Those #&!*% boring books!

One major problem teachers have brought up is that material is boring. Although it is quite easy to find that material is boring it actually leads us to a much more difficult but important and useful question. What material is exciting? What coursebook do you know of that makes students excited to come to class? What books have made your class the most interesting class the students attend in their school? What coursebooks give the sleepers insomnia? What coursebooks are so much fun that students who have no extrinsic interest in learning English take your course just because it's so fascinating?

Thinking outside the book

One thing that students and teachers really struggle with is boredom. Maybe I'm just easily bored but I have yet to find a book or teacher that really keeps the student's interest from cover to cover, it doesn't matter how good they are.

Sometimes I think that the way English teaching works is that we often trap ourselves into thinking "inside the book". Publishers have little interest in helping teachers think otherwise and because we often lean on manufactured materials we always wind up with a book.

We are basically teaching the same way Socrates, Plato and Aristotle taught thousands of years ago except for the addition of the printed book invented by Gutenberg.

Of course, there are guys who have rebelled against the book. You can find a bunch of them at Dogme. They have a Yahoo group and their leader has published in The Guardian newspaper ELT pages.

But to me, they seem more readily identified for what they are against than what they are for. And from my experience, it really helps to have a course or plan for students as otherwise the training can seem a bit aimless to the students.

So how can we escape the book but still have a plan?

First, let's brainstorm a list of all the new tools and technologies and other things that are available to us since the days of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Gutenberg. Without much order, here is my list:

Computers
Email
Telephone
Phone messages
PowerPoint
YouTube
PDA
Chat rooms
Blogs
Websites
Fax
MP3
MP4
Video
Email spam
Voice spam
Television
Shopping malls

Perhaps your list is longer. Now, just as a thought exercise to stretch us "outside the book", what if you assigned yourself the task of using each of these to provide some part of a training course.

There was once a game called Majestic by Electronic Arts. They described it as "The suspense thriller that infiltrates your life through the Internet, telephone and fax, then leaves you guessing where the game ends and reality begins." To play this game you had to check websites and periodically you'd receive frantic phone calls with clues or cryptic faxes.

I think something so pervasive would be an exciting way to teach and learn. What would a "Majestic" English course be like? The student would be receiving training from so many directions at so many times. Of course, not all of this is possible with every teacher and every student, but employing some of these technologies could really get us "out of the book". Consider the possibilities that a ficticious Chinese student named Jerry Liang would experience:

- Jerry gets a daily Email that has a short lesson, story or MP3. This Email is pumped out to Jerry and all the other students by a program similar to those used by spammers.

- Jerry also receives a daily SMS phone messages that reminds him to study an assignment, do homework or join some activities that the teacher has organized.

- Every week, Jerry is directed to watch a certain TV program or movie which all the other students and teacher will be watching. Jerry doesn't have to participate if he is busy that night but he does need to participate in at least two per week. Jerry tunes in the program and starts the chat program on his computer. While he is watching the program on his home TV, other students and the teacher are watching it and chatting with him about it, about the story, actors, what they like or don't like, etc. ("Don't go in that dark room!...don't do it!...Ugh! I knew it!!!")

- Jerry posts assignments on the blog.

- Jerry gets SMS phone messages with new vocabulary on set days. After first contact with the new vocabulary in a lesson he receives the vocabulary in a message on day 2, 5, 12, 19, 33, 63. He has a look at the words and reviews them.

- He has some specially recorded lessons made by his teacher or other teachers in MP3 format in his MP3/MP4 player or PDA which he listens to throughout the day.

- When Jerry visits the popular local mall he takes a walking tour via MP3. The teacher has made a short recording and guides the him through the mall, describing interesting things about the mall and shops and introducing more new vocabulary. ("Starbucks took its name from a coffee-loving character in the famous American novel called 'Moby Dick', a story about a man hunting a whale. Starbuck's strategy is to become people's 'third place', the main place people go outside of home and work.")

- Sometimes Jerry receives a phone call from the teacher to practice his speaking, but more often than not, the teacher (randomly?) assigns Jerry and the other students speaking buddies, other students, who he calls to practice a particular speaking activity. Every week Jerry recieves an Email with a speaking lesson to practice and his speaking buddy's phone number. Sometimes the buddy is in his class but most of the time the buddy is a student in one of the teacher's other classes, perhaps a manager in a company. It's interesting to have this way to talk to various professionals that he wouldn't normally meet (and Jerry thinks it's always interesting to talk to girls).

