What Are Some General Pointers for First-time Business English Teachers?
1. Find Out What Your Students and the Stakeholders Expect:
Just like with any class, you need to find out what outcomes your stakeholders want to achieve. This will not only help you know what material to cover and how to assess student progress, but it will allow you to manage your students’ and investors’ expectations from the very beginning, leading to an amicable and successful relationship between you and them.
2. Be Professional Without Becoming Boring:
While you should strive for professionalism and always keep in mind that your students come from a business environment, this doesn’t mean that classes need to be boring. You may not pull out all the same stops you would with other classes, such as using puppets, but your adult students will still appreciate you keeping things lively with Business English games and other activities.
Try to bring in interesting resources, such as current business magazines, podcasts about industry topics, or videos of market news reports, in order to diversify your activities. If teaching online, you can easily screen share things like news articles and videos with your students.
Business English teacher Cristina notes, “When my students have a very strong level of English, I often try to teach them something other than just English. For example, I had a student whose English was very advanced, so instead of giving her a vocabulary or grammar lesson, I created a lesson around the artist Frida Kahlo and her life. Not only was she learning English, but she was learning about art and history!”
3. Understand Your Students’ Lifestyle:
Unlike students in other ESL classes, Business English students are probably attending class just before or after work, and your hours may be either very early or late. Additionally, your students’ busy lives may prompt them to cancel or change their class hours at the last minute due to work-related problems that arise. Be understanding and flexible if you can, and remember that the higher pay usually makes up for any scheduling issues.
4. Find Out Who Should Be Receiving Your Progress Reports:
From the beginning of the course, it’s important to identify who will be able to answer any questions you may have and who would like to see your students’ progress, and how often. Find out if you should be contacting your supervisor at your language institute or the students’ supervisor for this. If your point of contact is the students’ supervisor, you don’t want to inundate him or her with too many reports, but you do want to keep them in the loop with progress updates. Agree upon a schedule of reporting.
James coaches ESL teachers to get their own students online and build a 6-figure teaching business. James is a scientist, consultant, business coach, and an ESL student himself. His own ESL teachers inspired him to start a business to help many more ESL teachers who are currently undervalued. To know more contact us!