Job Discussion Forums

[cormac]

I did try the search function, but doesn't seem to be working right now.

What is the story with teaching business English? Is it just the case of teaching "formal" English or are we talking about introducing concepts like "sustainable competitive advantage" or other such business concepts/terminology?

The reason I ask is that I've been offered a position teaching business English to businesses in Shanghai. I have 13+ year working in business, and for the types of positions I've held, the ability to use English clearly was necessary. However, I'm a bit of a loss as to what I'm expected to teach. I've asked the person who offered the position, but have only received vague references to my experiences working... I'd prefer some decent/specific insight... I'm assuming its different to the type of English I taught in public schools when i was farmed out before.

So... what is Business English?

Thanks for any info.

[XiGua]

Whenever i've seen it being taught it's just been basically "How to get jobs." Resume building, interview tips and practice, job practices, business writing. I've never seen people go too far in-depth with it. Always intro level junk.

[Jayray]

It is similar to teaching business English in the west, but perhaps a lot more demanding. International trade students learn the vocabulary of business and learn how to use it. The FT will probably need to do some study of terms himself. I have to learn the meaning of words I've heard before, but never learned such as legal and banking terms. Depending upon the text, business English is a lot more challenging and interesting to the teacher than a lot of other generic courses.

To supplement the book, I assign business vocabulary. I also require the class to form groups to role play various business scenarios. (Applying for a job is just one part of the course). Sometimes students are required to deal with difficult foreigners (invariably me) with strange accents. Chinese students tend to be very tactful, but I try to make it fun by pushing them to the limit and trying their patience.

With luck, you'll have a decent textbook to work with that introduces various aspects of business such as purchasing, selling, answering the telephone, customer service, shipping, receiving, going to dinner with customers, making small talk, etc..

If you have a terrible book, work with vocabulary specific to certain areas of business, and assign simple role play. You may also want to include some idioms and expressions.

Business English can be fun.

[cormac]

Thanks for the info. Appreciated.

Jayray, are the places/schools that offer this kind of service more reputable than private schools? I've had the experience working for a language mill in the past, and would prefer to avoid that kind of thing. The assigned working hours they've stated per the job offer are lower than my past experience working in a kinder, but I'm wondering is that because of transport costs (i.e. time).

Also, can i ask what kind of money you get from this kind of work? I was offered 17K - 19k (the difference being benefits of travel & housing allowance) rmb as part of this which I figured is a rather high amount considering the work involved. (The language mill i was in before gave 5k and an apartment, and made us work hard for every bit of it)

[RonHex]

yeah business classes will usually pay more.. is the school going to send you to different companies to do classes on site? there maybe a lot of travel time involved if thats the case. try to get an apt in a central location with a metro station near by... you could also talk to the school about paying for taxis or counting travel time towards ur contract hours. Teaching business can be demanding (usually pretty serious ss) but it can also be far more rewarding. GL and dont wait too long because there will be a bunch of FTs willing to jump on that kinda money

[Plan B]

Most likely, if you are teaching inside companies in Shanghai, you will not be teaching "Business English" as described in posts 2 & 3. It will most likely be more "corporate training" - i.e. meeting / negotiations / teleconferencing / email writing skills.

Most students will be engineers looking to improve their workplace communication. Only a few company employees (e.g. people working in logistics) would require international trade knowledge. And there would certainly be no "interview training"! The company HR won't particulary want their employees equiped with such knoweldge.

This being said, the training company may provide you with a textbook (such as Market Leader) which teaches these broad business topics.

[powerrose]

I observed a business English class in New York and here was the lesson breakdown:

Students had a discussion on a current events topic, in this case advertising.
Students read an article about advertising and answered questions (they were given a worksheet with article on one side/worksheet on the other). Teacher went around the room asking one student for the answer and then the class discussed.
Teacher handed out logos and asked students to guess which company belonged to each logo. This was a longer guided discussion where she did a brainstorm map about company identity, but also wrote advertising vocab on the board as it came up.
Afterwards, she led a discussion on whether each company's logo was effective and why.
Finally, she had one student give a 5 minute presentation. She also assigned three students to come up with one question each, then opened up the room to discussion. I liked that a lot because it mimicked a business presentation style and let most of the students practice. I believe she heavily modeled the presentation format in the beginning and each student had a week to prepare. It was low-key, no slide shows or material or anything.

Obviously her class was pretty high-level......

[Bondi007]

I spent a lot of my 12 month contract in China teaching Business English onsite at American and British companies...and I loved it. Not only did it pay more but nobody else in my school had Business experience (over 15 years) therefore my job was secure. I was taxied everywhere and made friends with all sorts of engineers and interesting professionals. I was even invited to a wedding.

I taught Business Vocab, job interviews, sales/marketing, branding, Business culture in the West, hiring...asking for a raise. A lot of these things were not from the book.

To make things more interactive and interesting, I set up a mock Election Campaign' where each of the 20 students had to run for office in their chosen country, stating how they'd fix the economy, create jobs, improve whatever...blah blah blah. They each had 15 minutes at the front of the boardroom to 'sell' themselves to the media (other students) and then came question time, where the Press Secretary (me) would open the gallery to five minutes of questions and the other students had to pose as reporters etc...
"Good evening, David Jones from ABC News - New York, where in your policy do you state...."
At the end of all the rehearsed speeches and questions times, the students became the voters and a secret ballot was taken and one lucky candidate was elected as the new 'Prime Minister of Canada'...so to speak. They'd win a bag of candy...not before standing at the front of the cheering room with their 'Acceptance speech'...

It's a good idea to have business experience yourself if you want to teach Business English as it makes the whole process more real for the students. Also keep up to date with International business news ie GFC, property and stock markets, politics etc. My students and I had long discussions about these things as they hated working from the out dated book.

Good luck.

[Jayray]