Accredited Level 3 Diploma in Teaching Business English

Content:
Module 1 - Introduction to Business English
This Unit introduces the Concepts of Business English and focuses upon the following elements:

• Why do we need to teach Business English ?
• Who requires Business English ?
• The market demand for Business English
• What concepts are required in Business English?
• Teacher qualities for teaching Business English
• The methods employed for Teaching Business English
• Introduction to online teaching
• Tools for teaching online Business English

Module 2 - Business Grammar

In business accurate grammar is essential. It is sometimes glossed over in English language courses! Whilst when arranging a luncheon party some colloquialisms or inaccurate use of terminology might be unimportant, when negotiating large contracts precise use of language is essential.

We can see the differences caused, as an example, by looking at the following sentence "I meet John at the office". The word "only" can be inserted in any of 5 places in that simple sentence. Each gives a very different meaning:

"Only I meet John at the office". "I only meet John at the office". "I meet only John at the office". "I meet John only at the office". "I meet John at the only office".

Module 2 will focus on those Grammar applications which are applicable to business conversation and writing skills. These are not intuitive and need to be taught.

Module 3 - Pronunciation Skills

Pronunciation in English is absolutely counterintuitive! This is a problem acknowledged by any student of the language. To learn the pronunciation of an English word you can look it up in a dictionary. Dictionaries tell you how to pronounce by using a special system called "phonetic transcription". Phonetic transcriptions are written in a phonetic alphabet. The most widely used phonetic alphabet is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Different branches of English have different pronunciation. For example, the pronunciation (the accent) in British English is different from the pronunciation in American English. This is simply one division but there are others. For example in India there are words in daily use which have long since become obsolete in England. Look up such words as prepone and thrice!

You have a choice between British English and American English, because these are the most important kinds of English in the world. Which one should you choose? Probably the kind that you prefer. Whether you choose British or American pronunciation, people will understand you wherever you go. Of course, you don't have to decide: you can learn to speak both kinds of English.

Module 3 concentrates on pronunciation skills focused within sample business conversations.
Module 4 - Grammar Translation

The grammar-translation method of foreign language teaching is a very old system. It concentrates on written work without much consideration of oral skills. Like most things, this has advantages and disadvantages.

In the course we try to use the advantages as much as possible without marring the fluency of the speaker. This is, still, a very useful method of communicating essential skills to a student.

Module 5 - Conversational English

English is the international language! 85% of the Internet is in English, three quarters of the world's mail is written in English, and it is the official language of air traffic control! The World Trade Organization debriefs, meets, and publicizes in English, even if the representatives are from countries where English is not the native language. How many more reasons could you want as to why adult learners abroad need business English teachers like you? This is your opportunity to teach the leaders and business innovators of tomorrow how to communicate effectively on an international level.

This part of the course is aimed at teaching you business conversational skills to equip your students to carry out work related assignments in business English. The emphasis is training the teacher to pass on business conversational skills. It examines different methods of delivery from the internet, formal class teaching to conducting business assignments as a language expert in order to teach executive English language conversation skills.

Module 6 - Vocabulary

This section will list some of the most common words and phrases in thirteen different business areas, together with financial terms in British and American English.

• Advertising
• Banking
• Company Structure
• Contracts
• Employment
• Import-Export
• Insurance
• Law
• Marketing
• Meetings
• Money
• Presentations
• Selling
• Financial Terms (British and American)

The emphasis of this course is to assist the Business English Teacher in getting started in building up essential business English vocabulary. The objective being to teach relevance, technique and purpose. It examines methods of building this library and getting additional information for work related assignments.

Within business certain words have specific meanings and these can be very different from the meaning of the same word in general parlance. For example the word "quotation" to most people means something like "To be or not to be, that is the question". To a business person it means a firm price for a job!

Some words have entirely different meanings between British English and American English. What an American calls inventory, an English person calls stock. What an American calls stock, an English person calls shares. Again these differences need to be learnt to avoid errors.

Module 7 - The Lexical Approach

The lexical approach makes a distinction between vocabulary—traditionally understood as a stock of individual words with fixed meanings—and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. The lexical approach advocates argue that language consists of meaningful chunks that, when combined, produce continuous coherent text, and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations. It is, however, important to avoid clichés These are commonly used phrases which are often meaningless- they can often be removed entirely without altering the meaning of the text. You will be given examples of these and how to avoid them.

