To become successfully competitive in the globalised post-COVID 19 virtual business world, the engineering students, besides learning the English language for Specific Purposes as stipulated by the existing Syllabi, require purposed efforts for the formation of intercultural business communication competencies. This research, conducted successively in the USA and Ukraine combining observational and experimental methodology, aimed at studying the influence of team learning on the development of intercultural business competencies and skills highly desired and valued by employers, such as team building and teamwork, critical thinking, decision making, conflict prevention, and resolution, etc. The results were processed by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Spanning in time from 2013 to 2020, the study proved the effectiveness of project work in learning teams for the development of intercultural competence and business communication skills. Team learning in virtual teams based on andragogical principles and methodology adapted by the authors to the needs of Ukrainian engineering students resulted in developing team building, teamwork, leadership, goal setting, planning, decision making, time management, creative and critical thinking, problem solving, conflict prevention and resolution, interpersonal and group communication and collaboration skills and competences, necessary for successful integration into the global workforce marketplace. Besides significant enhancement of intercultural business communication competencies, team learning resulted in raising Ukrainian undergraduate engineering students’ motivation towards learning ESP, engagement in group and classwork, persistence towards successful graduation and gainful employment, and overall positive learning experiences.

Studying the factors of successful acquisition of ESL speaking skills in Ukrainian adult learners, the authors focused on the correlation between emotional intelligence and development of oral communication skills, and, on the other hand, on the growth of these indicators as a result of purposeful inclusion of content-related emotions into activities aimed at the development of speaking and listening skills. Theoretically based on the ideas of emotional intelligence as an important factor in human interaction and guided by the hypothesis that content-related emotions intensify emotional involvement and have a positive influence on the acquisition of oral communication skills, the researchers applied Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test and the English Language Oral Communication Skills Test developed by the authors, to measure the key oral communication skills indicators against a 100 point scale. Experimental teaching of 124 undergraduate students of International Relations during September 2018-May 2019 proved a beneficial influence of including emotions in the learning activities on the acquisition of ESL oral communication skills, as well as on student motivation and overall quality of student experiences. Significant increments in Emotional Intelligence and ESL oral communication skills in the experimental group compared to insignificant growth of the same indicators in the Reference group allow to establish a positive correlation between the growth of emotional intelligence and acquisition of the ESL speaking skills pursuant to inclusion of content-related emotions into the ESL learning in Ukrainian students.

Based on the interactional translation model, this paper discusses the role of translator’s competence in the success of translation for business. Via complex analysis of translations of advertising texts as discourse acts that are pragmatically oriented and relatively uniform in their aims, the authors establish an extralingual criterion for measuring the quality of their translation – the ability to satisfy the same cognitive/communicative needs and exert the same influence as the source texts on the audience with the different cultural background. Arguing that translator’s /interpreter’s qualifications should include awareness of the target community’s ethnical and business culture coupled with the sense of responsibility for the results of translation as an intercultural discourse act, the authors formulate implications for the formation of strategic competence in teaching professional business translators.

On the turning point of European and world history, it is extremely important to unveil and effectively utilize the potential of effective high-quality education to make the future better for generations to come. Higher education quality management through accreditation has a long history of development in the United States, and time-proven standards, stimulating accredited institutions to continually improve academic quality. The concepts, systems, principles and practices of accreditation arouse in the United States out of the need to meet the demands for quality, and evolved over decades, to form a coherent set of standards and frameworks of continuous improvement in all meaningful directions of the educational institutions’ life, striving for teaching excellence and high learning outcomes. At present, accreditation principles and processes, as exemplified by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) programmatic accreditation, are implemented in the US and numerous countries of the world, to ensure high standard and continuous improvement of business education quality, to raise the competitiveness of educational institutions in response to the expectations of public (primarily, students and their families), governments, employers, universities/colleges, academics, and broader communities. This study establishes the correlation of the quality management system via ACBSP accreditation with the continuous improvement of business education quality. This study also provides statistical evidence that the application of quality management principles at institutions of higher education with accredited business programs did result in the association with enhanced student learning outcomes. Higher education quality management leads to higher employability of the institution’s graduates. Since the quality of education is crucial for the country’s economic growth and prosperity, the business education institutions and programs in Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European and Eurasian countries may benefit from implementing quality management through ACBSP accreditation for their undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate (doctoral) business programs, to satisfy ever-rising expectations of candidates for top managerial and leadership positions. The research suggests that 51% of the institutions of higher education with business programs in the United States, and 93% of the institutions of higher education worldwide could benefit from implementing accreditation principles and processes to maintain and enhance their education quality and competitiveness in the world business education market, for the sake of highest recognition of their graduates’ diploma on the global job markets and significant increase of their employability.

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