- Twice a month, Jerry is given a phone number to a company in an English speaking country that provides information about their services along with one or more questions that he needs to ask about. For example, he once had to call Trump International Hotel in New York to find out if they allow dogs in the room. (They do if the dog is under 10 pounds but the guest must pay a non-refundable $200.) This provides a real English challenge and practice for Jerry.

- Etc, etc, etc.

All of this is possible with current technology but will never be offered by a book publisher. It just remains for the teacher to sort out his content and figure out the different ways to deliver it.

A student, going through a course like that, would have an experience they've never had before. But as I said, maybe I dream up this stuff because I'm the kind of person who is easily bored.

Is there life after coursebooks?

In some postings last year I discussed many teachers feelings of frustrations with coursebooks.

A friend of mine, visiting from the USA, told me that many professors in universities have stopped using commercial textbooks and make their own books for their students. Indeed, while obviously a great believer in the coursebook, while visiting China, Jack Richards, the other of Interchange by Cambridge University Press, said there was a growing movement in Australia to not use commercially prepared coursebooks. He said that people are beginning to think you are not a very good teacher if you have to use a commercial coursebook.

I recently came across this podcast by Richard Baraniuk[1], a Rice University professor, with some brilliant insight about the possibilities of what life would be like after commercial coursebooks.

http://odeo.com/audio/1789167/view

ESP needs

As far as teaching students who are working, I'm terribly disappointed with the published materials for English for Special Purposes (ESP). Our school wanted to start several various ESP programs and we did a review of all the books available.

Cambridge's Information Technology ESP book, embarrassingly, has vocabulary including for "floppy disk". It is typical of many books on the market. (1) Out of date information. These books get old and are not updated. (2) Out of touch. IT people nearly always have a good technical vocabulary and perhaps to a lesser extent so do other professionals.

Of all the ESPs the biggest one and the one that attracts the most efforts of publishers is Business English. Even with Business English it is difficult to find material that is truly suitable for office workers.

I am about to start another year of teaching at an American logistics company that has centers in over 40 countries. Here is a typical Email that represents the type of English they need. This is written by one of my next students there:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Mr. Cao(ABC Co.), Polly(DEF Ltd.), Charles(GHI Inc.) and Daniel(JKL),

Greetings from Susan Lau, MNO Guangzhou.

Per PQ's e-mail below, I believe you already come into production the Holiday POPs. As you know, MNO need to repack and allocate the POPs to more than 400 RST Stores in Mainland China.

Usually, we will do the following when POPs ETA MNO:
- Combine some POPs to one carton to save packaging materials. (e.g. We usually put the Translite, Standee and Hanging Mobile into one Standee wrap)
- Ask some Temp. Helper on the POP allocation(to reduce Over Time Pay for
Workers)
- Catch Normal Routing Delivery to DCs, then from DC to Stores(to save delivery cost)
- 2 days repack in SUMS for 400+ stores

Therefore, we need your cooperation to deliver the POPs to MNO on or before Dec. 27, 2004. Otherwise, some POPs will be delivered by Express mail, this will bring on high delivery cost.

Any query or comments please feel free to call me or send me an E-mail.

Many thanks!

Susan Lau
Manager Trainee - MNO(GZ)

BERL Services (Guangzhou) Ltd.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Most business people have difficulty with basic English. Students should probably focus on basic English until the upper-intermediate level. At that point the technical vocabulary they need is often particular to their specific type of business and their particular company and it is unlikely that a business book will even come close to it.

What is the solution? Something the publishers have no interest in giving us.

The ultimate ESP teacher tool would be a computer program that drove a flexible template based course generator. It would be strong on basic functions and notions and grammar practice (as is needed in the sample above) and allow teachers to easily insert the vocabulary and themes needed by the ESP teacher.

Photo: My student, a manager of a cold storage logistics company, visiting one of the top supermarkets in the city with me, learning and practicing her English about...well, cold storage.

Will a McTeacher steal your job?

One teacher in the USA explained: "As for Allwright's comment, surely everyone knows that the day of 'teacher proof' materials has already arrived. The trend in publishing now is to write teacher's manuals with step-by-step directions and explanations of anything likely to cause the teacher difficulty. I have written half of dozen of these myself."

