Welcome to BESIG

BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group of IATEFL, is a truly professional body representing the interests and serving the needs of the international business English teaching community.

BESIG's members are mainly teachers of Business English and include both native and non-native speakers of English. The largest proportion of our members comes from Europe but we also have members in over 50 countries including South America, Africa and Asia. BESIG offers you ways to improve your expertise in teaching Business English and a link with other people in the profession. We do this through our annual international BESIG conferences, regional workshops, regular newsletters and reports describing conference papers/workshops in detail.

Please follow the links on the left to read more about BESIG and to find out how to become involved in our events. For information of current interest please see below or follow the links on the right.

Harrogate Online: Call for forum moderators

As you may know, the IATEFL Annual Conference is being held this year in Harrogate UK, and as not everyone is able to attend the conference in person, as in previous years, IATEFL and the British Council are offering teachers all over the world the opportunity to participate online.

IATEFL are looking for Harrogate Online moderators who would be willing to participate in forum discussions before, during the conference and for a short period after. BESIG is holding a Pre-Conference Event on the theme "Business or Business English?" (see here for details PCE 2010), so the conference will be of particular interest to business English professionals around the world In addition, there will be a day devoted to business English presentations, an open BESIG forum and other presentations throughout the conference on topics of interest to those teaching business and professional English.

You can find details of what this exciting opportunity involves, and how to apply on the IATEFL website here: Harrogate Online

Your applications will need to be sent to: nik.peachey@btinternet.com no later than 23rd Feb 2010 and successful applicants will be informed in the first week of March.

Cert IBET scholarship - 2010 applications now being accepted!

BESIG, Trinity College London, English UK and The Consultants-E are pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for the joint scholarship for an online course leading to the Certificate in International Business English Training (Cert IBET). For details on the Cert IBET, the course and the scholarship please click here. Please note that the application deadline for the 2010 scholarship is 30 July 2010.

Pre-Conference Event 2010

BESIG is pleased to announce the Business English Special Interest Group Pre-Conference Event. It will be held on Wednesday, 7 April 2010 as part of the annual IATEFL Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate, UK. The Pre-Conference Event will take place from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm and includes talks, workshops, coffee breaks and lunch. Well-known speakers, trainers and writers in the field of Business English will be expressing their ideas and thoughts on the topic "Business or Business English?" The day has been set up so that there will be time for discussions and feedback from both the trainers and the participants and ideally will lead to topics that can be explored further through the discussion list or at other BESIG events. The PCE is sponsored by Cambridge ESOL and our media partner is Business Spotlight. For further details please click here: Pre-Conference Event 2010.

Annual Conference 2010: Bielefeld, Germany

The 2010 Annual Conference will be held in Bielefeld, Germany over the weekend 19 - 21 November. Please click here for a leaflet with preliminary information about this return to the venue used for the very first BESIG Conference held in 1988.

Annual conference 2009 & New committee

This year's conference was held in Poznan, Poland over the weekend 20 - 22 November. For more details including downloads of the presentations, photos and more please click here. At the conference a number of committee members stepped down and were replaced by new members. To see details of the new committee please click here.

David Riley Award

David Riley was a teacher, writer and publisher of Business and ELT materials. He was renowned in the ELT world for his creation of materials for a range of publishers, big and small. David passed away in 2007 leaving a big gap in the ELT world. To remember him and his rare talent, BESIG and Macmillan are honoured to launch a new industry award - ‘The David Riley Award for Innovation in Business English and ESP’. The winner of the David Riley Award for Innovation 2009 was English for Law Enforcement by Charles Boyle and Ileana Chersan (Macmillan). Congratulations to the winners!

Entry details for the 2010 award are available on the David Riley Award page.

For links of current interest please follow the links on the right.