Bridging Language Gaps in Business Writing: The Role of Writing Conventions in Enhancing ESL Students’ Meeting Reports

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-827-1_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Business Communication; ESL Students; Writing Conventions; Cultural Differences; Pedagogical Solutions

Abstract

Coherence and clarity are vital for effective business communication, particularly in formal written records such as meeting minutes. ESL students often adopt standard academic writing conventions, but language differences and limited exposure to business genres may lead to unnoticed errors in their documentation. This study explores language-related challenges—structural and stylistic—faced by ESL learners in producing meeting minutes, with a specific focus on how writing conventions mediate these difficulties. Using a narrative review methodology, the study analyzed 26 peer-reviewed articles sourced from the Scopus database, selected for their relevance to ESL writing in business contexts. The limited number of articles reflects a noticeable gap in the current literature, especially in studies that directly address meeting minutes as a subgenre of business writing. The review identifies recurring barriers including conversational processing, coherence issues, and formal writing standards, alongside the influence of cultural variations on stylistic norms. A theoretical framework is developed to inform systematic pedagogical interventions aimed at enhancing ESL students’ business writing capabilities. The results are significant from two perspectives: theoretically, they offer insights into barriers to effective pedagogy; practically, they highlight the need to embed explicit instruction on writing conventions in ESL curricula. The study advocates for professional communication training and recommends future empirical research to validate the model in work-integrated learning (WIL) environments.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Rafidah Amat
AU  - Nur Syazwanie Mansor
AU  - Nor Asni Syahriza Abu Hassan
AU  - Mohd Badri Amat
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/22
TI  - Bridging Language Gaps in Business Writing: The Role of Writing Conventions in Enhancing ESL Students’ Meeting Reports
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Business, Finance, Management and Economic (BizFAME 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 319
EP  - 340
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-827-1_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-827-1_21
ID  - Amat2025
ER  -