A teacher in Greece declares: "Dick Allwright's views do resonate with me. Behind the perceived indispensability of packaged methods and coursebooks alike lies (lurks?) a conception of teachers as semi-skilled 'materials operators', rather than educated and trained professionals."

A McJob is "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement."

I don't think we can call any of my blog readers a McTeacher. Just by viewing this blog shows that you are a professional and serious about your career and looking for more information to improve your skills. But let’s ask the question:

Are there McTeachers "out there"?

I'll venture answering "yes" as far as China is concerned. In China, we don't call them McTeachers. We call them backpackers. There has been a lot of discussion amongst teachers in China about the problem of the McTeachers which some teachers claim have infested the teaching jobs in China. Teachers with MA's and trying to find good jobs with decent pay blame these McTeachers for driving the wages down. A teacher working at a university with an MA will likely get only $120 more per month than a McTeacher or if working at a private training center may get paid the same.

Jack Richards referred to Apple and Jungck for a definition of deskilling published in a paper called "You don't have to be a teacher to teach this unit": "The first is what we shall call separation of conception from execution. When complicated jobs are broken down into atomistic elements, the person doing the job loses sight of the whole process and loses control over her or his own labor because someone outside the immediate situation now has greater control over both the planning and what is actually to go on.

"The second consequence is related, but adds a further debilitating characteristic. This is known as deskilling. As employees lose control over their own labor, the skills that they have developed over the years atrophy. They are slowly lost, thereby making it even easier for management to control even more of one's job because the skills of planning and controlling it yourself are no longer available. A general principle emerges here: in one's labor, lack of use leads to loss."(1)

This is not an issue to blame on publishers or material writers. It's a tribute to coursebook writers. They have made the new coursebooks so easy to use that even a McTeacher can use them. Fine. But what are you going to have to do to preserve your job?

============
(1) Apple,M and Jungck, S. 1990. "You don't have to be a teacher to teach this unit." Teaching, technology, and gender in the classroom. American Educational Research Journal 27(2):230

Choose between "static" or "dynamic" teaching materials

During one of my rants against coursebooks a teacher challenged me: "Dave Kees would like to see coursebooks that are more alive and dynamic. That would be wonderful. However, it is the teacher who brings life to the material. A dull teacher could make the most creative material tedious and mind-numbingly boring."

I agree with her 100%! But forgive me for my lack of clarity. I don't mean to make or conduct an engaging and interesting lesson. I mean that parts of the course can quickly and easily change according to various needs. It's time to have dynamic teaching materials.

One definition for "dynamic" in The American Heritage Dictionary describes is: "An interactive system or process, especially one involving competing or conflicting forces."

It is interesting how the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia puts it: "Refers to operations performed 'on the fly,' which are based on decisions made while the program is running rather than beforehand. The expression, 'buffers are dynamically created,' means that space is created when actually needed, not reserved ahead of time. The expression, 'data is compressed onto the disk dynamically' means that the compression algorithms are being applied when the data is being written rather than before. Contrast with static."

Hmmm, contrast with "static". Are you static or dynamic?

Photo: Get the students out of the classroom and take them to Ikea. My corporate English students learning how to talk about Ikea's innovative marketing experience at Ikea.

Are you being idiot-proofed?

Michael Swan, although a supporter of coursebooks, nevertheless warned: "The danger of ready-made textbooks is that they can seem to absolve teachers of responsibility. Instead of participating in the day-to-day decisions that have to be made about what to teach and how to teach it, it is easy to just sit back and operate the system, secure in the belief that the wise and virtuous people who produced the textbook knew what was good for us. Unfortunately this is rarely the case."(1)

Allwright explained from another perspective: "According to this view, we need teaching materials to save learners from our deficiencies as teachers, to make sure, as far as possible, that the syllabus is properly covered, and that exercises are well thought out, for example. This way of thinking might lead, at one extreme, to the idea that the 'best' teachers would have 'teacher proof' materials that no teacher, however deficient, would be able to teach badly with."(2)

Although coursebooks can be an invaluable contribution to the training of new teachers it could be argued that they "deskill" experienced teachers.

I will not say that Swan and Allwright are anti-coursebook extremists. I am not an anti-coursebook extremist but I have found myself going through some transitions.

I went through being coursebook dependent to coursebook embellisher to coursebook modifier but arriving at coursebook frustration when the coursebook didn't fit my students at all.

At this point, the teacher is faced with a quandary. He lacks the confidence that he can teach his students without a commercially prepared coursebook even though the coursebook isn't doing the job. He is unable to believe that he can make the next logical step. Why do we fear this?

