught? How are the BC words distributed throughout different levels of textbooks?

Most of the research on this topic began with analyzing the words included in some of the published textbooks and used linguistic corpus as the method to map out BC word usage. For example, Xin (2007) chose eight textbooks published between 2004 and 2006, covering four levels: Introductory, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Zhou and Gan (2008) chose ten textbook published from 1999 to 2005, covering Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. An and Shi (2012) chose seven textbooks widely used in the USA, covering Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Du (2012) chose 11 Intermediate BC textbooks published in Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and the USA. It should be noted that no textbook was chosen by all the researchers, and the same textbook could be placed into different levels by different researchers. For example, A Practical Business Chinese Reader (《基础实用商务汉语》) was placed in the Beginner level by Zhou and Gan (2008), and was categorized as Intermediate by An and Shi (2012).

All of these research projects first took into account the number of words used in each book and compared them with a standardized vocabulary list by grade, such as the HSK word list (《汉语水平词汇等级大纲》) widely used in Mainland China and TOP eight thousand Chinese vocabularies used in Taiwan. Through the comparisons, the researchers came to several common findings. First, many BC textbooks, even those self-professed beginner textbooks (Zhou and Gan 2008), included words that were beyond either the HSK or TOP word list. Second, textbooks of the same level chose words very differently, which would make the learning process even more difficult than it would inherently be. Therefore, all these researchers ultimately call for more of an effort to create a graded BC vocabulary list to guide future textbook development. Xin (2007) made the first endeavor in this direction. Based on a large-scale newspaper database, the author’s research team identified a BC word list that included 2457 words. These words were approved by BC experts and became a part of Business Chinese Test guidelines, also known as the BCT word list. While the BCT word list is thought to provide better guidance than the HSK word list, it does suffer from some shortcomings as pointed out by several researchers. For example, the BCT word list does not provide words’ grading, which makes it less useful to textbook writers. Second, a large gap still exists between the BCT word list and the words included in published BC textbooks.

While it is meaningful to explore the scope of BC vocabulary, some researchers shifted their attention to the most used BC words. As An and Shi (2012) pointed out, teaching students the most used BC words, or core BC word list as they named, would allow students to build up a vocabulary foundation quickly and thus reduce anxiety caused by the seemingly infinite number of BC words. Based on the BCT word list and seven textbooks, the authors generated a core word list containing 121 most used BC words. They also suggested that the way to generate the core word list might be applied to rank the BCT word list.

In addition to which and how many BC words should be taught to students, some researchers were interested in how to teach them. Du (2012) proposed drawing learners’ attention to word collocation—the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word. Some suggested that BC vocabulary could be taught more efficiently if the core words were introduced first (An and Shi 2012) or studied more intensively within a period (Chen and Li 2012a).

The fourth category concerns other BC learning materials. Ji (2007) shared some thoughts on creating a corpus-based dictionary for BC learners. For example, the author proposed compiling words by frequency and putting together words that share the same morpheme. The selection of typical examples and explanations of the words should also be contained in the database. In the face of a fast-growing need for business Chinese, Ding (2009) proposed establishing a comprehensive BC database, consisting of four sub-databases: BC promotions and policies, BC teaching (including teachers, textbooks, courses, and assessment), BC research, and BC application (such as need analyses, employment info, and trading fairs). Wang et al. (2015) introduced a how to use the “Wed as Corpus” method to build a Web Business Chinese Corpus (WBCC) and showed that such tool could provide more collocation information than other Chinese corpuses. Jiang (2016) looked at the challenges brought about by Cloud computing, mobile Internet, and Internet of things, and offered some suggestions to textbook writers and publishers. For example, future BC textbooks must be learner-centered, individualized, and digitized. The author also mentioned the importance of protecting intellectual property rights in this new era.

