Teaching and learning legal English in businessrelated majors: Advantages and disadvantagesx

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM TP HỒ CHÍ MINH 
TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC 
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE
ISSN: 
1859-3100 
KHOA HỌC GIÁO DỤC 
Tập 16, Số 8 (2019): 241-252 
EDUCATION SCIENCE
Vol. 16, No. 8 (2019): 241-252
 Email: tapchikhoahoc@hcmue.edu.vn; Website:  
241 
Research Article 
TEACHING AND LEARNING LEGAL ENGLISH IN BUSINESS-
RELATED MAJORS: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGESx 
Chau The Huu 
Ho Chi Minh University of Foreign Languages – Information Technology 
Corresponding author: Chau The Huu – Email: chauthehuuftu@gmail.com 
Received: March 18, 2019; Revised: June 13, 2019; Accepted: July 18, 2019 
ABSTRACT 
This paper is composed specifically to point out the pros and cons of Legal English learning 
and teaching in universities which includes business-related subjects in their curricula. The 
methodology employed is qualitative method, conducted through collecting and analysing 
secondary data in combination with observations and experimentation in daily classroom 
activities. It has been found out that, besides such advantages as learners’ English fluency, both 
practical and theoretical material diversity and up-to-date curricula in business-related 
universities, lack of materials for learning, time-consuming preparation and insufficient passion 
are among many issues to be addressed in teaching and learning Legal English in universities. 
Keywords: business, contract, economics, ESP, Legal English. 
1. Introduction 
Economic performance in Vietnam has been gaining much development in recent 
years. As one of the major forces of the economy, import and export continuously achieve 
success year after year. In 2017, there was a considerable increase of 21.2% in exports in 
comparison with that of 2016, reaching 214.02 billion USD, while imports remained under 
good control (Ministry of Industry and Trade, 2018). Undoubtedly, the number of deals 
settled successfully goes hand in hand with that of trade contracts to be signed, which put a 
great pressure on the company’s human resource to be responsible for contract negotiation 
and signing. Moreover, the trade conflicts have been an inevitable issue in business. 
Ministry of Industry and Trade (2018) confirms that until December 2017, as a World 
Trade Organization (WTO)’s member, Vietnam has taken legal action in three anti-
dumping cases against Indonesia and the United States of America (USA) and brought 
them to the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the WTO. Those are the issues which 
Cite this article as: Chau The Huu (2019). Teaching and learning legal english in business-related majors: 
advantages and disadvantages. Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Journal of Science, 16(8), 241-252. 
Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số 8 (2019): 241-252 
242 
mainly concern with trade policies from a macro-economic viewpoint, obviously followed 
by a great number of other micro-cases between businesses. 
A key point for Vietnamese enterprises when they have to get involved in such cases 
is their understanding towards contract content and language. It is an advantage that almost 
all contracts signed between Vietnamese and businesses from other countries are made in 
English language – an international communication tool for global citizens. However, this 
also poses some challenges for people who have just started running or are currently 
operating their businesses due to their insufficient language skills, especially those of 
Legal English. Although many universities and training centers have organized classes to 
equip their students with necessary understanding and application in the English of Law 
and specially, English for contracts, there are still many things to be done concerning from 
both the aspects of learners and teachers. For the purpose of analysing the current 
situations and proposing some recommendations, I have decided to conduct a study on the 
topic “Teaching and learning Legal English in Business related majors: Advantages and 
Disadvantages”. 
The study aims to figure out the pros and cons in teaching and learning Legal English 
situation at some universities which organize classes in business majors, including Foreign 
Trade University HCMC Campus (FTU HCMC), HCMC University of Foreign Languages 
– Information Technology (HUFLIT) and University of Education HCMC (HCMUP). It 
holds a vital position in deciding the current status and suggesting appropriate guidelines 
for both lecturers and students in these educational institutions specifically and others 
generally. 
The limitation of the study lies mainly on the timing and scale of research, which is 
limited within the three universities. Furthermore, as most examples listed hereunder refer 
to real context in business contract, more study needs to be conducted in other legal 
documents such as legislation terms, company’s internal documents, as well as other types 
of contract, namely the charter party, insurance policy, etc. However, as the distinction of 
these documents is mostly concerned with content, and format other than language, the 
suggestions in this study are still applicable to some extents for the above-mentioned 
documents. 
2. Overview of Legal English 
There have been variations in understanding and interpreting the term Legal English. 
Based on purposes, ESP (English for Specific purposes) practitioners prefer to use other 
terms as classification, such as EGLP (English for general legal purposes), EALP (English 
for academic legal purposes), and EOLP (English for occupational legal purposes) 
(Northcott, 2013). In this study, I mainly focus on some features relating to Legal English 
in the case of being used in business contracts. Like other professions, law has its own 
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complexity, which requires learners to put much effort in order to master the principles and 
contents of every single sentence, as well as paragraph. In case the terms are written in 
mother tongue, readers still face difficulties in reading and comprehending the meaning of 
words and sentences. Moreover, where English, or other languages, is used in composing 
such provisions, the challenge becomes greater not only for common readers, but also for 
those specialized such as lawyers, researchers or negotiators, etc. Northcott (2013) 
confirmed that one of the sources of Legal English’s difficulty was put down to the 
Common Law system, which heavily depends on precedents. 
