Analytical and creative aspects of teaching written business communication to linguistic students

Importance. Understanding business etiquette and existing formats of written communication as ways of expressing corporate culture is an important professional skill for future linguists. The purpose of this study is to examine analytical and creative tasks in the written business communication (WBC) curriculum for linguistic students enrolled in the bachelor's programs “Linguistics” and “Digital Technologies and Foreign Languages” at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU). Research Methods. Based on a theoretical analysis of scientific literature, a systematization of existing pedagogical assessments of analytical and creative aspects of teaching, and a student survey, methodological conditions for teaching written business communication at a modern university are identified and substantiated. Results and Discussion. Drawing on recommendations of scientific and methodological literature, developing basic research skills in linguists is highly important. Therefore, it is proposed to introduce two key analytical review tasks into the linguist training program: examining text cohesion at the levels of cohesion and coherence, and analyzing the degree of politeness and formality in business letters. The differences between cohesion and coherence are analyzed and illustrated, and an algorithm for analyzing business letters based on their informative structure, reflecting denotative, pragmatic, and stylistic functions, is described. Digital creativity based on learning platforms and AI reflects the current state of university teaching. The main example is the online course “Expressing Politeness and Formality in Business Communication” on the Stepik platform. A comparative analysis of the learning outcomes of two linguistic groups is provided: the control group of linguists (CG) received traditional instruction, while the experimental group of students studying digital technologies (EG) received instruction using the online course. Both groups demonstrated approximately 30 % improvement in performance. A survey of students was also conducted to determine their attitudes toward the analytical and creative aspects of the PDK course: both groups rated analytical tasks higher than creative ones, with the experimental group rating them 20 % higher than the control group. Conclusion. The novelty of this study lies in its focus on the need to develop research skills in linguistics students in the WBC course. It was also proved that the online course on politeness and formality in business communication improves students’ written communication skills. These findings can be used to organize written business communication training for students in linguistics programs at university level.