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Personal branding in an elevator: Developing job search pitch skills in tertiary level Business English pedagogy

  • Jolanta Łącka-Badura

    Jolanta Łącka-Badura (Ph.D.) is a Linguist and Business English lecturer, head of the Foreign Language Center at the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. She also holds two postgraduate diplomas: in Management and European Integration. Her research interests include business communication, teaching English for Business Purposes, discourse analysis, the language of persuasion and evaluation.

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Abstract

This contribution reports on the use of genre-based instruction in developing students’ job search pitch skills in a Business English course taught at the tertiary level. The job search pitch (also referred to as personal branding pitch) is viewed as a subgenre of an elevator pitch; it is regarded as an essential communication tool to be mastered and used by students in future job search situations. Drawing on the available literature as well as the author’s own research and experience, the report demonstrates how the generic structure and rhetorical devices contributing to the realisation of the communicative function of job search pitch are incorporated in the job search module of an undergraduate Business English course taught at the University of Economics in Katowice. It also provides a brief account of students’ reflections and observations related to the usefulness of job search pitch skills and the challenges involved in their development.


Corresponding author: Jolanta Łącka-Badura, University of Economics in Katowice, Katowice, Poland, E-mail:

About the author

Jolanta Łącka-Badura

Jolanta Łącka-Badura (Ph.D.) is a Linguist and Business English lecturer, head of the Foreign Language Center at the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. She also holds two postgraduate diplomas: in Management and European Integration. Her research interests include business communication, teaching English for Business Purposes, discourse analysis, the language of persuasion and evaluation.

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Published Online: 2020-09-19
Published in Print: 2020-07-31

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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