In terms of application, it is undoubted that Legal English is widely useful in life, 
work and study. People need to read and understand the laws passed by legislative body as 
those can affect their daily life such as new regulations on tax, shopping or transportation. 
Students have to read regulations in schools and other educational institutions so as to duly 
follow. In business, Legal English finds itself of great importance when being made use of 
in various cases such as internal documents, and, more significantly, commercial contracts 
and agreement. For the above reasons, teaching and studying Legal English remains a 
crucial part in education in general, and some business – related majors in particular. Due 
to the little use of Legal English in non-business related major, I primarily concentrated on 
analysing the pros and cons in training this type of ESP only in business-related curricula. 
It is worth noticeable that so far has this topic been studied and mentioned in a 
number of research studies and books domestically and internationally. In his study namely 
“Teaching Legal English: contexts and cases”, Northcott (2009) evaluated the current 
situation of training Legal English for law professionals of second languages. He 
concluded that ethnographic skills and partnerships between language specialists and law 
experts should be strictly considered and applied in other to achieve high result in training 
(Northcott, 2009). The research study set up general understanding of educating Legal 
English internationally nowadays. Meanwhile, the article “Terminology translation in 
teaching Legal English” by Mishchenko (2010) approached translation of legal terms as a 
pedagogical method. The author confirmed that a teacher of Legal English, especially 
when he or she is not a legal expert nor a native speaker, requires remarkable cognitive 
effort and huge amount of time in preparing for good lessons. Mentioning the training of 
Legal English in business context in Vietnam, the book “International trade contracts” by 
Nguyen (2007) marked an advancement in raising the awareness of both educators and 
learners towards this special field. Eleven parts and two appendices in the book 
demonstrated the relationship between the law and contract, instructed basic and advance 
notes for learners and illustrated those points with real examples (Nguyen, 2007). The 
limitation of the book lies in its lack of Vietnamese explanation and interpretation, which 
makes it difficult for readers and students who have only basic skills in English to follow. 
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244 
To make it easier for students who are not good at English, Nguyen (2011) published a 
book, namely “Hợp đồng xuất nhập khẩu tiếp cận từ khía cạnh pháp lý, nghiệp vụ, ngôn 
ngữ - tiếng Anh (Import-export contracts - Legal, Operational and Linguistic approach)”. 
As put forward in its name, the book includes three chapters discussing three distinctive 
aspects of composing commercial contracts in foreign trade operations (Nguyen, 2011). In 
spite of the useful and various guidelines to be found in the book, the drawback of this 
publication is that it is lack of necessary system of exercises and practice for learners. 
Therefore, many readers just consider it as a book mainly for reading but not practicing. 
What can be considered from the above literature is that teaching and learning 
English of Law have caught much attention internationally. However, there are still many 
things to be done so that such pedagogical approach in educating this kind of language in 
business major in Vietnam is well applied. 
3. Teaching and learning Legal English in business-related majors 
3.1. Advantages 
Studying and teaching Legal English requires good English skills from both learners 
and lecturers. It is inevitable to see that the ability to listen, read, speak and write in 
English of Vietnamese people has been rising strongly so far thanks to the good attention 
in high school education and a stress on achieving international certification (such as the 
Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), International language testing system 
(IELTS), or Test of English for International communication (TOEIC)) in English from the 
young nowadays. This growth does help raise confidence in learning and teaching Legal 
English courses. 
Another advantage of training Legal English currently is the availability of materials, 
especially those published online. In the past, it was not easy to get access to international 
contracts signed by companies and their foreign partners due to the issue of confidentiality. 
Such documents could mostly be achieved only through mutual relationship between 
researchers (i.e. teachers and students in this study) and someone in the corporation. 
Thanks to the development of Internet and electronic commerce, many companies 
specializing in import-export are also organizing training courses for students, whom they 
consider potential recruits. As one part of their marketing strategy, a great number of 
business documents are shared both publicly and separately for the one who registered. 
Taking advantages of this, students and teachers can look for various examples for their 
purpose of mastering Legal English. 
Moreover, the curricula in some universities, like Foreign Trade University HCMC 
Campus (FTU HCMC) or at the Department of International Business Administration of 
HCMC University of Foreign languages – Information technology (DIBA – HUFLIT), 
include teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) together with other specialized 
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245 
subjects. Take FTU HCMC’s curriculum of External Economics major as an example, 
students in their third and final year have to deal with classes on ESP which are very close 
to their other subjects to be learned in the same semester. For instance, they study 
Commercial Correspondence and International Business Contracts in their ESP classes in 
correlation with International Trade Transactions or Law on External economics activities 
as specialized subjects. 
These above subjects all mention the Sales contract and its structure as illustrated in 
Figure 1, but from different aspects. This helps create a useful link between subjects and 
enhance motivations for students to follow and concentrate on gaining knowledge and 
practicing their skills. With the specified advantages, teaching and learning Legal English 
in business contexts will surely develop more thoroughly if the following drawbacks are 
carefully considered and solved. 
