In the final post from her series on teaching Business English, Natilly Macartney explores ‘sustainability’ in business. She shares how to get students to consider this topic for a research and presentation activity, to encourage their opinion sharing and language production.
Sustainability – more than the environment
Sustainability is a vast and interesting topic. Primarily, students think of the environment when talking about sustainability, and although the impact a business has on the environment certainly plays a major role in developing its sustainability strategies, it’s not the only focus. Sustainability in business also involves financial and social development. As a result of this, there are lots of interesting subtopics that can be discussed under the theme of sustainability, including recycling, the gender pay gap, employee satisfaction and the role of businesses in supporting local communities.
Sustainability is also a great topic for teaching students useful vocabulary, such as eco-friendly, carbon footprint, fair trade, renewable and non-renewable sources etc. Students would come across these words everyday in an English-speaking country, whether it be on the side of a take away coffee cup, or an advertisement encouraging more people to use public transport.
The Body Shop – world’s most sustainable company
One familiar case study I presented to the students was The Body Shop. The Body Shop is a world-renowned skin care and cosmetics company with humble beginnings in the UK. In 2016, it pledged to become the most sustainable global company on earth by 2020. Some of its sustainability strategies involve ensuring that 70% of the company’s total packaging does not contain fossil fuels, powering all stores with renewable or carbon balanced energy and helping 40,000 vulnerable people access work. You can find more information here.
Although the corporate sector is an obvious starting point for talking about sustainability, I wanted to show the students that all sectors have to consider sustainability. I asked them to discuss in small groups examples of sustainability at the university. Ideas they mentioned included recycling bins on campus, the use of recycled paper in the printers and bikes available to hire.
Presentations on sustainable companies
My overall aim was to use the topic of sustainability to develop students’ presentation and research skills. In small groups, the students researched sustainable companies and delivered a presentation on their chosen company.
In a class leading up to the presentations, I did a presentation skills session. In this session, we discussed ‘what makes a successful presentation’? This session covered the pros and cons of the different styles of delivery one can choose from, for example reading from a text, memorising a speech or speaking from slides. As well as the importance of preparing well-structured presentations with a clear content and summary slide and limiting information on slides to a maximum of four bullet points.
In their presentations students gave a brief overview of their chosen company, discussed three or four of its sustainability strategies, incorporated an interactive task with the audience, such as a quiz or a game, and gave the audience a hand out. Some students also brought along samples of the products they were presenting for their peers to try (bonus!). Different companies the students chose to present included ‘Coca Cola’ and ‘Makava’, an Austrian drinks company.
The purpose of these presentations was not for students to simply recite information about a company from its homepage, research also played an important role. I wanted the students to demonstrate a genuine and thorough understanding of the topic in their presentations. As well as desk research, some groups, who chose local companies, contacted their chosen company and interviewed members of staff (impressive!).
Developing different skills
Whilst preparing their presentations, students worked on multiple skills, including team work, time management and of course, research. In addition to these skills, I wanted students to practise building rapport with the audience. Therefore, a task requirement was that students included an interactive task in their presentation so that they did more than ‘talk at’ the audience.
As well as presenting, the students also had clear roles as audience members and were required to not only participate in the tasks, but to also ask their peers questions about their presentations. Each student was given two playing cards and each time they asked a question they traded a card in, the goal of course was to have traded both cards in by the end of the session.
Focus on student talking time
These few sessions were just a basic introduction to the concept of sustainability in business; however, the purpose of this topic was not to give students an in depth insight into what sustainability is, but to use the topic as a way of engaging students and encouraging them to give their opinions. In fact, very little came from me during these sessions and most of the time was filled with student talking time.
If you’ve enjoyed this article make sure to catch up with Natilly’s other Business English posts on writing effective business emails, running a class debate, and creating an English CV for the UK.