In sum, the development of BC textbooks has been fruitful in the past 20 years, if judged by the quantity of yearly publications (Zhang 2006; Lu 2006). Researchers were well aware of the importance of selecting words that are useful and practical, and attempted to use a large-scale database to generate them. The BCT word list has proven itself a better guide to textbook development than other word lists intended for general purposes. However, researchers have not yet reached a consensus on some key questions; for example, how many and which words constitute the BC vocabulary? What criteria should be considered when determining BC words difficulty and arranging acquisition order? Another conspicuously absent aspect of textbook research is user opinion. None of the articles reviewed here included students’ opinions and feedback on the books, which seems to be inconsistent with the so-called user-centered principle.

3.2.3 Instruction and Pedagogy

Along with what to teach, how to teach is regarded as another pillar of foreign language instruction. In this section, we will begin with the research on BC instructional pedagogy, and then discuss approaches geared toward different language skills.

While it is widely accepted that BC teaching follows the same pedagogical principles as teaching Chinese for general purposes (Wan 2004; Chen 2012), some researchers argued that certain approaches might fit BC better. For example, the approaches that have been discussed include task-based language teaching (Yuan 2006; Gu and Fang 2009), case study approach (Yuan 2006), communicative strategy (Zhang 2011), and practice teaching (Shen 2014). No matter how different these terms may sound, the primary feature of these approaches seems to be the same: teach and learn BC through practical language use. In other words, BC has been theorized to be more communication-driven and practical. For instance, Gu and Fang (2009) stated that task-based teaching approaches could allow students to engage in meaningful activities instead of receiving knowledge passively. Zhang (2011) proposed that a model training on communicative strategy could enhance advanced learners’ language use competence. Shen (2014) suggested utilizing classrooms, campuses, and the society to create real-life or near-real-life settings for students to learn and practice.

Among various approaches, case study seems to be the favorite among many BC instructors. Yuan (2006) introduced the history of case study and discussed why it would be a good fit in BC classes. As the author summarized, case studies can provide students with an opportunity to think critically about given situations, develop problem-solving and decision-making skills, and enhance communication skills. Yuan also made an important observation about goals to aim for when case study is used for learners of different proficiency levels. For highly proficient language users, the language is just a vehicle for the content and the case is the primary focus, whereas for students actually learning the language, the case is a vehicle to learn how to use the language. Since their primary focus is different, teachers should be well aware of this distinction and select business cases carefully through streamlining and making the material language-centered.

From a pedagogical perspective, the study of business cases can be treated as “language learning tasks” (Yuan 2006). Task-based language teaching (TBLT) started to gain popularity in second language acquisition in the 1980s. Gu and Fang (2009) detailed the theoretical foundation of TBLT, and discussed how and why it could be used as an effective way to maximize the teaching goals of BC. For example, TBLT allows both teachers and students to take on multiple roles. This learner-centered approach enables students to communicate and express themselves in a real-life-like environment. Besides, it also diminishes the distance between classroom and real life. However, task-based teaching also has limitations. As for TBLT’s potential limitations, the authors mentioned randomness of tasks and monotony of types of tasks. They also mentioned that it may not be suitable for all learners.

TBLT seems to provide a ready-to-use framework for BC instructors to follow. Yuan (2006) looked at why TBLT should be used for BC. She suggested that form-focused instruction should be incorporated into a meaning-based communicative teaching paradigm. By means of task analysis, she found that tasks vary in levels of difficulty, depending on language factor (syntactic complexity and range and those required to perform a task) and cognitive factors (familiarity with the materials). Besides, the framing of a task also matters—the way of inputting and outputting information. Based on the aforementioned analysis, she proposed three task implementation phases: pre-task, mid-task and post-task. Overall, this article introduces an alternative approach to teaching business Chinese—analyzing methodologies and providing a framework and sample for practical uses.

