Teaching Business English (Level 3 Diploma)

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How is the course structured?

The OLQA Level 3 Teaching Business English course is divided into ten comprehensive modules:

Module 1 - Introduction to Business English
This Unit is a foundation course to the entire Diploma. It introduces the Concepts of Business English and focuses upon the following elements:
Why do we need to teach Business English Who requires Business – English The market demand for Business English What concepts are required in Business English Teacher qualities for teaching Business English The methods employed for Teaching Business English Introduction to online teaching Tools for teaching online Business English

Module 2 - Business Grammar
Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the "rules" of a language; but in fact no language has rules. If we use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. What we call "grammar" is simply a reflection of a language at a particular time.

Do we need to study grammar to learn a language?
The short answer is "no". Very many people in the world speak their own, native language without having studied its grammar. Children start to speak before they even know the word "grammar". But if you are serious about learning a foreign language, the long answer is "yes, grammar can help you to learn a language more quickly and more efficiently." It's important to think of grammar as something that can help you, like a friend. When you understand the grammar (or system) of a language, you can understand many things yourself, without having to ask a teacher or look in a book. So think of grammar as something good, something positive, something that you can use to find your way - like a signpost or a map.

Module 2 will focus on those Grammar applications as applicable to business conversation and writing skills.

Module 3 - Pronunciation Skills
Reading an English word does not tell you how it is pronounced. For example, the words no and do both end in the letter o. However, no is pronounced like this, and do is pronounced like that. This means that, generally, you have to learn the pronunciation of every word that you're going to use.

How can you learn the pronunciation of an English word? You can look it up in a dictionary and read about how it is pronounced. Dictionaries tell you about pronunciation through a special system called phonetic transcription.

Phonetic transcriptions are written in a phonetic alphabet. The most popular phonetic alphabet is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Different kinds of English have different pronunciation. For example, the pronunciation (the accent) in British English is different from the pronunciation in American English.

You have a choice between British English and American English, because these are the most important kinds of English in the world. Which one should you choose? Probably the kind that you like the most. Whether you choose British or American pronunciation, people will understand you wherever you go. Of course, you don't have to decide: you can learn to speak both kinds of English.

Module 3 concentrates on pronunciation skills focused within business conversation pieces.

Module 4 - Grammar Translation
The grammar-translation method of foreign language teaching is one of the most traditional methods, dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was originally used to teach 'dead' languages (and literatures) such as Latin and Greek, and this may account for its heavy bias towards written work to the virtual exclusion of oral production. Indeed, the emphasis on achieving 'correct' grammar with little regard for the free application and production of speech is at once the greatest asset and greatest drawback to this approach.

The major characteristic of the grammar-translation method is, precisely as its name suggests, a focus on learning the rules of grammar and their application in translation passages from one language into the other. Vocabulary in the target language is learned through direct translation from the native language.

Module 5 - Conversational English
English is the international language! 85% of the Internet is in English, three quarters of the world's mail is written in English, and it is the official language of the Olympic games! The World Trade Organization debriefs, meets, and publicizes in English, even if the representatives are from countries where English is not the native language. These are among the many reasons why adult learners abroad need ESL teachers like you. This is your opportunity to teach the future leaders and business innovators of tomorrow how to effectively communicate on an international level.

This course is aimed at teaching you those business conversational skills in order to carry out work related assignments in business English. The emphasis is based upon teacher training in order to conduct business conversational skills. This examines different methods of delivery from the internet, formal class teaching to conducting business assignments as a language expert in order to teach Executives English Language conversation skills

Module 6 - Vocabulary
This section will list some of the most common words and phrases in thirteen different business areas, together with financial terms in British and American English.
Advertising Banking Company Structure Contracts Employment Import-Export Insurance Law Marketing Meetings Money Presentations Selling Financial Terms (British/American)

The emphasis of this course is to assist the Business English Teacher in getting started in building up a business English vocabulary. The objective being to teach technique and purpose. We will examine methods of building this library and getting additional information for work related assignments.

Module 7 - The Lexical Approach
The lexical approach makes a distinction between vocabulary—traditionally understood as a stock of individual words with fixed meanings—and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. Lexical approach advocates argue that language consists of meaningful chunks that, when combined, produce continuous coherent text, and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations.

