International Business English Summer Conference 2010

University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

25 - 26 June 2010

The IATEFL BESIG Summer Conference was a mid-year opportunity to network and to catch up with current trends in Business English. Mix that with a choice of excursions, cultural visits and gastronomy –  all in Rome. Business with an authentic Italian flavour!

Patrick Boylan was the keynote speaker and talked about teaching Business English as a Cultural Mindset. Patrick is a well-known authority on language and inter-cultural communication and a former professor of English at the University Roma Tre.

The conference ran from 12:00 on Friday, 25 June to 12:30 on Saturday, 26 June with 15 parallel 45-minute sessions run by trainers, authors and other leading experts in the field of Business English.

Optional excursions to the cultural heart of Rome were offered on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning for those who could stay on a little longer.

Presentations

Here is a selection of talks from the event

The little extra that makes the difference
Speakers: Marjorie Rosenberg and Marie-Louise Cuyt

Summary:
Supplementary materials have a number of uses in the business English classroom. For teachers using a course book, they can be implemented as a way to reinforce and recycle vocabulary and grammar, to provide more opportunities for speaking or to simply liven up a class. For those who create their own materials, they can be used as valuable timesavers integrated into the curriculum. For trainers teaching one-to-one, they can be invaluable as they deal with a topic while providing practice materials. An added benefit is that use of extra materials enables the trainer to reach a wide range of learner types. This workshop will present a variety of supplementary materials which make use of the elements above.  They have all been used in a variety of classes in secondary, tertiary and adult education and can be easily adapted to different classroom situations.

Biographical information:
Marjorie Rosenberg has been teaching both general and business English for almost thirty years on the tertiary level and for corporate clients in Austria. She is an active teacher trainer and travels throughout Europe holding seminars and workshops on topics such as learning styles, cooperative learning, and NLP. Her publications include Communicative Business Activities, öbvhpt, Vienna 2001, In Business, CUP, 2005, and two series of textbooks for Austrian schools. She is also a contributing author to Cornelsen and Macmillan projects. At the moment she is creating several courses for english360. In addition, Marjorie is currently the joint-coordinator of the IATEFL BESIG committee.

Marie-Louise Cuyt has been teaching both general and business English for 25 years. She works with tertiary students and trains business people in a number of companies. In 2008 she successfully completed a course of study on Teaching English for Business presented by Mark Powell and was awarded the English UK/LCCIEB Certificate in Teaching English for Business. Marie-Louise is also a Cambridge ESOL Oral Examiner.

 

Using e-feedback in large classes in a business writing course
Speakers: Debbie Lahav and Ms Lisa Amdur

Summary:
“Business English” is a specialized compulsory writing course in the undergraduate program for Business Administration at Ruppin Academic Center in Israel. The course takes a process approach to writing instruction and is based on the assumption that writing development is contingent on extended writing practice together with responsive, customized, and on-going feedback which research has shown to be essential for writing development.
In designing the course, the following constraints were taken into consideration: (a) class size (n=38), (b) limited time (28 academic hours), (c) heterogeneity of the learners, and (d) work load of the instructor in providing feedback. Technology, in particular, the use of the MOODLE platform, has enabled us to address all these constraints,.
In this presentation, we will describe the units of study that make up the course. We will particularly focus on the provision of e-feedback and share our students’ attitude to it." Biographical information:
Debbie Lahav has an MA from Haifa University in Linguistics, specializing in SLA. She has taught high school, adult EFL, business English and EAP. Currently she is teaching EAP and Business English at Ruppin College and working for Hebrew University, heading PD projects for in-service EFL teachers. Ms Lahav is actively promoting the integration of technology in English instruction.

Lisa Amdur is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, specializing in language testing. She has taught English at all levels of education, from elementary school through to college. She is currently teaching EAP and Business English at Ruppin Academic Center and is a teacher trainer at Beit Berl Teachers College. Ms. Amdur also coordinates the English curriculum committee at the Ministry of Education

English360 - Collaboratively co-creating Business English courses and content
Speaker: Valentina Dodge

Summary:
Business English teachers are using web media to grow and reflect together. Educators around the world are sharing content, classroom activities and expertise with a network of colleagues - whether in the same staff room, city or on the other side of the world, authoring of courses and inspiration for lesson ideas has no boundaries. English360, a web-based platform is now available to further facilitate this co-development of material or courses. This workshop shows how the community of English360 users collaborate with each other to publish and share lesson activities and courses. The session has a practical focus related to on-going course design, progressing needs assessment and tagging. It outlines the benefits of blended and online BE courses. Participants will take part in discussions on how to address some of the challenges of this new mode of delivery: integrating authentic material, dealing with plagiarism, increasing awareness of copyright and Creative Commons.

