This emerging paper will examine what ‘culture’ means as a Threshold Concept in the area of Business English, what it looks like and its implications for the language classroom, not just in Germany but also for educators and curriculum developers in Europe as a whole.

TCs are often described as a ‘portal’ that learners need to pass through in order to progress. TCs might often be typically described as ‘core concepts’ which would be a conceptual block to assist understanding but does not ‘necessarily lead to a qualitatively different view on the subject matter’ (Meyer and Land, 2003). They have also been referred to as ‘key’, ‘central’, ‘very important’ and ‘ah-ha moments’ but they do not necessarily need to be these or ‘alter the way you think’. However, they do point the way forward and help us past the door (Atherton, 2011).

In order to have a TC, there are certain characteristics that must be fulfilled to some extent. These are transformative, troublesome, irreversible, integrative and bounded. There is much debate to the degree on which the above traits must be essential to classify as a TC, but there is a lot of agreement that the TC should initially be troublesome for learners to grasp. This ‘bottleneck’ can be extremely problematic and if not tackled early on can lead to demotivation among students. In the process of defining that a bottleneck is, it is possible to ‘create new knowledge about the students themselves’ (Diaz et al., 2008: 1212).

TCs have started to become prevalent in such areas as engineering, economics, medicine and teacher training as educators attempt to break down their subjects into more distinguishable and manageable parts in a more specialized curriculum as a way to assist their students understanding of the subject. However, there has not been a lot of research into Business Language Teaching and its TCs.

Workshops held in Germany brought forth the topic of ‘culture’ for Business English languages learners, who hold a wide array of positions in various well established companies but still find it difficult to grasp the cultural differences which exist in business. The participants noted and agreed that many of their learners, typically German or Eastern European appear ‘too direct’ or ‘strident’ in class which could have undesirable consequences in doing business. Sometimes the language used is ‘too straight’ or ‘shooting from the hip’ as one participant put it. Some students can easily damage the relationship with their fluent English speaking co-workers who could take offense to their directness. An educational Business magazine, designed specifically for the German business language speaker, Business Spotlights, recently had a feature titled ‘Standing Your Ground’ where eight different approaches to saying no were presented so as not to be too direct when speaking English (Business Spotlights, 2012). 

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