Congratulations on successfully passing the twelfth module! 🙂
In this (bonus) Teaching Business English unit, we will be taking a look at some of the key requirements when teaching Business English students. It is essential that you thoroughly read through all the information presented within this unit, before then completing the Unit Quiz and proceeding to the (bonus) Teaching Young and Younger Learners unit. If you have any unit-related questions, please contact your personal tutor through the CONTACT LESSON TEACHER button. Good luck and we hope you enjoy completing this second to last section of the course! 🙂
Many students take a Business English course while still at school or college, before they begin work. These courses are often based around generic business skills, language and texts that are likely to be of use to anyone entering any kind of business. Such courses may also have a second aim of providing an introduction to the world of business itself, for students who have no previous experience of it.
A basic Business English course is likely to include many of the following skills: writing letters and emails; writing reports; reading reports and business-related articles; negotiating; telephoning and conference calls; talking about facts, figures, graphs, diagrams, etc; participating in meetings and video conferences; making presentations; using social English – meeting and greeting, small talk, dinner-table conversation and is also likely to include an introduction to how business works: business terms and expressions; negotiation; sales and marketing; finance; projects; business travel; working with people.
Any course of this kind is going to be hit-and-miss to some degree. Before someone starts their work it is hard to know what kind of telephoning or negotiating (or whatever) they are likely to be doing, so courses tend to offer activities and tasks focused on a wide range of different general business contexts. General Business English course books are suitable for courses of this kind.
If English lessons are taken when participants are already in work, a course has the possibility of becoming much more tightly focused onto real and immediate needs. By doing a thorough Needs Analysis with learners, we can find out exactly what they require from a course. If the course has people from different employers, jobs or departments you may find that, for the most part, a generic course is the most suitable – but the Needs Analysis will still help you to offer useful focuses on specific tasks and skills to replace or add to what is in the book.Â
Look for ways that allow your participants to make use of current examples and stories from their daily work in class:
Presentations.
Get participants to prepare, rehearse and do presentations in class about their daily work, current tasks, problems, etc., followed by feedback, discussions and related language improvement work.
Diagrams and models.
Use Cuisenaire rods, models or pencil and paper to get participants to create and talk through images of their work – for example: my office space, my travels, who I communicate with around the world, the manufacturing process, etc.
Diaries and blogs.
Instead of traditional exercise-based homework, ask participants to write (and read each other’s) diaries and blogs. They can record details of their daily work, difficult situations and language problems they have faced. Use excerpts (with permission) as the seed for in-class discussion, language work, etc.Â
Role play.
Find out as much as you can about the specific kinds of meetings, negotiations, discussions, etc., that participants do in their daily job. Create similar role play opportunities in class, making use of as much unclassified, real stuff as they can provide (documents, images, diagrams, Powerpoint slides, etc).
Many company training managers organize courses within the workplace itself, bringing the teacher to the students, rather than the other way round, often with lessons very early in the morning or very late in the day. This is obviously convenient for participants – though perhaps less so for the teacher who may have to travel across town at hours when they would much rather be in bed! The educational downside is that working business people have a lot of urgent calls on their time and, however keen they are, English lessons tend to be some way down the must-do list. Very late arrival and absenteeism are often significant problems for courses run in-company. Group courses can sometimes end up with completely different personnel week to week – making continuity and progress a nightmare. So, a key starting point for the teacher about to begin work on such a course is to liaise with the training manager and find out what policies the company has to encourage or require attendance. Emphasize the importance of regular and on-time attendance. Find out what you can do as a teacher to play a part in encouraging this – for example, awarding credits towards participants’ individual training goals. Be clear that for the course to achieve its goals, it has to be taken seriously by the company first – before the students will take it seriously. Another point to bear in mind is that when a course for in-company participants has been booked and paid for by a company training manager, the needs/expectations of the student and the purchaser may be very different, and you may find it a hard act to balance.
Whether or not you use a course book, much of an in-company course tends to become spontaneous, responsive teaching. If the participants are using English in their day-to-day work, they will be hitting live problems all the time – and they will often want to bring them to you for help and advice. Allow time for this, perhaps even timetabling it (for example: a participant Q and A discussion at the start of each lesson); you may find that you can develop all the work from such questions and requests and that it seems to be more focused and useful than course book work.Â
Many Business English courses are one-to-one. Here are a some essential tips for you:
- Rapport. Relationship is crucial. Take time to find out about each other. Take time to go on building that relationship over future lessons. If you don’t like each other and feel uneasy in each other’s company, the course is never going to take off.
- Needs. Spend time on discovering needs. Go back to discuss and re-look at them every few lessons.
- Plan lesson to lesson. Create the course from lesson to lesson rather than entirely in advance or by relying entirely on a course book. Use the course book to supplement needs-related work as it emerges.
- Study what is live and relevant. Bring along material suggested by errors, discussions and ideas from the previous lesson.
- Plan beginnings, not whole lessons. Plan lessons in terms of starting points (interesting documents, relevant video clips, important language items, etc.) rather than complete planned-through procedures.
- Take your lead from the participant. For at least part of each lesson, take your lead and pace from the student. Start with discussion; respond to comments, questions and requests as flexibly as you can. (But also watch out for the participant who uses your flexibility as a way to avoid focusing.)
- Vary the challenge and pace. A leisurely pace is fine for much of the time, but also make sure to include concentrated, challenging tasks and exercises.
- Cooperative work. Work with – rather than in front of – your student. Don’t feel the need to be the presenter or entertainer at the front of the class all the time (or any of the time) . More a colleague in the next seat.Â
- Reformulate as a correction strategy. After your participant has done an oral task, rather than correcting lots of errors and problems, give them the chance to see you doing the same task in your way. They can take notes, ask about what you said afterwards – and then try again themselves, using any of your ideas, expressions or approaches.
- Silences. Don’t worry if there are silences. Silence is thinking time and adjusting time.
- Board. Use a pad of paper on the table as your shared board. You can both write and draw on it, adding to and editing what the other writes.
- Build progress. Get the participant to prepare and do things (for example: role playing something they do in their daily job, explaining how something works, making a presentation) – then give them feedback – then get them to do it again.
- Audio recording. Use your computer’s microphone and software to record what the participant says. Listen together, work on raising awareness of problems and improving them. Practice – then record again.
- Writing. If you set an in-class writing task as a change of pace, don’t be too present while they work. Don’t swamp them with helpful advice. One-to-one can get very intense. They need to breathe too!
- Internet. Exploit the Internet. Look up things as you need them. Find examples. View video clips. Write tweets or emails to each other. Get other online people involved. Contribute to forums. Make phone calls from class.
Congratulations on reading through this (bonus) Teaching Business English unit!
Now it’s time to take the Unit Quiz, after which you will gain access to the (bonus) Teaching Young and Younger Learners unit.
Important! We recommend reading through this unit again to ensure that you are fully prepared to take the quiz.
Click on the VIEW THE LESSON QUIZ button to proceed to the Teaching Business English Unit Quiz…