Lexis, in its various types plays a central role in language teaching and learning. Teaching should be based on the idea that language production is the piecing together of ready-made units appropriate for a particular situation. Comprehension of such units is dependent on knowing the patterns to predict in different situations. Instruction, therefore, should centre on these patterns and the ways they can be pieced together, along with the ways they vary and the situations in which they occur.

Activities used to develop learners' knowledge of lexical chains include the following:

• Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language.
• First and second language comparisons and translation—carried out chunk-for-chunk, rather than word-for-word—aimed at raising language awareness.
• Repetition and recycling of activities, such as summarising a text orally one day and again a few days later to keep words and expressions that have been learned active.
• Guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context.
• Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations.
• Working with dictionaries and other reference tools.
• Working with language corpuses created by the teacher for use in the classroom or accessible on the Internet—such as the British National Corpus.

Module 8 - The Eclectic Approach

Eclectic means selecting things from a variety of sources. The eclectic approach is based on a foundation of three principles:

1. Successful learners focus on language performance, not classroom study. 2. On-the-job English needs should drive classroom learning and independent study. Learners receive immediate business results, because most learning is preparation for actual performance events in presentations, meetings, research, professional 3. Active - Our constructivist method development, email, etc.

• Successful learners are active, autonomous, and accountable. The focus of the course is on "learning by doing" with English.
• Successful learners are autonomous - The focus on substance learning (learning how to learn) gives students the tools to take charge of their own learning. So teachers can do more coaching, and less lecturing. The job of the teacher, then, becomes to motivate the student to want to learn.
• Successful learners are accountable - We enable students to design and manage their own programme, which establishes goals in accordance with the acronym S.M.A.R.T. (q.v.) and timetables to keep progress on track and keep track of progress.
• Successful learners use a variety of channels to gain knowledge and experience. Many of these channels are pointed out to our students. It is amazing quite how much high quality material is available, free of charge, if you only know where to find it!

Most language learning consists of a teacher, classroom, and book. In contrast, business English teaching focuses on a wide range of channels that correspond to individual learning styles, such as blogs, peer learning, white papers, web conferencing, podcasts, cable TV, wikis, discussion groups and forums and e-learning, in addition to the essential working with a teacher.

Module 9 - Teaching Receptivity Skills

Listening to and understanding speech involves a number of basic processes. Some depend upon linguistic competence. Some depend upon previous knowledge that is not necessarily of a purely linguistic nature. Some depend upon psychological variables that affect the utilisation of these competences and this knowledge in reference to a particular task. The listener must have a complete set of these in order to listen and understand As he or she hears the language, the student might be helped, by part of the set, to process and remember the information transmitted.

This Module will teach receptivity, within the context of Business English focusing primarily on listening and reading skills.
Module 10 - Business Meetings and Presentations

The course will examine how to conduct both Business Meetings and carry our presentations using effective Business English. The emphasis will be on providing the teacher with the skills and techniques to enable instruction to improve the quality of both meeting materials and presentations. For example:- Business Meetings:

Have an Agenda:

Outline what points will be covered in the meeting. Type it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help save time and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.

Follow the Agenda:

This sounds very elementary, but you'd be surprised by the number of people who take the time to create an agenda, and then disregard it during the meeting.

Limit the Agenda to key matters:

Ask yourself, "What are the most important things we need to cover in the meeting?" Limit the agenda to these points. The rest of the things you wanted to cover, by definition, weren't really important anyway, so why waste everyone's time?

Entry Requirements:

• All students must be 16 years of age or above.
• Level 3 Diploma courses require a minimum prior learning to GCSE standard. This is to ensure that students can manage their studies and have the assumed knowledge within course content.
• Study Hours
• Approximately 20 hours per unit. This varies between students and depends on your ability and aptitude. The course is completely flexible. You might find some units take less than 20 hours. If you are particularly interested in a certain unit, or if it is very relevant to your situation, you are free to devote more time to it.

Assessment Method

• 2 assessments. The first one is at the half way mark and the final one is when you have completed all the units.

Award

• OLC Level 3 Diploma in Teaching Business English