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Teaching English to business students: The syllabus, materials, methods, and assessments

This presentation explores the curriculum, teaching materials, instructional methods, and assessment instruments for teaching English to business students, with a focus on Bengali-speaking students. It highlights the importance of Business English skills in the globalized world and the role of teachers in helping students achieve desired learning outcomes.

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Teaching English to business students: The syllabus, materials, methods, and assessments

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  1. Teaching English to business students:The syllabus, materials, methods, and assessments Prof. M. Maniruzzaman, Ph. D. Email ID: mmz71@juniv.eduCellphone: (+88) 01711 337 559

  2. Introduction • Business students currently unavoidably need to be capable of effectively communicating in English. • Business English has recently received increasing importance due to globalization, outsourcing, e-banking, e-commerce, e-business, e-marketing, cross-cultural business negotiations and so forth. • The students graduating from business disciplines, schools, colleges, economic universities or just searching for jobs have to be competitive in the labor market.

  3. Introduction (cont.) • A good command of Business English is, next to managerial skills, a necessity in the 21st century. • Hence, teaching Business English is as crucial as challenging; and • The teachers and/or trainers concerned play an important role in helping business students achieve the learning outcomes stated in the syllabus and/or curriculum of Business English.

  4. Today’s presentation- • examines and addresses four rudimentary issues relating to teaching English to business students, especially the Bengali speaking ones: • The curriculum and/or syllabus • The teaching/learning materials • The instructional methods, techniques, or strategies • The assessment instruments

  5. The curriculum and/or syllabus • The syllabus addresses the questions: • What does the teacher teach when he/she teaches English to business students?, • What do business students learn when they learn English?, and • What learning outcomes do business students achieve after the completion of the course?

  6. The curriculum and/or syllabus (cont.) • Teaching business English differs from teaching general English since the former is a register having technical linguistic and extralinguistic elements which the latter usually lack. • Ellis and Johnson (2003): Business English is different from other varieties of English since it is often a blend of specific content concerned with particular job areas or industries, and general content related to general ability to communicate especially in the business setting.

  7. The curriculum and/or syllabus (cont.) • Hyland (2009): Business English incorporates developing communicative skills based on general English practice, and the relevant socio-professional dimensions of communication determined by specific business contexts. • Brieger (1997): teaching Business English connects three aspects to achieve the learning outcomes- • teaching meaning running a training program, • English meaning knowledge of a language and culture, and • business meaning having knowledge of the subject-matter.

  8. The curriculum and/or syllabus (cont.) • Mihaescu (2013): the Business English syllabus should be defined in relation to- • business performance skills: presentations, meetings, socializing, negotiating, specific documents’ reading or writing, and • the language in the syllabus: grammatical or lexical items, stress and intonation patterns, and organizational characteristics, such as signaling a new topic or turn-taking in interactive situations.

  9. The curriculum and/or syllabus (cont.) • Thus, the curriculum and/or syllabus for a Business English course should first state clear, observable and measurable learning outcomes, e.g.: • After the completion of the course (C), the BBA first semester students (A) will use 300 business words for communication (B) with full appropriateness (D). - (Maryland Faculty Online, 2001)

  10. The curriculum and/or syllabus (cont.) • and then embody the following based on learner needs assessment: • General communicative English: the basic skills including basic grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation • Business English as a register: business vocabulary, expressions, terms, and genres • Cultures: local, target, and global • Business contexts: local, and international

  11. The teaching/learning materials • What materials do the teacher and business student use to achieve the learning outcomes? • Printed materials: books, newspapers, magazines, photocopies, realia … • Virtual materials: soft copies (word, pdf…), PPT slides, online materials, • Recorded materials: audio, audio-video clips, you-tubes … • Ready-made materials: collected from market … • Teacher-made materials: handouts, PPT slides … • Learner-made materials: written assignments …

  12. The teaching/learning materials (cont.) • Materials should be as authentic as they can be. • Rogers & Medley (1988, p. 467): consider them as “appropriate” and “quality” in terms of goals, objectives, learner needs and interest and “natural” referring to real life and meaningful communication.

  13. The teaching/learning materials (cont.) • Advantages of using authentic materials: • provide exposure to real language, to a reality level of Business English. • drawn from periodicals are always up-to-date and constantly being updated. • relate more closely to learner needs and provide them with a source of up-to-date relevant materials for learning Business English. • have a positive effect on learner motivation. • provide authentic cultural information. • offer a more creative approach to teaching.

  14. The instructional methods, techniques or strategies • The instructional methods answer the question: • How does the teacher teach English to business students? • Instruction refers to activities, methods, or techniques reinforcing the learning objectives of a curriculum, course, module or lesson and preparing students for assessments measuring learning outcomes (Burger, 2008).

  15. The instructional methods, techniques or strategies (cont.) • They are basically descriptions of the activities oriented to specific learning outcomes and the flow of information between teachers and students (Kizlik, 2012). • Instructional methods perform three essential roles: • motivating students and helping them focus attention, • organizing information for understanding and remembering, and • monitoring and assessing learning.

