Geomuse Education » english course http://www.geomuse.org Providing Varied Information on Education especially in The Web Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:04:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 A Brief History of Business English Teaching http://www.geomuse.org/37/a-brief-history-of-business-english-teaching http://www.geomuse.org/37/a-brief-history-of-business-english-teaching#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:20:15 +0000 admin http://www.geomuse.org/?p=37 What methodologists and teachers consider differentiates Business English from General English has obvious implications on how Business English is taught, along with the dominant approaches in English language teaching at any given time. We can see this by taking a brief look at developments in Business English teaching.

In the late 1960s and 1970s it was felt that the difference between Business English and General English was mainly specialist vocabulary, and this was reflected in the coursebooks and materials of the time. These focused largely on texts with comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, and repetition drills. Business skills and application to real-life situations were not generally focused on.

A move towards greater skills training in a business context occurred in 1972 with the publication of the BBC coursebook and video English for Business, which incorporated greater emphasis on areas such as listening skills development, dialogue practice and role-plays, therefore accepting the need to develop students’ skills to deal with practical situations. This trend continued during the mid-1970s and 1980s, when Business English teaching followed the move in General English teaching towards a more functional syllabus. The focus was now on functional language and the teaching of formulaic phrases for recommending, agreeing, disagreeing etc. These were introducedin business contexts and practised in role-plays of common business situations such as making appointments, making introductions, business lunches etc.

From the late 1980s the focus shifted to working on business communication skills. This was largely due to the development of company training programmes in the late 1980s, which began to provide employees with opportunities to attend courses in presentation techniques, negotiating and effective meeting skills, among other things. This of course led to the publication of books and materials onbusiness communication skills. This has profoundly influenced Business English teaching up to the present day in that the focus on Business communication skills forms a major component of most current Business English courses and coursebooks.

To conclude, and broadly-speaking, the focus on real-world communication, which is prevalent in much contemporary Business English teaching, fits in neatly with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the predominant approach toEnglish language teaching in the world for the past twenty years. In essence this is an approach to language teaching where the underlying key objective is to develop the learners’ ability to use language to communicate effectively. An important point related to CLT is that fluency and acceptable language is the primary goal. Language accuracy is judged in context.

Related posts

]]> http://www.geomuse.org/37/a-brief-history-of-business-english-teaching/feed 0 General tips on Learning English http://www.geomuse.org/33/general-tips-on-learning-english http://www.geomuse.org/33/general-tips-on-learning-english#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:17:21 +0000 admin http://www.geomuse.org/?p=33 If you want to learn English and are thinking about taking one of the many English courses on offer, then it’s important to develop good study habits to ensure you get the most out of your time and money investment. Below are a few general study tips to help you.
Review regularly
It’s important to revise and review regularly. Whether you are studying General English, Business English or something more academic like IELTS it’simportant to review a lesson within 24 hours and then again within a week. Good language courses usually build in review sessions but you should be able to do this for yourself.
Talk and write about what you enjoy
Once you have mastered the basics of the English language it’s important to practise talking and writing about the things that really interest you. This way you are better able to converse in English using the most typical grammatical constructions and phrases.
Study every day
It’s important to try and get into the habit of studying every day. A good way of going about this is to set out a weekly routine specifying a daily amount of study time that you have to do. This should fit around everything else you do but preferably at a time of day when your brain is at its most receptive. It’s better to study for 30 minutes every day than for 3 hours once a week. If you can manage an hour a day, break it up into two sessions of 30 minutes with a short 5 minute break in the middle to keep yourself fresh.
Target setting
Setting reasonable targets is a good way to motivate yourself. Your teacher will be able to help you do this .You could aim to achieve for a certain level of proficiency for example.
Keep going!
There will be times when learning English seems impossible and that you are not making any progress, whilst at other times you seem to be picking things up easily. These fluctuations are normal when learning a language so don’t be discouraged. If you feel like you are making little or no progress, try going over earlier lessons/exercises to see if they’re easier now than when you first tried them.
Make it fun!
Find ways to make learning English fun. This could involve on-line learning, songs, stories, jokes and anything else that comes to mind.

Related posts

]]> http://www.geomuse.org/33/general-tips-on-learning-english/feed 0