Biographical information:
Valentina is Teacher Community Coordinator for English360 where she helps educators provide personalised business English learning programmes to meet their student and customer needs. She collaborates with and supports business English language teachers all over the world to help them publish and share lesson and courses for blended or online delivery. She organizes training sessions and support forums on instructional design and blended course organization to allow educators to combine their own materials and lesson plans with high quality course material from Cambridge University Press.

Collaboration in ESP course design and delivery: ideas, models and experiences
Speaker: Nick Robinson

Summary:
Collaboration in the context of ESP course design and delivery involves a set of working practices between a language specialist and a subject specialist. The aim of the collaboration will vary from case to case but is usually two-fold: to better meet students’ needs by providing the best possible mix of credible and authentic professional content and relevant language focus and development; and to help the language specialist better navigate the intricacies of a field that he or she may not be fully trained or conversant in. In this talk, we will examine how these aims can be met and discuss what is necessary from both sides in order for a successful collaboration to take place. We will draw on examples of collaboration from current ESP practitioners as well as from several ESP titles from Cambridge University Press, including Cambridge English for Marketing, written by myself in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).
This talk will be a commercial presentation on behalf of Cambridge University Press.

Biographical information:
Nick Robinson taught English in Spain, specialising in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Business English. He then worked for Cambridge University Press as a Marketing Executive and as an Editor on the ESP list. In 2007, he moved to York to become a freelance author, editor and trainer. He is the author of 'Cambridge English for Marketing', the 'Infotech' 4th Edition Online Workbook, and the 'English Vocabulary in Use Elementary' CD-ROM 2nd Edition. He is the co-author of the 'face2face' Advanced Teacher’s Book; the 'English Unlimited' Elementary, Pre-intermediate and Intermediate Self-study Packs; and 'Let's Talk Online', an online speaking and listening course. Since November 2009 he has been a Brand Manager at Cambridge University Press.

Death By PowerPoint (And How To Avoid It.)

Speaker: Seth Dickens

Summary:
Business English teachers and Business English students have something in common when it comes to PowerPoint; they have usually been bored to death by it more times than they'd care to remember.

In this presentation I will show participants simple, practical ways to improve their own PowerPoint slides. We will also discuss two simple but effective lesson activities:

Creating simple but powerful visual contexts for conversation lessons using PowerPoint. These contexts draw students into the lesson and inspire classroom debate.

Creating stunning slides for business lessons. While presentation skills are vital for business students, even the most fluent student's presentation will flop if the slides that accompany it are deathly dull. My simple suggestions will help teachers gain enough confidence with slide design for them to pass ideas onto students and use PowerPoint for class projects."

Biographical information:
I am a language teacher, teacher-trainer and educational technology consultant based in North Italy. I am particularly interested in helping teachers incorporate technology and Web 2.0 tools into their teaching in simple and practical ways.

My "main" job is at a high-school near Trento. I teach subjects like economics, psychology, and Biology in English, using engaging Web 2.0 tools.

I also work with various schools and agencies including E.U. funded projects, the local education authority and private language schools. I wrote several modules of an online language-teacher-training course for EAQUALS, which I am now tutoring for the Technical University of Dresden.

 

Help! My learners need English to work in Asia.
Speaker: Evan Frendo

Summary:
This scenario is becoming very common in many companies, and trainers are having to adapt or create materials accordingly. Yet often those trainers lack any experience of Asia themselves, and it can be difficult to remain credible. In this session I will discuss some of the needs of learners who need English for Asia, and then look at ways we can meet these needs, focusing both on improving language competence as well as intercultural communication competence.”

Biographical information:
Evan Frendo is a freelance trainer, teacher trainer and author, and has been involved in Business English training and consulting since 1993. Currently based in Berlin, he lived in Singapore from 2003-2006,
working with German expats needing English to work in Asia. Nowadays his work for various corporations and clients takes him regularly to different parts of Europe and Asia. He has published various books and
articles over the years, including How to teach Business English, (Longman, 2005), and the Double Dealing series of coursebooks (Summertown, 2004-2006), with James Schofield. His most recent book is Working in Asia (Cornelsen, 2010) which he co-authored with Shuna Hsu.

View "Help! My learners need English to work in Asia" on Prezi

English for human resources management (workshop)
Speaker: Pat Pledger

Summary:
"Human resources covers a multitude of people management issues over and above the recruitment process – what are they and how can you teach the vocabulary and technical jargon? Join me to look at what your personnel professionals, recruitment agencies or line managers will be needing in English and how you can help them to succeed. "

Biographical information:
Pat Pledger spent 20 years in human resources management in London, before relocating to Germany and setting up as a business English trainer 20 years ago. Running a small business English consultancy in Hamburg, Germany, Pat works closely with many companies in northern Germany, but her main specialty is human resources training in English. www.pledger-bet.de Her book, ‘English for Human Resources’, has been published in Germany, the UK, China and other countries.

Photos

Click here for conference slideshow: Photos from Rome

 

 

 

 

 

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