Plurilingual skills are among the key skills required in international
business communication. Employees working in international business
operations use multiple languages concurrently, switch between them, and
mediate between different languages and cultures. Up until now however,
the language teaching accompanying business studies at universities has
aimed at developing proficiencies geared to single languages.
Plurilingual skills such as language alternation, code-switching,
mediation, and transfer strategies have not been taken into account.
Learning objectives that satisfy the particular requirements of
multilingual individuals are thus missing from the curriculum. The
Pluriling study, a didactically aligned analysis of the language
requirements of the alumni of the Turku School of Economics, presents
empirically reliable data that, in the first instance, describes the use
of multiple languages in international business communications. Based
on answers to open questions, typical plurilingual skills and strategies
are defined and summarised under the term plurilingual proficiency.
This new learning objective not only provides a framework for a new
study module comprised of plurilingual courses, but is also of value
when developing curricular plurilingualism. Its implementation in
plurilingual courses as regards approaches and methodology are discussed
in the final section of this article.