Building business communication skills: Storytelling

In our present-day information -driven world, oversaturated with data and facts, storytelling - or the ability to create and tell stories - constitutes a competitive advantage. Storytelling is not only a very important social 'glue', a skill that allows people connect with peers, but also a business tool used to persuade, inspire, or trigger emotions. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the use of storytelling in a Business English teaching context, that is, as an essential communication skill that business learners should master. To this purpose, we carried out an analysis on a sample of 60 students enrolled in the second year at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi. The study was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2021-2022, and it revealed that storytelling enabled students to engage more easily in classroom activities, it stirred their interest and boosted their confidence when speaking in front of their peers.