Teaching business English students today is about preparing them to communicate effectively and appropriately in a variety of workplace situations, through a variety of communicative media. Here are five ideas that can help to engage students with little or no experience of the workplace.
1. Developing intercultural communicative competence
Today’s Asian learners need to be prepared to communicate in English across different cultures. Consider this: a Thai student entering the workplace is going to be more likely to use English to communicate with someone from Japan or another country in the Asia region, than with someone from England or the USA. The opportunity for communicating in English with colleagues and customers from a variety of backgrounds is much greater in today’s increasingly globalised world.
Exposure to a range of speakers’ accents and backgrounds can go some way towards equipping learners in these multicultural situations. But of equal importance is the awareness of cultural similarities and differences that the students may encounter, particularly those closer to home. For example, focusing students on how to greet people from different countries, or using information about countries in language practice activities, can help to build and shape the students’ cultural awareness of countries in Asia and beyond.
Business Plus, Unit 6, p47 – using regional facts to practice comparative structures.
2. Connecting to the learners’ experiences
One of the issues for pre-experience business English students is that they often have no knowledge of the workplace to relate to. This means that situations and terms can be unfamiliar to the learners, which at best means it is difficult for the teacher to engage the class in the themes, and at worst can mean the students feel such apathy towards the topics that they become less than motivated language learners.
Interests and situations more familiar to Asian students can help to tie in the less familiar strand of business English with the more popular interests of today’s typical university or college student. For instance, when exploring the topic of company profiles, we can build a lesson around a company that students are likely to relate to, such as an Asian fashion brand. Alternatively, when dealing with the topic of helping customers, the context could be a customer shopping for new gadgets. To a large extent, many teachers would agree: interesting topics mean motivated students (Dörnyei, 2001).
3. Build on the language they know, then activate it
Business English students need language they can activate in real situations. Take the present simple tense as an example. The goal for the learner isn’t to learn the present simple, but rather to learn how they can greet a colleague using the present simple. Students aim for the goal of being able to do something in English, not simply learn something in English.
Providing real contexts for language is also important. An example might be for students to return to a listening text they have previously encountered and be guided towards a specific grammatical structure – before being asked to complete a rule about the use of the target language. This inductive approach can allow the learners to explore the language in actual use and help them to connect the form, meaning and structure, making the language more memorable in the process.
4. A step-by-step approach to speaking tasks
Success in business is about confidence, and this requires learners to build up their confidence in speaking. Expecting lower-level learners to dive straight in to a speaking task, such as a discussion, can be a sure way to the task failing. But by carefully selecting a topic that pre-experience students can easily relate to, then slowly building up to a speaking task through several stages, a learner can develop their confidence as speakers. This confidence can then be transferred to more functional business English tasks, such as role-playing a telephone exchange, or speaking to a visiting guest.
Business Plus, Unit 3, p22 – building confidence through carefully staged speaking tasks
When teaching business English to large classes of 30 or more learners, the layout of the classroom and arrangement of chairs can be a restricting factor for speaking activities. Tasks need to be flexible enough that they can be done with one or two people sitting near the learners. Teachers can also change the dynamics of a speaking activity by asking students to stand, pretend to be on the phone, or walk around.
5. Providing a purpose to reading and writing
Pre-experience business English students need to be equipped with the reading and writing strategies they will need to use on a day-to-day basis in the workplace.
With reading, we must empower students to deal with texts efficiently through constant recycling of reading strategies. It is worth noting that the majority of pre-experience university and college students will already employ these reading strategies in their own language, but what teachers can try to do is show them how to transfer these skills to reading in English (Grabe, 2009). Again, the content is key – students can practice and develop their reading skills through texts designed to engage with their interests and knowledge. For example, practising scanning for detail using a text on the new fad of “showrooming” not only provides an interesting context for the students, but also links to the wider business theme of buying and selling.
Business Plus, Unit 4, p33 – developing reading strategies through engaging, business related texts
With writing, it is important that the learners feel they are creating something authentic, that has real purpose and context (Hyland, 2003), and that can be quickly applied to the types of situations they might find themselves in their future workplaces. One example might be in customer services, where students are shown how to write an email confirming a hotel reservation. Later, making the learners aware of the different styles and registers involved in other forms of written communication, such as resumes, reports, itineraries, and minutes, can prepare them for the realities of demands that may be placed upon them when entering the world of business.
References:
Dörnyei, Zoltán, 2001, Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press
Grabe, William, 2009, Reading in a 2nd Language, Cambridge University Press
Hyland, Ken, 2003, Second Language Writing, Cambridge University Press