Raoul F. Duke
- 2012-01-17
I've done a lot of this in China, rarely with a prepared curriculum (and wishing I didn't the few times I did...).
A couple of questions occur...
1) How much English do the students actually speak? This will set the line between how much 'English' and how much 'Business' you'll be teaching...
2) What do the students do? 'Business' covers a lot of ground...finding out what your guys do might help you narrow your emphasis.
One good general approach I used was to focus on Business Communications...various kinds of e-mails, reports, phone calls, letters, presentations, and so on.
This is something almost all Business workers have to do, and also provides a good format for focusing on language and correcting demonstrated problems. There are books on this in China (I wrote one myself) but it's not too hard to design projects in BizCom...
I sort of have the opposite problem other people have. I was offered a job today teaching business English by virtue of my business background and degree, but I have no ESL teaching certificate. I know little or nothing about the fine art of teaching and am considering this offer to be tantamount to being thrown into a fire.
The recruiter tells me it's up to me to design lesson plans. Can anyone suggest a website where I could find business English lesson plans for intermediate students? I did a preliminary search but the results were not very promising. I see there are books on the subject as well, but the truth is I'd rather design my own, with a little bit of guidance. Any suggestions? Are there such things as ESL mentors/coaches that could bring me up to speed and teach me the minimum I should know in a day or two? Thanks for any input.