- 1). Figure out what the students are hoping to achieve from the course. Business English can have different meanings to different people around the world. For some people, it can mean the language of international trade, while for others it can mean the language and communications skills that office workers need. For example, if you were teaching a group that were mostly secretaries and administration staff, they would want you to teach them English used for phone conversation skills and email writing.
- 2). Give your students English practice by role playing realistic scenarios of meetings, greeting clients, telephone conversations, customer service and business negotiations. For example, bring a student up in front of the class to be a customer asking for a return on an item and have the other student be a customer service representative dealing with the situation. Afterwords, have them switch parts and show them how they could of improved the situation. In addition, prepare with a collection of phrases that they might use in an English-speaking environment such as at business lunches at the office or during breaks at international conferences.
- 3). Make the students do business presentations in front of the class. Different topics may be on marketing, promoting and negotiating. Teach them how to introduce their topic, how to transition it from one idea to the next and how to conclude the topic and take questions from the audience. English learners might need to do presentations for their business and this will give them a starting point to how it should be done.
- 4). Teach business English correspondence skills to the students. Almost all professions who use English for business need to write business letters, emails, and short reports and will need to use the common standard phrases or terms associated with business writing. For each lesson, pick one type of correspondence like writing a formal letter to employer and provide good examples to demonstrate how it would be done. During these lessons, you will need to emphasize more on English grammar and punctuations.
- 5). Broaden the selection of discussion topics in business. For example, even if your students may work for an insurance company, that doesn't mean that want to talk about business related to insurance for the whole time. Offer diverse topics in that involve business English speaking skills such as etiquette in multicultural settings, how to use English to find new jobs on the market or the advantages and disadvantages of doing business abroad. The goal of business English is not so much to teach about business, but to get the students to be exposed to as much English as possible so that can effectively use the English that they have learned to work in their business-related field.
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