  16. The instructional methods, techniques or strategies (cont.) • Ellis & Johnson (2003): the ideal instructional activities should- • balance language skills and business knowledge • combine language skills and intercultural communication skills • provide both classroom teaching and autonomous learning • enhance professional and humanistic understanding • teach both theories and practicum • employ traditional methods and modern IT approaches • use learner-centered and teacher-guided approaches, and • motivate students within the classroom.

  17. The instructional methods, techniques or strategies (cont.) • Since business operations particularly involve interpersonal communication, the CLTA proves more beneficial than others. • Communicative activities including role-plays, simulations, projects, and case studies are the most important Business English task-based learning techniques (Wang, 2011). • Besides, business students should have an opportunity to develop their business communication skills: meeting, presentation and negotiation, as well as management, team work, decision-making, problem-solving, critical thinking, and organizational skills (Yan & Zhai, 2012).

  18. The instructional methods, techniques or strategies (cont.) • Guan, Ma, and Han (2012) propose a new teaching method for Business English teachers based on computer networks or a multimedia environment. • The method is a combination of graphics, images, vibrant colors, realistic sounds, dynamic images, and text. • By using this method, students feel stimulated to be more interested in learning, to pay more attention to their coursework, and to improve their English language proficiency needed for communication in the business context.

  19. The assessment instruments • The assessment instruments respond to the question: • How are the learning outcomes assessed? • That is, assessment functions as a component of evaluation, and is constituted of varied ways exploited for collecting information about learners and their ability and achievement.

  20. The assessment instruments (cont.) • Brown and Abeywickrama (2010) identify assessment as an ongoing process, consider it as an umbrella term embodying a plethora of methodological techniques: testing, surveying, observing and the like used for ascertaining learners’ performance. • Coombe et al. (2007) contrast traditional assessment (TA) with alternative assessment (AA). • TA commonly including pencil-and-paper tests is a measure in a teacher-dominated classroom for determining what students know about the target language, e.g. multiple-choice tests, true/false tests, short answers, and essays.

  21. The assessment instruments (cont.) • AA is based on: knowledge having multiple meanings, learning being an active process, both process and product being valued, developing real-world problem-solving skills, assessment facilitating learning, integrating cognitive, affective and conative abilities, assessment being subjective and value-laden, sharing power and control, and learning being a collaborative process (Brown & Hudson, 1998). • In a learner-centered class, AA exploits activities disclosing what students can perform with the target language, e.g. open-ended questions, exhibits, demonstrations, hands-on execution of experiments, computer simulations, portfolios, journals, and projects.

  22. The assessment instruments (cont.) • The selection of the right type of assessment depends on two paramount factors: • consonance of the assessment purpose with the decisions being made, and • the agreement of the assessment type with the curriculum, course, module or lesson objectives or learning points. • However, assessment should be for learning, not of learning. • Hence, AA is preferred to TA.

  23. Conclusion • Learner needs assessment • The demand of the business context • Local, target language, global cultures • The syllabus with learning outcomes clearly stated • The materials being authentic • Appropriate instructional techniques promoting cooperation and collaboration, and self-learning • Assessment enhancing learning, preferably formative

  24. References • Brieger, N. (1997). Teaching Business English handbook. York: York Associates. • Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment principles and classroom practices. White Plains, N.Y.: Pearson Education. • Brown, J. D. & Hudson, T. (1998). The alternatives in language assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4): 653–675. • Burger, M. (2008). The alignment of teaching, learning and assessment in English home language grade 10 in District 9, Johannesburg (Dissertation). University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.

  25. References (cont.) • Coombe, C., Folse, K., & Hubley, N. (2007). A practical guide to assessing English-language learners. Michigan Teacher Training series. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. • Ellis, M. and Johnson, C. (2003) Teaching Business English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Guan, W., Ma, R., & Han, Q. (2012). A study on Business English teaching under multimedia environment. Proceedings of 2012 International conference on artificial intelligence and soft computing: Lecture notes in information technology, 12. • Hyland, K. (2009). English for professional academic purposes: Writing for scholarly publications. In: Belcher, D. (ed.) Teaching language purposefully: English for specific purposes in theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 83-105.

  26. References (cont.) • Kizlik, B. (2012). Instructional methods information. Robert Kizlik & Associates. Boca Raton, Florida, Amazon.com • Maryland Faculty Online. (2001).The ABCD model for writing objectives. Retrieved October 27, 2012, from http://www.mdfaconline.org/mdfaconline/Presentations/ABCDmodel.doc • Mihaescu, (2013). Current issues in teaching Business English to university students. Knowledge Horizons, 5 (1). • Rogers, C. V. and Medley, F. W. (1988). Language with a purpose: Using authentic materials in the foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals.

  27. References (cont.) • Wang, W. (2011). Teaching Business English in China: Views on the case-based teaching in intercultural business communication. The Asian ESP Journal, 7(1). • Yan, X., & Zhai, L. (2012). The application of communicative approach in Business English teaching. The Asian ESP Journal, 9(2).

  28. Thank you so much!

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