Job Discussion Forums

[booty]

Some prefer General English as it is more 'playful' and 'fun,' and a chance to meet younger students while others prefer business English. What's your bag and why?

[spiral78]

Biz and academic English - working with younger students isn't my favorite, and I like the motivation of adults with specific purposes to study.

[dmb]

I'm with Spiral. The idea of teaching little people, terrifies me. I haven't taught kids in about 10 years. I wouldn't know what to do.

[Mike_2003]

I quite like teaching business English in one-to-one situations with Upper Int or higher students because it gives you the chance to really produce materials specific to the student's position/department and discuss some interesting aspects of their work environment.

I sometimes get fed up of going over the Pre-Int to Int level grammar again and again so these days I'm finding the complete beginners and the advanced English-for-business students more interesting and challenging.

The one thing that bugs me about business English is the way students think it is some new magical language. They are convinced that learning it will mean they no longer need to learn the grammatical basics. The biggest problem I encounter with the English I've encountered in business contexts (sites, company literature, e-mails etc) is poor grammar stuffed with 'business words'.

This from the competition...

"The French language programmes use textbooks that have as
a goal to approach the specifical vocabulary of real situations
with which students might face in day-to-day activity or in the
professional environment."


French???? What?

"The connection between students and teachers/trainers is a
success factor because we pride ourselves with a
tight relationship between students and trainers in which
each party contributes to the deep acquiring of the English
language (I'm disappointed they didn't use 'tongue' here) as we
pride ourselves of the high quality of our services and especially
the trainers� team for that all our trainers are qualified, graduates
of the profile faculties and have good abilities of communication."

Hmmm

Mike

[Sonnet]

From where do you get the idea that General English students are younger than Business English students?

In my experience, both General & Business English classes have had a fairly mixed age range, from students in their early twenties to those in their mid-forties. That might just be an eastern China thing, though?