As Richards points out: "[a] potentially negative consequence of the use of textbooks is that they can lead to reification. Reification refers to the unjustifiable attribution of qualities of excellence, authority, and validity to published textbooks, a tendency often supported by the promotional efforts of publishers. In promoting their products, publishers often support the idea that their books represent the theories of experts or the most recent scientific research. With our without publishers' efforts, however, there is the general expectation among teachers that textbooks have been carefully developed through consultation with teachers and specialists and through field testing, and that the exercises and activities they contain will achieve what they set out to do. In some situations, this belief may be reinforced by culturally based views on the attributes of the printed word.

Teachers in some parts of the world, for example, tend to assume that any item included in a textbook must be an important learning item for students, and that explanations (e.g., of grammar rules or idioms) and cultural information provided by the author are true and should not be questioned; they assume that they do not have the authority or knowledge to adapt the textbook. They likewise believe that activities found in a textbook are superior to ones that they could devise themselves."(3)

We should be sure that we are using coursebooks and coursebooks are not using us. Perhaps it's time to make our own.

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(1) Swan, Michael 1992. The textbook: Bridge or wall? Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 2(1):33
(2) Allwright, R. L. 1981. What do we want teaching materials for? ELT Journal 36(1):6
(3) Richards, Jack 1998. Textbooks: Help or hindrance in teaching?; Beyond Training:131

The adaptable customizable dynamic coursebook -- Are you ready for it?

In a discussion we were having Betty Azar explained: "It seems to me that a textbook that provides a solid core of good material is crucial in a classroom..."

I really don't wish to argue with Ms Azar. She is certainly my senior in this profession. I haven't used her books but they are being sold here in China and I have never heard a single criticism of them but I have heard considerable praise. As for myself, I am a mere teacher sans-MA and unpublished and holding a mere certificate with only a few years of experience under my belt.

I don't wish to argue against the coursebook. I want to advocate for a better coursebook. I would like to see coursebooks that are alive and dynamic. I would like to see coursebooks that can adapt to teachers and students. Teachers and students should not have to adapt to coursebooks.

Today's coursebooks are too static. They are written for a mass market or even for a specific market that is not the market you are teaching in. All of the business English coursebooks I have to use were written for Europe. My students are learning about entertaining in London and doing business in Poland. I'm in China. My students are not going to Poland but they may need English to negotiate a contract in Tokyo and check on suppliers in Korea. There's a new business English book that is for Asia but it's more centered in Thailand and it doesn't focus on the language well enough for my students' needs.

Why can't we have an adaptable coursebook? Why can't we have coursebook templates that a teacher can use to fill in the details specific for his class? Why can't we have a coursebook Wizard like MS Office has so that you can fill in some information and it will generate a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation or a coursebook for us? Why can't we have a coursebook format for upper intermediate students that we can use for business English and shift to logistics English and flip to warehouse English.

Do you know there are actual computer programs that can help script writers write a script for a movie? They step the writer through the structure of a script and help him keep control of character development and story line. Is it going to win an Oscar? No. And are you going to teach the world's greatest lesson tomorrow? No. We don't need magnificent lessons. We need good lessons that are geared to the specific needs of our students.

I am making my lessons in PowerPoint. I sometimes make changes in my lesson in mid-exercise if it is not just right. I can even include pictures of my students in the lesson or pictures of our city.

Wouldn't you like to have a "Betty Azar" Wizard to step you through the process of customizing the grammar focus for your particular students? Wouldn't it be cool if a virtual "Jack Richards" was at your elbow making suggestions on more activities to reinforces some new vocabulary for tomorrow's lesson?

We don't need less Betty Azar, we need more Betty Azar. So when can we have something like this? We will have to wait until the big publishers figure out how to make money out of it. But the longer the big publishers take to do that the more we will start doing it ourselves.

How to make your own coursebook

Busy teachers had little time to develop a coursebook. It's much easier to shop around and buy a book that fits the need as close as possible even though it may leave a lot to be desired. It's like food. Often it's easier to go to the store and buy a frozen TV dinner than to buy the various ingredients and cook them yourself.

So what can the busy teacher do? Beginning teachers may have no recourse to published coursebooks. However, teachers or schools with at least five years of experience should be able to do this quite easily. There are two approaches to coursebook writing. The bottom-up and the top-down.