Communicative strategy for relatively advanced learners is proposed by Zhang (2011). The overall learning objective of BC based on communicative strategy is that learners will be able to use communicative strategies fully, accurately, and appropriately. Its teaching goals are different from other methodologies in that it focuses more on selecting language forms, which means enabling students to master language forms that can be used in similar communication functions and to know under what circumstances each language form ought to be used. Based on discourse analysis, a communicative strategy method has two stages: input and output. Within discourse analysis, teachers need to analyze communication goals, communication roles, speech style, and discourse structure. During the input stage, it is necessary to have the learners know what communicative problems can be solved through the language they are about to learn—it is especially important for business Chinese as many learners may not have business working experience.

While all the aforementioned methods involve practice to some extent, Shen (2014) highlighted the important role of practicalness (实践性) to BC. According to Shen, BC should be practiced not only in the classroom but ought to be extended to campus and social every-day use. In the classroom, students can practice through role-play, full immersion, virtual environment, and content extension. On campus, students can practice by means of setting up model labs, engaging in academic activities, sharing personal experiences, and modeling real-life activities. Students can also practice in non-academic, social settings; for instance, companies and conventions are ideal settings for students to practice. Besides, students should also be guided and encouraged to carry out field investigations, design business plans, and conduct business studies.

Methodologically speaking, the pedagogy researchers included in our study have focused on improving the quality of BC instruction by engaging students in more practice. The methods and approaches reviewed here all have advantages and limitations and may vary with respect to target students and instructional goals. Hence, teachers must learn to design, adapt and tailor the materials and activities to cater to different needs of different student population.

Apart from overall methodologies, some researches zoomed in on aspects of BC learners’ language skills.

Speaking. Zhang (2010) analyzed the basic discourse features of oral Chinese used in business settings, in the form of monolog and dialog. The findings, as the author pointed out, can be used to guide BC instructors in designing exercise and activities. Lou (2010) proposed to choose and adapt teaching methods from the pragmatic cognition perspective. The author exemplified how to use turn-topic-inference approach to teach business Chinese. Zhang (2012) investigated the gender and the social status factors within the speech act of refusals by Chinese businessmen. Chen and Zheng (2014) discussed why the Chinese word “shi” (是) does not correspond completely to English “yes” in terms of dialog structure, and pointed out relevant pragmatic problems in language use.

Writing. Ding (2004) conducted an action research on BC writing, experimenting the process-oriented approach in place of product-oriented approach. The results from students’ work and feedback seemed positive. Zhu (2010) explored how to teach a particular genre of business writing—sales invitations using a corpus of authentic business letters.

Vocabulary. Luo (2003) argued that the difficulty of teaching BC vocabulary does not lie in the technical terms, but lies in some “linguistic factors” that have the potential of hindering business communication. These factors refer to semantics, pragmatics, style distinction, self-depreciatory and respectful expression, euphemisms, idioms, and newly created words. Huang (2010) explained the importance of cognitive metaphors in helping students understand BC words and exemplified how to draw on concept maps to teach securityrelated vocabulary.

Culture. Lee and Chen (2014) surveyed in-service business professionals’ need for learning Chinese business culture, and identified that cultural content regarding intercultural communication, beliefs, values, and subtle matters expressed through language were the most important and useful to students. Wang (2014) introduced how to deepen learners’ language and cultural understanding through a hybrid course that blended face-to-face classroom instruction and online communication.

In addition, Lou (2004) discussed the relationship between subjective consciousness and cultural symbols. Zhang (2002) introduced an online BC course developed in the Language Learning Lab at the University of Illinois. Zhou (2008) illustrated the possible application of using Chinese advertisements to teach Chinese language and culture. It should be noted that these research areas are relatively small-scale, with limited number of articles addressing each topic.

3.2.4 Assessment and Evaluation

Assessment is a crucial step in language teaching as it serves as a way to examine whether the students have mastered necessary skills and reached the learning objectives. For business Chinese, the most relevant and authoritative test is the Business Chinese Test (BCT), which is a standardized test that assesses non-native Chinese speakers’ abilities to use Chinese in business settings. Research on assessing business Chinese is limited—all three available articles focus on analyzing BCT.

