use of a questionnaire which the students had to design on their own. All the necessary information was collected by the students from the websites of the companies. In the process, the students established four aims they wanted to fulfil: At first the students focussed on which foreign languages - especially with regard to English - are used in German companies. Secondly they wanted to discover how widely the use of English effects German employees. Thirdly they wanted to pinpoint problems which can come up by only using English and fourthly they wanted to establish which other languages may also become important for companies in the future.

The students collected data from a lot of international and also national companies, but only the results of the international companies are quoted in the article by Erling and Walton.

All in all the students’ survey included seven international companies situated in Germany [?] and they found out that German is the most widely used language of internal communication, though English is also very important for daily business life. The students found out that the use of English depends on the position of the worker in the company, the amount of international interaction and also the department in question. In most of the cases the use of English increases the higher the employee’s position in the company’s hierarchy. Nevertheless, the less conversations within the company deal with local topics, the more the English language is used in companies. Furthermore, not all company staff is German, so it is a sign of politeness that the main language at meetings is English: “[…] Moreover at meetings, the use of English is mandatory for every employee when there is a participant who is not able to speak German.” (p. 35). Because of this everybody has to speak English adequately, which results in the companies’ offering more internal English courses to improve the employees´ English skills. The students also tried to find out through their survey if there is a restriction of the use of English in the companies´ policy. The results differed in the different firms. Some said that German as well as English can be spoken in meetings and conferences; others only allowed their company staff to speak English all the time because of the high number of non-German employees. In most of the cases the

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