The bottom-up approach would be to closely study the students to discover exactly what kind of English they need making no assumptions concerning grammar and vocabulary and subject matter. However, some people would consider this reinventing the wheel.

The top-down approach would be to refer to your favorite collection of coursebooks and teaching materials and take the things you like and adapt them. If you like how the business English book used some interesting business news in each unit to introduce new vocabulary with some speaking exercises built around them then adapt this idea for your medical English students and find some interesting articles on medical news to build your exercises around.

Perhaps another coursebook presents business writing in an interesting way and you can get ideas from that to do the writing component of your book for sports coaches. Do you like the way grammar exercises are presented? You can do the same but adapt them for the needs of your particular students. You can use a four skills book written for teenagers to get ideas for oral English lessons for engineers.

You cannot copy the books but you can model your coursebook after them by taking the best teaching ideas from each one and customizing them to fit your students.
Why go through all of this trouble? (1) After you finish your own coursebook you will have something which fits you and your teaching philosophy and your students and their needs. (2) If you discover something doesn't fit or work well, almost like action research on steroids, you can easily modify it between classes. (3) You can easily update it and keep it current with the latest world developments (no more books that talk about sending faxes but not Emails) and developments in ELT methodology (corpus based research?).

Teachers should make their own coursebooks

Perhaps most teachers use coursebooks. They like the ease the coursebook provides. They like the authority the coursebook presents. (S1: "Why are we learning this?" S2: "Because it's in the coursebook, stupid.") They like the systematic approach of the coursebook.

At the same time they know that the coursebook they are using is boring, sometimes missing the mark, has redundant material, is using outdated methodology which is not very effective with students, etc. These teachers complain about their coursebooks but wait patiently for a better book to come along. Coursebook publishers and authors always assure us that we can always skip parts of their books, modify parts, take away or add to parts of their book. The fact is, they really don't care what we do to their books as long as we buy them. Their number one job is to sell books, not educate the world.

It is claimed that Mark Twain said, "What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if he can; honestly if he must." Applied to publishers we would have to say that their chief job is to sell books any way they can and if necessary they will have to publish books that will educate people. It's a business and the goal has to be to make money, not love your student. We cannot blame the publishers for being like this.

Teachers better not hold their breath for a better coursebook. It's going to be a long time before a coursebook that is exactly right for them and their students comes along, if ever.

So what can teachers do about it? First, stop complaining! And second, make their own. After teaching for five years you should know coursebooks pretty well. You should be able to recognize the approach the book is using. You should be able to recognize how various exercises are being used to reach a certain objective. You should see how various material is being recycled to promote retention. You should also be familiar with all methodologies and their strengths and weaknesses. You should be able to critique the coursebooks on a methodological level and also be able to say what works really well with your students and what doesn't work with your students and why.

You will become a coursebook author. Of course, the only user may be yourself and your students. But finally you will have a coursebook that is an exact marriage of what your students need and the way you like to teach.

Coursebooks are failing our students

Except for new teachers, it is an overly simplistic idea that coursebooks are doing a great job of meeting the needs of our students.

No publisher or book author knows your students like you do. Look at nearly every single business English book. There are loads of stuff in there that will not help anyone. I've yet to have any students who could make full use of one of those business English books.

I mean there are entire units talking about Advertising, Marketing and Investing. My business English students were managers at Colgate in China or managers of a Japanese electronics firm in China. They were managing the factory. They had nothing to do with Advertising and Marketing. Actually, what they really needed was Manufacturing English. Where is the book on that? Sure there might be one or two but those are usually outdated and still too general. I need a book on electronics manufacturing and one on fast moving consumer personal care goods manufacturing. I had an IT English book that explained what a "floppy disk" was. Can you imagine going over the definition of a floppy disk with an IT manager?

Is nothing going to ever change? Are we going to be stuck with books forever? I learn very little from books these days. I've been studying the significance and uses of corpus from the Internet. I've recently learned a lot about the significance of Bayesian statistical theory and e-rating, the science of machine rating writing papers on the Internet. But I must admit that I am turning to books to satisfy my interest in Physics and String Theory, but those are audio books.

What is going to come after the book? That's why I think that "books" have got us in a BOX. Teachers today do need help. They need highly adaptable materials in an electronic format that they can focus to each type of students they are going to teach. If they had a basic course framework with basic teaching content that the teacher could shift to different needs. He could shift this basic course framework to teach English to doctors, English to lawyers or English to policemen. The biggest difference between the different courses would be the vocabulary.

