Bill Mascull is a business materials writer and lexicographer, and has previously taught-in company in Sweden and France. Most recently, he has authored new editions of two business vocabulary books and eBooks: Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate and Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced. In the third of four posts on teaching Business English, Bill discusses a few useful tools commonly found in the material writer’s toolbox.
Rephrasing
Rephrasing is a very useful tool in the material writer’s toolbox. Learners match words and expressions to sentences that illustrate the ideas or concepts behind them, but that do not contain the actual word or expression in question.
For example, in this exercise from the latest edition of Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate, students have to replace pronouns with the target items that have been presented in the area of market research.
Answers: (1) focus group (2) field trials (3) surveys (4) the moderator (5) low response rates (6) observations.
In addition to replacing pronouns, rephrasing exercises can also be used to get students to replace words or expressions with other words or expressions.
Mistake correction
Some teachers say that students should not be presented with mistakes, as they make enough of their own already! However, I believe that mistake correction is a valid exercise type − students must be able to distinguish what is possible from what is not possible. This exercise follows on in Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate from the one above. People are talking about their work in product development.
Correct the mistakes in the words in italics.
These are the kind of mistakes that intermediate students might well make, and correcting them will be beneficial. (For example, students need to know that ‘research’ is an uncountable noun and never plural, a common mistake.)
Related forms
Another exercise type that I like is getting students to give/identify related forms of words. Consider this exercise from the new edition of Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced. In my experience students sometimes know the right ‘base’ word, but use the wrong grammatical form. This type of exercise helps to concentrate their minds on the issue.
Answers: outsource, distribution, retail, warehouse, transport
These table exercises can be followed up with a gap or matching exercise, where students use the items from the table to match definitions or complete sentences with items in the table.
Labelling diagrams
Teaching materials can be enlivened by a good choice of artwork, of course, but when visual elements are actually incorporated into exercises, this is an added bonus − it’s great when language can be presented/practised in visual form. One of these visual forms is labelling of diagrams. In this exercise, students have been presented with the below vocabulary items to complete the exercise on manufacturing inputs and outputs.
Use the words and expressions below to label the diagram:
- capital
- components
- finished goods
- knowledge
- labour
- parts
- raw materials
- stocks/inventories (used twice)
- work-in-progress
Process, not just product
In a business context, you can also get students to complete organigrams, flow charts and so on.
All of the above examples were initially designed for self-study, each item with one right answer, but in the classroom, one of the tasks of the teacher is to discuss with students their ‘strategies’ for approaching exercises. As with all exercise types, working with students on the logic behind each answer is as important as them getting the right answer.
When doing exercises in class, it is important to encourage discussion about the processes that led to students giving particular answers, rather than just ploughing through the exercises without comment. The lessons that learners acquire on the processes of learning will hopefully have a cumulative effect, making them more autonomous and more able to absorb new material.
The final post in this series of four will address a particularly important area for teachers of business students and professionals: writing an effective CV. Read Bill’s first post on the importance of context and word combinations when teaching vocabulary and grammar and his second on creating your own vocabulary learning exercises.