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Business English: "How Do I Reach These Kids?!!"
An-D
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
I'm teaching English in China (at the university level), and one of the primary subjects they have me teaching is 'Business English.' In college, I was a political science major with a minor in journalism. I'm really not qualified at all to be teaching it, but I used the internet to the best of my ability and I rocked it for most of the 1st semester.
The 2nd semester is coming up (now, actually) and I don't really know what to teach. I have to fill an hour and a half basically with teaching/edu-tainment and reach classes between 30 and 80 students.
What are some essential Business-y English topics I should try to hit?
Somethings that I've done:
1) Got them to form groups and form pretend companies in class. They could form any company they wanted (as long as it was legal and possible today). Every week or two, I give each group a business problem with their company and give them a week to find a solution. They present the following week. Success rate on this is about 50-50. Sometimes it rocks, and sometimes its awful. Its good way to for me to introduce vocabulary in context with something and get them thinking business.
2) I get international business articles from online sources. I talk about them to the best of my ability, and try to get the class to discuss them. This is mostly met with silence, except for many three or four kids that speak up. Vocabulary, reasoning and debate skills.
3) Resumes. Oh, god, this was awful with the larger classes (they aren't English majors), but with the smaller classes with better English, it was manageable. I'd like to find a way use their final resumes for something.
4) Lectures on...so many random topics. I found out relatively quickly that planning super far ahead when teaching in China is a fool's errand. You start talking about a concept or certain kind of Business language and than you realize that they have no idea what you're talking about and you end up spending two weeks helping them figure it out. So, the topics I lectured on were super varied (Entrepreneurship, advertising, lawsuits, major American business cities, resumes/interviews etc). Anyway, I hate lecturing. Its boring and super hard to gauge if the kids are following me.
I know there were more things, but really, those four are the big ones that I hit a lot.
What are some good other ideas that I could implement into class? I have no real teacher supervision and no instruction from any of my "bosses." I was pretty much told "Your class is Business English and it is here." That was my orientation. Later on I was told that because I'm a foreign teacher, I could do "whatever I wanted." I sometimes have access to a computer/projector in class and there is a copy machine at the other campus (15 minutes away or so).
So...yeah, no real limits. Fun activities to do to keep interest, important topics/concepts I should cover and things like that. Any business or real education people out there want to give me a hand?
:^: ?
The 2nd semester is coming up (now, actually) and I don't really know what to teach. I have to fill an hour and a half basically with teaching/edu-tainment and reach classes between 30 and 80 students.
What are some essential Business-y English topics I should try to hit?
Somethings that I've done:
1) Got them to form groups and form pretend companies in class. They could form any company they wanted (as long as it was legal and possible today). Every week or two, I give each group a business problem with their company and give them a week to find a solution. They present the following week. Success rate on this is about 50-50. Sometimes it rocks, and sometimes its awful. Its good way to for me to introduce vocabulary in context with something and get them thinking business.
2) I get international business articles from online sources. I talk about them to the best of my ability, and try to get the class to discuss them. This is mostly met with silence, except for many three or four kids that speak up. Vocabulary, reasoning and debate skills.
3) Resumes. Oh, god, this was awful with the larger classes (they aren't English majors), but with the smaller classes with better English, it was manageable. I'd like to find a way use their final resumes for something.
4) Lectures on...so many random topics. I found out relatively quickly that planning super far ahead when teaching in China is a fool's errand. You start talking about a concept or certain kind of Business language and than you realize that they have no idea what you're talking about and you end up spending two weeks helping them figure it out. So, the topics I lectured on were super varied (Entrepreneurship, advertising, lawsuits, major American business cities, resumes/interviews etc). Anyway, I hate lecturing. Its boring and super hard to gauge if the kids are following me.
I know there were more things, but really, those four are the big ones that I hit a lot.
What are some good other ideas that I could implement into class? I have no real teacher supervision and no instruction from any of my "bosses." I was pretty much told "Your class is Business English and it is here." That was my orientation. Later on I was told that because I'm a foreign teacher, I could do "whatever I wanted." I sometimes have access to a computer/projector in class and there is a copy machine at the other campus (15 minutes away or so).
So...yeah, no real limits. Fun activities to do to keep interest, important topics/concepts I should cover and things like that. Any business or real education people out there want to give me a hand?
:^: ? An-D on
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Posts
Describe the virtues of the 1 page document. Standard English courses like the 3-5 page paper - Businesses hate that crap - we want it concise and boiled down to a single page.
Skills to master:
The one page resume
The difference between a resume and a curriculum vitae.
Writing KSA - Knowledge Skills and Abilites (Government type applications)
Alternatives:
Writing Job Roles and Responsibilities - Good way to turn resume writing on its head. Form A and B teams. Teams A will write a job posting, thinking about an ideal candidate and their qualifications. Teams B will write fictional resumes responding to the advertisement. Teams B will then watch Teams A debate with each other about who the superior candidate is.
Business cases for change - You have noticed a company policy that is negatively impacting customers. Write a letter to your boss with a statement of the problem and a clear plan on how to fix it.
Employee Reprimand - You run a small business with about 10 employees. One employee has been getting more and more out-of-hand over X. Write a reprimand/corrective action for this employee.
I've done a lot of random tidbits on business slang and casual English slang. I think this semester I'm going to do a '5 English Slangs of the Week' or something.
I sort of did this when I did interviews and it sort of worked - they all figured out how to use their resumes and apply to jobs that they're suited for, but I did the 'make a fictional resume' thing. They had a lot of fun with it, making super people with awesome degrees from Harvard that were awesome Kung-Fu champions etc etc. It took a week or two to make them aware that lying at all on their resume is a super, big no-no.
The hardest part about teaching in China is that copying and 'cheating' doesn't really get you in trouble.
Dunno how workable that would actually be in a classroom setting.
Sexual harassment in the workplace training?
As you've identified it as an issue, talk about how to correctly cite others.
Research skills can probably be incorporated into your curriculum.
Give them the chance to see what they've accomplished throughout the year - let them go over "bad English" examples and correct them in-group: serves to develop vocab, spelling, grammar, and team-skills.
connect them to other classrooms - hopefully with native english speakers. It might be a bit difficult to find a connection, but if you can find native english speakers they can have a conversation with online, it might be fun, engaging, and give them a sense of conversational English.
also: if you can find a few native english speakers nearby, run your students through mock interviews; this can help, but I don't know if it's feasible for such a large class.
you're in a really tight spot: you're asked to fill a traditional university educational role without a curriculum for students who really need more individualised attention. Keep up your emphasis on group work.
It sounds like you're doing a fantastic job, given what you're given.
(I'm in the same boat this year - english and mathematics students, no instructional supervision or direction, and zero examples of exemplary curriculum. The students suffers, and that's too bad, but if you really apply yourself your teaching will improve dramatically).
(ps - if you want to chat about teaching sometime, send me a pm and I'll provide some contact info - I'm no expert, but you can use me to bounce ideas off whenever you feel like it).
You can also do that with that company's annual report.
Maybe, you can have them do a power point presentation to chair a meeting for their fake company.
Maybe, you can have the write a fake Quarterly Business Review.
Can have them write a fake sales proposal.
You can have a results oriented power session of business vocabulary for the Chinese Student focus group.
And apparently I'm doing something right, because I just got $~230/month raise and they also gave me some grad-level classes to teach. I don't know what to do with grad students, but I'll figure it out. High five!