Yang (2009)’s article focuses on the language use skills that need to be tested, including conversational implicature (会话含义) and communication strategies (交际策略). These language use skills are of high importance because business is a complicated setting where understanding conversations and utilizing communication strategies are indispensable skills. After analyzing four major parts of the test, namely, listening, reading, speaking, and writing, he came to the conclusion that the listening part is the most ideal part in which to test such skills. In sample BCT listening part, even the shortest conversations could include such communication strategies as explanation, circuity, speculation, etc. Therefore, the author suggested that we should make full use of listening to test the language skills students have mastered. Instead of giving correct answers directly, they should be presented in a subtle fashion to mimic real-life situations, making the test more challenging and thus capable of assessing the test takers more accurately.

This research points out that there is a heavy emphasis on language use in the sample exam, thus it implies a direction for classroom instruction, for instance, selecting key sentence patterns, practicing communication functions (daily life and business), and increasing the level of difficulty of classroom conversation practice.

Unlike Yang (2009), Lu (2011a, b) centers his research on comparing BCT with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and corresponding scales between the two. Based on a manual published by Council of Europe, Lu conducted a comparative research on the reading competence in BCT and CEFR. Through a series of procedures including selecting personnel, familiarization with tasks, consistency test, and material evaluation, he came to a conclusion that “both the ‘communicative behavior scale’ and the ‘communicative competence scale’ of CEFR have been fully embodied in the reading task of BCT” (Lu 2011b).

Another important aspect of the comparative study between BCT and CEFR is standardization. In order to investigate the corresponding scale between BCT and CEFR, Lu (2011a) utilizes the standard setting approach, selecting experts in TCSOL, language testing, and BC teaching and having them evaluate listening and reading parts. The results show that BCT and CEFR have reached a satisfactory level of correspondence. Lu’s articles seem to offer supporting evidence that BCT can be used as a reliable assessment for BC learners, which will allow Chinese teaching and testing to be promoted internationally.

Assessment is the key to examining whether the instructional objectives have been met. However, research is still lacking in terms of quantity and content. Questions remain to be answered, such as what are the tests really testing—language or content? What other forms of assessment exists for business Chinese? This probably loops back to the definition of business Chinese—what should be tested?

Up to this point, we have reviewed the most important BC research topics. Now we will examine their proportion and distribution over time. According to Fig. 6.5, Instruction and Pedagogy and Textbook and Materials share similar research attention, with 38 and 31% of total articles, respectively. Curriculum Design contributes to a quarter of current research. The remaining small portion belongs to Assessment and Evaluation, which only makes up 6% of the total research.

Fig. 6.5
figure 5

Proportion of the four research categories

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Chronologically speaking, research on Curriculum Design gained much attention in the beginning (Fig. 6.6), yet it did not hold it for long. It needs to be noted that the recent research on curriculum design focused on need analysis, which is different from the initial research. Textbook and Materials and Instruction and Pedagogy show a general trend of steady growth over the past 20 years. Research on Assessment and Evaluation was very limited, with only three studies published around 2010.

Fig. 6.6
figure 6

Numbers of articles of the four research categories by year

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4 Discussion and Conclusions

In this final section, the findings of the review are summarized, and their implications are discussed in relation to future research and development efforts in business Chinese.

The overview of the BC research published between 1997 and 2017 shows that BC research is growing, but it is still at a very early stage. While BC has recently been regarded a “hot” area of teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) (Zhang 2006), research on BC is limited in quantity. As the previous graphs show, only a handful of journals have published BC research, and some journals have published only one article on BC. The lack of BC research can be interpreted in several ways. First, BC research has not been able to earn a higher level of recognition among academic journals. Although some scholars (Wan 2004; Zhang 2010) attempted to set BC research apart from other TCFL research, academic journals do not seem to be convinced. Second, a significant amount of BC research did not meet the criteria for publication. According to Cao (2016), there were 125 BC papers published in Mainland China’s journals between 1996 and 2015, but fewer than 30% of these articles were published by top-tier journals. In order to promote BC teaching and learning, much more evidence-based research is needed. The third possible reason is that there is a lack of a BC community where teachers can collaborate and exchange ideas. BC researchers are mostly BC instructors, who usually have to conduct research in an isolated manner. Thus, there is a need to set up a platform on which more people can be brought together to discuss and debate.