Figure 1. Structure of an International Sales Contract 
Source: (Doan & Kim, 2016) 
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3.2. Disadvantages 
The first factor is the availability of qualified teachers. Teaching Legal English 
obviously requires teachers to be fluent at English language. Moreover, a good 
understanding in the common legal systems around the world plays an important part in 
their lecturing career. On the other hand, educators need to be aware that students have to 
apply what they learn into interpreting documents in their own legal system. (Mishchenko, 
2010) All of the above put a great pressure on current Vietnamese teachers nowadays as it 
is not easy for universities and other educational institution to recruit and keep a lecturer 
who is good at both Legal English and real business operation. 
The next factor to be of concern is student’s patience and passion for learning. As 
mentioned before, Legal English is a kind of language that is not so easy to handle, 
especially for students whose English background are not good. For those who achieve 
high grade in International English tests like the TOEFL, or IELTS, comprehending 
English structures in legal context also cause difficulties. I have conducted a small 
experiment with a group of seven (7) students of different English background and 
understanding towards legal framework. With the help of online and offline materials, all 
were asked to translate the following part of a License Agreement between two 
corporations specializing in oil trading from The United States of America and Vietnam. 
Figure 2. Terms from AMTECOL License Agreement used in experiment 
Source: (AMTECOL & INDOCHINA, 2018) 
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The experiment took place in about fifteen (15) minutes. The first student, who have 
achieved IELTS 8.5 and CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English) grade A finished the 
task earlier with only some small mistakes in translation, as shown in Figure 3. The 
remaining students with level of English equivalent to TOEIC 600 took more time to fulfill 
the assignment, and their work contained much more mistakes than that of the first. Their 
translation seemed to be made only by word-by-word technique, regardless of its flow and 
meaning in Vietnamese language. 
Figure 3. Translated version of Figure 2’s content 
It can be inferred from this small experiment that students’ ability in English affects 
how fluent they are when studying Legal English, even in the case they have achieved high 
recognition in various English tests. This would impact strongly on their motivation and 
interest in mastering Legal English. 
The time for Legal English learning and practice is another main issue to be 
addressed. Curricula in many universities which have business and economic majors 
consider Legal English as a small part in their English program. Students of Business 
English major at English Department, HCMC University of Education spend most of their 
time in studying many Business English subjects, in which Legal English is mentioned 
with a small proportion in some units of the textbook. In order to master it, what the 
students need is a systematic view of the structure, vocabulary and key points in 
translation. Meanwhile, students studying at DIBA HUFLIT only learn Legal English 
within fifteen (15) periods in the Subject of Import-export and International Payment, 
which is insufficient for building the basics of such language. Due to this limitation, the 
teaching and learning only focus on analysing sample contracts and documents (Chau, 
2015). 
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On the other hand, lack of academic materials also raises an obstacle for teaching 
and learning Legal English. Despite the availability of sample items online, transferring 
knowledge require a systematic root, which is not mentioned commonly in current 
Business English textbooks used in university. This is also the reason why teachers have to 
spend much time preparing for lessons as they have to look for, read and analyse relevant 
documents in order to produce good lectures. 
4. Suggestions for improving teaching and learning Legal English in business-
related majors. 
4.1. For students 
4.1.1. Key points in learning 
* In terms of grammatical points which are worth memorizing and practicing, I would 
suggest the following: 
- Nguyen (2007) concluded that regarding the order and types of clauses, there are 
four (4) types of sentence structures to remember when learning Legal English in business 
and contractual context. 
(1) Main clause + Main clause (together with conjunctions such as and, but, or, etc.) 
(2) Main clause + Subordinating clause (or in reversed order) 
(3) Main clause + Subordinating clauses (more than two subordinating clause) 
(4) Subordinating clause A + Mail clause + Subordinating clause B 
Among these, type 4 is the most complicated and most commonly used in Legal 
English. Take a term from a rice export contract as an example “Should any dispute arise 
between the contracting parties to which no agreement can be reached, these disputes 
shall be settled by arbitration, which shall take place in Singapore as per arbitration rule 
number 125 of GAFTA.” (Chau, 2016). As can be seen, the above sentence is composed 
from the combination of Adverbial clause of condition and an Adjective clause, which 
makes it complex for readers. 
- It is also noted that the Simple present tense and the Passive voice are commonly 
used in Legal English, and sometimes accompanied by “shall” as modal verb, which 
means “must”. For example, a clause of Force Majeure terms says that “If at the end of 
Force Majeure period, shipment is still prevented by any of the above causes, the Contract 
shall be void unless a further extension is mutually agreed” (Chau, 2016). However, the 
use of passive voice and active voice should be appropriate so as to express the parties’ 
intention precisely; otherwise, it would lead the reader to unnecessary confusion when 
interpreting the terms (Nguyen, 2007). 
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* Regarding vocabulary to be used in the language of contract, besides terminology 
which is only available in specific contractual terms such as payment, delivery 
transportation or insurance terms, archaic terms (such as hereto or aforementioned, ect.) 
are also worth being paid attention due to their frequent appearance in such