In the lexical approach, lexis in its various types is thought to play a central role in language teaching and learning. Teaching should be based on the idea that language production is the piecing together of ready-made units appropriate for a particular situation. Comprehension of such units is dependent on knowing the patterns to predict in different situations. Instruction, therefore, should center on these patterns and the ways they can be pieced together, along with the ways they vary and the situations in which they occur.

Activities used to develop learners' knowledge of lexical chains include the following:
Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language. First and second language comparisons and translation—carried out chunk-for-chunk, rather than word-for-word—aimed at raising language awareness. Repetition and recycling of activities, such as summarizing a text orally one day and again a few days later to keep words and expressions that have been learned active. Guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context. Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations. Working with dictionaries and other reference tools. Working with language corpuses created by the teacher for use in the classroom or accessible on the Internet—such as the British National Corpus.

The eclectic approach is based on a foundation of three principles:

1. Successful learners focus on language performance, not classroom study.
2. On-the-job English needs should drive classroom learning and independent study. Learners receive immediate business results, because most learning is preparation for actual performance events in presentations, meetings, research, professional
3. Active - Our constructivist method development, email, etc.
4. Successful learners are active, autonomous, and accountable focuses on "learning by doing" with English.
5. Autonomous - The focus on substance learning (learning how to learn) gives clients the tools to take charge of their own learning. So teachers can do more coaching, and less lecturing.
6. Accountable - Enabling clients design and manage their own program, which establishes measurable goals and timetables to keep progress on track.
7. Successful learners use multiple channels.

Most language learning consists of a teacher, classroom, and book. In contrast, business English teaching focuses on a wide range of channels that correspond to individual learning styles, such as blogs, peer learning, white papers, webconferencing, podcasts, cable TV, wikis, discussion groups and forums, e-learning, in addition to working with a teacher.

Module 9 - Teaching Receptive Skills
Listening to and understanding speech involves a number of basic processes, some depending upon linguistic competence, some depending upon previous knowledge that is not necessarily of a purely linguistic nature, and some depending upon psychological variables that affect the mobilization of these competence and knowledge in the particular task situation. The listener must have a continuous set to listen and understand, and as he hears the utterance, he may be helped by some kind of set to process and remember the information transmitted. His linguistic competence enables him, presumably, to recognize the formatives of the heard utterance, i. e. , to dissect out of the wave form of the morphemes, words, and other meaning-bearing elements of the utterance.

This Module will teach receptive skills, within the context of Business English. Focusing primarily on listening and reading skills.

Module 10 - Business Meetings and Presentations
The course will examine how to conduct both Business Meetings and carry our presentations using effective Business English. The emphasis will be on providing the teacher with the skills and techniques to enable instruction to improve the quality of both meeting materials and presentations. Example:-

Business Meetings:Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the "chasing of rabbits," and help participants be more prepared for the meeting. Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you'd be surprised by the number of people who take the time to create an agenda, and then totally disregard the agenda during the meeting. Limit the Agenda to Three Points or Less: Ask yourself, "What are the three most important things we need to cover in the meeting?" Limit the agenda to these three points. The rest of the things you wanted to cover, by definition, weren't really that important anyway, so why waste everyone's time?

Set a Time Limit: I would suggest setting the time limit for the meeting to be no longer than 30-minutes. In future meetings, shorten the time by five minutes until the time limit is 15-minutes or less. The leader of the meeting will become much more efficient, and the participants will become much more focused as well. When the time limit is up, end the meeting. You may not get to cover every single thing that you wanted to the first couple of time you try this, but within a short time, you will find that the major information points are being discussed and decisions are being made very efficiently. Encourage Participation from Everyone, but don't Force Them: Instead of going around the table and asking for opinions or input, just ask a question and let people volunteer their answers. There will be times during any meeting that each person will "phase out". If we call on every person, it wastes time, and puts people on the spot. Other ways of encouraging participation is to just ask a question, and after someone answers, say something like, "Good, let's hear from someone else." If there are people in your meeting who rarely speak, instead of calling on them directly, you might say something like, "I value the opinion of each of you, does anyone else have something to add." Then, just look at the person you want to hear from. If he or she has something to say, he or she will say it if encouraged in this way. If he or she doesn't, then you haven't embarrassed the person.

END

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