Are you teaching business

or business English?

 
 
 
 
Aims:
• Understand what business English is and the direction it is heading

Materials required:
• None

Appropriate for:
• All business English teachers currently in the classroom

There is a lot of debate at present as to what exactly business English (BE) is and where it is going. Should
it be confined to teaching language needed for the workplace or is it more than that? Within this wider
debate, a question arises: how easy or desirable is it to separate business content from business language?
Should we confine ourselves to giving students the language tools to be able to do business – the language
of business – or to also provide students with opportunities to talk about business – language about
business? (Nelson, 2000). To be able to talk about business, students need to be exposed to business
content. When that happens, you get parallel learning in the BE classroom, where students are learning not
only the language but also improving their understanding of how business works in theory and practice. The
boundaries between business English and business studies consequently start to fade and blur.
Our answer to some of these questions may partly depend on the type of students we are dealing with.
There are basically two types of learners in a business English context: in-service working professionals who
have business experience, and pre-service students who have no working experience. The former are
generally found in private language schools whilst the latter are typically enrolled in pre-sessional or in-
sessional language courses in higher education institutions, where they are also studying business and
management
One thing we can be sure of is that BE is coming of age and expanding its horizons. In its infancy, it used to
be referred to critically as ‘General English with a tie on’. Well, it’s a lot more than that now, but how much
more is the big question.

Cambridge English Teacher © Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

 
  

Tasks

1. Quiz
Which of the following would you consider appropriate for BE teachers to do in their classroom? Write Yes to
indicate ‘appropriate’, No to indicate ‘inappropriate’ or Maybe to indicate ‘possibly appropriate’.

a. Facilitate learning of academic business theory

b. Facilitate learning of how business works in practice
c. Teach pronunciation features useful for presentations
d. Teach breathing techniques to help students relax before giving a presentation
e. Teach how to communicate across cultures (inter-cultural communication)
f. Teach speed-reading techniques
g. Teach critical thinking skills
h. Teach general English language in a business context

Which of the above would you feel confident incorporating into your teaching? If you do not feel confident in
any of these areas, what would you need to do in order to feel confident?

2. Reflecting on the BE textbooks you use

Textbooks vary considerably. However, you might be surprised by how much ‘learning about business’ and
‘developing real-world business skills’ there is in today’s BE textbooks along with the more traditional area of
‘learning business language’. There is also increasing attention paid to developing reading, writing, speaking
and listening skills, which goes well beyond basic listening and reading comprehension tasks or speaking
and writing practice.
After each of your next few BE classes, take a few moments to reflect on exactly what type of learning took
place in each class to build up a picture of what it is you are teaching and what it is your students are
learning. Do this by drawing a simple pie-chart after each class showing the rough percentage breakdown of
reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. In short, how much parallel learning is going on in your
classroom?

Cambridge English Teacher © Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

 
  
 

Suggested answers

1. Quiz
All eight activities could be considered appropriate for the BE classroom. See below for examples:
a. To facilitate learning of academic business theory, you can create listening and reading comprehension
work via an extract of a text from a business academic journal or an interview with a business professor, for
example. Texts are subsequently exploited for language and skills work. In the final analysis, whether to use
this kind of material or not will depend on the type of working professionals in your classroom and their
interests and needs.
b. To facilitate learning of how business works in practice, you can build comprehension tasks into business
case studies, extracts from company reports, interviews with business people, etc. As above, texts can be
exploited for skills and language work.
c. Pronunciation features useful for presentations include sentence and word stress, linking words,
intonation and pace.
d. Numerous breathing techniques exist such as diaphragmatic breathing. (If students are too nervous then
no matter how much language they have been taught, they won’t be able to perform). This is a useful part of
holistic learning.
e. Teaching inter-cultural communication could be introduced via texts (reading and listening) on the topic
which can act as a springboard for students to discuss their own experiences.
f. Borrowing from English for Academic Purposes (EAP), you can teach students how to read more
efficiently by teaching reading sub-skills such as skimming and scanning, predicting content, etc. This is as
relevant to business people with overflowing inboxes as to students with long reading lists.
g. Teaching critical thinking skills is particularly useful when teaching in-service students. Deal with
emergent language in student essays and reports. Many students focus too much on simple description
when they need to think critically about issues by analysing, evaluating, comparing and contrasting amongst
other issues.
h. Teach tense system and language functions (agreeing/disagreeing, inviting, clarifying information, etc.)
where target language is embedded in business conversations presented as listening exercises.

Reference
Nelson, M. (2000) A Corpus-based study of the lexis of business English and business English teaching
materials, unpublished thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester. Available
at: http://users.utu.fi/micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm. [Last accessed 15 October 2013]

Cambridge English Teacher © Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014