Should business experience/training be a requirement?

[tigertiger]

...there are terms that you can look up like mergers & acquisition or arbitration, but a student will always bring up a topic that you haven't prepared for in advance.

Very good point.
If a student was to ask "what is brand identity?", how many of us could give an example. More tricky are questions like "what is the difference between brand recognition and brand awareness?", or "what is the difference between closing and fulfilment?".

... my student told me that the new teacher had absolutely no experience in business and could not effectively answer any of the students' questions.

There is a big difference between working in the school system and serving corporate customers.

In a school a pupil (consumer) is unlikely to complain, thier parents might, and the school principal (your customer) might have words but the child with not withdraw from class. And you would have to be pretty bad before any punitive measures were taken.

Corporate customers pay good money, they also have the cost of managers (the student) being away from their desk. If the student (consumer) complains, so will thier HR/Training Dept/budget holder (customer). They do complain and tehy do withdraw students from calss and withold payments, cancel contracts or don't renew contracts.

If the teacher is not meeting the students needs, it reflects on the teacher, the school and the industry. It impacts on the earnings of the school and subsequently the teaching staff. This is an example of one of those occassions were education and economics make uncomfrtable bed fellows.

[Superhal]

As an MA in ESL, I would agree. I received no specific training in business english. However, I am qualified (imho) to design a BE class and I'm confident it would be better for it.

There are two topics here: what does an MA bring and what does the class require, and which one can be taught through training? Imho, you are far more likely to train the content matter of a given class into someone rather than what a person gets through an MA program.

One word of caution: be wary of people who have MA in Education with a TESL concentration. These people aren't very solid in either and this is almost always the result of a distance education diploma mill.

[hallo]

i disagree with the poster who said you can't teach business english. i think you can. there are basic terms that for instance a german salesperson uses and if he is involved in international trade with a u.s. based company, he/she wants to learn the equivalent terms. also having a background in business enables a teacher to discuss terms in greater detail.

having previous business experience also allows a teacher to demand (and get) a high pay rate.

as an aside, i'd like to say. presently, i am working at a school that has teachers teaching business english who have no previous business experience. one of the teachers has given students incorrect information because the teacher pulled the information out of a (very dated) book.

[www.english-test.net]

Hello hallo,

You have made a couple of interesting points. For example, you say that you can teach business English and if you are convinced you can, then of course you can. So, maybe you can also tell us your definition of business? You mentioned that business terminology is important when it comes to teaching business English. But what exactly is business? And what is business English? And who defines which terms have to be used in which situation?

[hallo]

business english (in my opinion--i'm sure others have their own) is for _people who work in a company or an organization (or who would like to work in a company or organization) who need to communicate with people in other countries in order to engage in trade.

we all know what business school is. i hope most of us realize that working at a company is completely dissimilar than working at a school. dictionaries are helpful --but only up to a certain extent. business communication is filled with "lingo". some of which is contradictory. i don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure some of these things out. (':shock:') but it is to a school's advantage to hold onto teachers who have had hands on experience in the business world.

it's okay to help a client memorize technical terms. however, most clients also want to know how the terms are used and in what capacity.

[www.english-test.net]

business english is for _people who work in a company or an organization who need to communicate with people in other countries in order to engage in trade.

Hello again, hallo. Could you please tell us the difference between a company and an organization?

we all know what business school is.

What do you mean by 'business school'?

i hope most of us realize that working at a company is completely dissimilar than working at a school.

Hallo, are you saying that a school is not a company? What about the business school(s) you mentioned earlier? Wouldn't they qualify as being companies? Do the people who work at a (business) school use business English or do they use 'business school English'? Or maybe they use just 'school English?'

[www.english-test.net]

there are basic terms that for instance a german salesperson uses and if he is involved in international trade...

If that salesperson is already involved in international trade they should know basic terms already, else, how have they managed to get involved in international trade in the first place?

having previous business experience also allows a teacher to demand (and get) a high pay rate.

Really? And why is that?

as an aside, i'd like to say. presently, i am working at a school that has teachers teaching business english who have no previous business experience. one of the teachers has given students incorrect information because the teacher pulled the information out of a (very dated) book.

Does that mean you are working for a company that employs incompetent teachers?

[hallo]

answers to some of english-test.net questions. i've paraphased some of the questions:

business vs. organization: might i suggest you look this up in an _english dictionary. if you don't know the difference, i wonder why you are teaching english.

a school --such as harvard, is not a business. the red cross is an organization. businesses have organizational structures. you may run across people who use these words interchangeably, but i would argue that the meanings are different.


why someone with business experience might be able to ask for (and get) more money for teaching.

experience. generally speaking no matter what industry a person works in, he/she will usually receive more money for a position if he/she has more work experience. or at least, he/she can make a strong argument for a higher salary.

international sales:

last year, i worked with an executive who had just been promoted to a new position. in a lot of countries, people go to a university and receive a general degree and end up working in business. in other countries, a person might train for a very specific position. (the former is more common than the later.)

incompetent co-workers:

i don't work with incompetent people. i work with a lot of nice, friendly, wonderful people. but business terms (as i mentioned before) can be (seemingly) contradictory and heavily 'lingo' based. additionally, words go in and out of fashion very quickly. what was standard business lingo in the early 80s is somewhat different than what is presently being used.

but for people without professional business experience, i would recommend reading the business section of a reliable newspaper. and looking up words that sound unfamiliar such as EBDTa.

[hallo]

answers to some of english-test.net questions. i've paraphased some of the questions:

business vs. organization: might i suggest you look this up in an _english dictionary. if you don't know the difference, i wonder why you are teaching english.

a school --such as harvard, is not a business. the red cross is an organization. businesses have organizational structures. you may run across people who use these words interchangeably, but i would argue that the meanings are different.


why someone with business experience might be able to ask for (and get) more money for teaching.

experience. generally speaking no matter what industry a person works in, he/she will usually receive more money for a position if he/she has more work experience. or at least, he/she can make a strong argument for a higher salary.

international sales:

last year, i worked with an executive who had just been promoted to a new position. in a lot of countries, people go to a university and receive a general degree and end up working in business. in other countries, a person might train for a very specific position. (the former is more common than the later.)

incompetent co-workers:

i don't work with incompetent people. i work with a lot of nice, friendly, wonderful people. but business terms (as i mentioned before) can be (seemingly) contradictory and heavily 'lingo' based. additionally, words go in and out of fashion very quickly. what was standard business lingo in the early 80s is somewhat different than what is presently being used.

but for people without professional business experience, i would recommend reading the business section of a reliable newspaper. and looking up words that sound unfamiliar such as EBDTa.