I know that years of research goes behind the design of coursebooks but still I'm tempted to believe that the course book designers are doing something that Dave Barry would describe as "listening to a little voice in my head that makes up believable facts".

The unit themes in business English course books have a lot of redundant material that business professionals will never need. Few business people need the full scope of topics including everything from Stock Market Investing to Advertising. Now you could argue that college students who are not certain what field of business they will get involved in could make good use of this and I will grant that.

But to make that concession here in China and some other places it is getting more and more difficult. I just bumped into a student from last semester. He was real happy to tell me he found a job at Nokia. I was happy for him. Nokia is a great company. I asked him what exactly he was doing. He was a salesman working a counter in a department store. It is unlikely that he will get any English practice in that situation and the job holds little prospects.

Consequently, the English of this student and a lot of his classmates will go unpracticed and possibly much of it lost. This is not entirely an English teaching problem but it is part of the reality in which we operate. The Chinese government has announced it will reduce the number of college students in an effort to improve teaching quality and the high employment expectations of graduates. These kinds of concerns are not reserved to China. Something similar has happened in France.

At the college level what we are doing is "front loading", filling the student up on knowledge that he might need. There was no recourse to this when we were students. But today, after all the technological developments, the science and art of teaching needs to become much more flexible and targeted. We need to employ the principles of "mass customization" to be able to mass generate customized training for students and give them this training "just-in-time".

China is in the past with "New Concept"

A teacher wrote us: "I noted recently the, I think, generally unannounced passing of LG (Louis) Alexander in June 2003. Alexander was a giant of TESOL in the early 70s when I began using his texts in TEFL situations. When I returned to the field a few years later his hour had passed and he wasn't heard of again. Too much repetition; too much focus on habit formation."

Alexander and his "New Concept" series, published in 1965 (with only superficial changes since) predating even Dell Hymes' and the Communicative Approach (is it still a new concept?) is the number one best seller in China even today. It seems like Chinese students and Chinese teachers think it is the greatest invention in English teaching since the dictionary. They erected a statue to Alexander in Beijing .

A teacher suggested an examination of methodologies of the past to see what good things from them may have been overlooked. Obviously, more work needs to be done to get the world's largest English learning population out of the past and at least to the present. So much has changed in the English teaching world since "New Concept" was published. The study of linguistics has benefited a lot from the research of Noam Chomsky, Stephen Krashen and many other researchers and modern thinkers. "New Concept" is in the past. It is the old concept. Time for a "new" new concept.

Business English lessons for low level students? Don't do it

A teacher asks for some material to teach Business English to low intermediate students.

I suggest that it is not in the students' best interest to begin studying Business English at that level for two reasons:

1. They really should get grounded in some basic English before trying to learn a specialty English like Business English. About 95% of their communications will be basic verbs and basic vocabulary.

2. There are no Business English books that can give the students the help they need in basic English at a low intermediate level.

At best they can only learn a McEnglish. This is what I call the English that McDonald's order takers have around the world. Here in China you can ask the girl for a Big Mac, fries and Coke without any problem. However, if you ask her if she thinks it will rain today she is lost.

Giving a Business English too early makes the student aware of SOME business vocabulary at the expense of a broader grasp of the language.

A great general English book is New Interchange in 4 levels from 0-3. A good approach would be to get the student up to at least the level 2 (about mid-intermediate) and then instead of doing 3 with them it would be safe to introduce Business English.

There is a world of difference in teaching college/university students and business people or professionals. The first group is quite intrigued about business and are eager to learn it. I have even been asked by these students to teach more business and less English.

The second group deals with the language of their business constantly. They actually excel at all the little buzzwords and company language of their business. My Chinese Proctor and Gamble English students used to carry on whole conversations in English in their P&G lingo and I could hardly understand a thing. However, this group invariably needs help with basic vocabulary as well as the grammar patterns to create correct proper sentences.

For example, here is the last Email sample I received as part of my needs analysis of a logistics company where I have begun teaching. It is very typical:

"Pls refer to blw details,payment has been settled by our agent. Pls kindly arrange remit to head office asap TTL:USD141.00. Tks to release cargo accordingly."

I would say the key business vocabulary here is: details, payment, settled, agent, remit, head office, release cargo; all used quite well. However there are lots of grammar errors.

Business English for pre-employed students is much different than for students who are professionals.