The breakdown of research topics allows us to get a clearer idea as to what research has been done. The published articles generally fall into four categories: curriculum design, textbook and material development, instruction and pedagogy, and assessment and evaluation.

Judged by their relative proportions, research on assessment and evaluation is the most under-developed area. There are only three articles addressing BCT, and two of them focused on whether BCT is equivalent to CEFR. There is no research on BC students’ performance over a course, on BC instructors’ effectiveness, or on the evaluation of BC courses or programs. The shortage of such research is alarming because without assessment and evaluation, we have no way of knowing how students have learned and how we can teach better, nor do we know whether our goals have been met.

In fact, the lack of research on assessment is partially rooted in the lack of clear instructional goals for BC courses. Although there were several early articles discussing what BC courses should entail, researchers and teachers hold very different viewpoints about what instructional goals should be. While different courses may have different goals, there is a need to have some common ground among them. It should be pointed out that the fundamental questions surrounding BC instructional goals seem to have been discussed less and less in recent years. However, as our review shows, our understanding of those questions is still very limited and superficial. Relatively speaking, the need for analysis research is a more fruitful area. These articles provided concrete evidence on BC language use in different work settings, targeting different student populations. Because they included students, the center player of BC instruction, as a part of the course planning, their findings turned out to be informative with regard to what students need and “real-life” needs are.

BC textbooks are growing very fast during the past 20 years. Due to the development of computing technology and corpuses-based linguistics, researchers found it possible to generate word lists to guide textbook writing. Despite the aforementioned limitation, the BCT wordlist provides textbook writers a good starting point when they need to consider which words should be included. What is needed for now is to know the extent to which these findings have been used in actual textbook development, and whether such books will help students learn better. Similarly, it would be useful to know whether the findings of need analyses have been drawn on by textbook writers. Another area that has been missing in the current research is systematic comparison and critiques of the published textbooks. There is only one article (Chen and Li 2012b) specifically comparing the cultural content of ten beginner level BC textbooks, yet many remaining aspects of textbooks still require comparison, such as grammar patterns, exercises, and functional structures. Because of the lack of comparison, BC instructors find it difficult to understand which book is more suitable for their students, nor do they know the strengths and weaknesses of the available books.

Research on BC instruction and pedagogy appears to be quite diverse but not deep enough. Case study approach is widely used, and task-based teaching has been suggested, but classroom-based evidence is still lacking to inform us in what way(s) these methods work better than other approaches. This issue is closely related to the fundamental questions people have asked since the inception of BC courses: what truly distinguishes BC from other Chinese courses? Should BC classes be taught differently? From the published articles, we find it hard to get a clear answer. Most approaches and techniques suggested by the researchers are equally, if not more, applicable to any Chinese courses. If there existed some approaches that fit BC instruction better, would it also suit Chinese for other special purposes, such as Chinese for law or medicine? To answer these questions, researchers must examine students’ learning processes and outcomes more in-depth.

According to Li et al. (2013), business Chinese has steadily settled in as one curricular option in higher educational institutions where the demand is high. Through BC courses, students who are motivated to enter business-related fields can learn valuable skills in both language and cultural understanding. While BC instructors can be quite optimistic about the future of BC courses, it should be noted that BC research is still behind where it needs to be. To remedy the aforementioned problems, we have a few suggestions. First, BC instructors should be given more incentives to conduct classroom-based research. Second, more collaborative efforts between language teachers, business professionals, and well-trained researchers should be encouraged. Third, the importance of BC research for national interest and cross-cultural exchanges should be made clear to relevant policy-makers. As more parties become involved in BC teaching and research, we would become more confident in predicting that BC will ultimately jumpstart a new movement of Chinese learning around the world.