Try this free role play lesson plan we created using the Global Scale of English Teacher Toolkit.   As we talked about in a very recent post, Pearson’s Global Scale of English (GSE) Teacher Toolkit gives you fast access to GSE learning objectives, grammar and vocabulary that can help you plan lessons at the right level. By providing your students with the specific language skills they need for a specific job, the GSE can help improve their employability. Of course, in order to get a job, most people have to go through a job interview first! The GSE can help you devise a lesson so you ..read more

The last twelve months have flown by. We hope that you had a productive 2018 and that you found lots of interesting ideas and activities to use with your students using our blog and other resources. We’d like to reflect on last year by sharing twelve of the most popular blog posts. Have you read them all? Revisit them and maybe even discover something to use in 2019. January: Spring festival lesson plan By Sue Alderman Sue brought us a spring festival-themed lesson plan for intermediate to upper-intermediate adult students in January last year – and many of you loved it! The lesson plan cover ..read more

The first class with a new group of students can be tough – especially when they’re busy business people and you are dragging them away from their desks. You need to build rapport with them, find out their needs, and test them with relevant and engaging materials. As business English teachers you must also adapt your lessons to suit the different roles your students have and the industries they work in. Business English courses come with a range of resources, but you can supplement these with your own to help further personalize the course and add more variety to your lessons. So, here are fou ..read more

Teaching business professionals can be a scary experience, especially for new teachers. They are busy people and expect to see results in a short amount of time. What’s more, as experts in their fields, there’s a good chance they’ll know a whole lot more about business than you – which can make teaching them work related skills or vocabulary daunting. So, can you teach Business English when you’re not a specialist? We asked a number of leading ELT experts and here’s what they said. Margaret O’Keefe Yes, absolutely! The business specialists are my students in companies. My role is to help them ..read more

A new eight-level course for business English students We’re delighted to announce the launch of Business Partner, an innovative course for learners and professionals who want to communicate effectively in English. It offers core business topics, real-life case studies, authentic videos, communication skills training, a variety of accents and a flexible, modular approach to language learning. How is Business Partner different? As many teachers are aware, soft skills are becoming an increasingly important part of business English teaching, as we covered in our recent article How to Bring Soft ..read more

Anyone who’s ever taught a business English class knows that their students are busy people. Sometimes they get sidetracked by their other tasks – even during class. This means we have to make the most of the time we have with our learners and focus on what they really need. How you do this depends on the sector your students work in (or plan to work in), their previous experiences studying English and their own strengths and weaknesses. Teachers often focus on teaching hard skills, such as writing reports or running meetings. We do this because it can be challenging for many business students ..read more

Margaret O’Keeffe is an experienced author, teacher and course designer specializing in Business English and ESP. She’s a co-author of our popular course Business Partner. In this article, she outlines a number of practical steps for teaching advanced business English effectively.  You might also like to watch Margaret’s Pearson English Spring Day’s webinar, How to teach business English to advanced level learners, which also tackles the challenges of teaching advanced students.  The challenge of teaching Business English to C1 level students Once your business English students reach ..read more

Margaret O’Keeffe is an experienced author, teacher and course designer specialising in Business English and ESP. She’s a co-author of our popular course Business Partner. In this post Margaret offers lots of practical advice for teaching business English to low-level learners.  — The CEFR describes A1 and A2 learners as ‘basic users’ of a language. So how can we help these students to develop their communication skills for the international workplace? Read on and discover my six top tips. 1. Focus on high frequency vocabulary for work Learning vocabulary for the work context is the ..read more

The world of work has transformed dramatically over the last few years and technological change means that the pace of transformation is likely to increase. While the need for English as the language of communication in the workplace is well established and growing, alongside that is a growing need for soft skills that facilitate communication and build relationships. Business Partner is a new course which promotes the development of effective language, and business and soft skills. It is co-authored by Margaret O’Keefe, an ESP university teacher and former Director of Studies, and Iwonna Dubi ..read more

IATEFL 2019 kicks off next week in Liverpool, UK. As the date of this year’s conference draws nearer, we are excited to present all the Pearson speakers on the programme. They will be sharing their knowledge on a range of topics from employability and AI to assessment and 21st-century skills. This time, we have the pleasure to introduce Margaret O’Keeffe. Margaret will talk about bridging the gap between the classroom and the world of work with the help of Pearson’s new eight-level Business Partner series. Margaret O’Keeffe is a business English teacher and materials writer. She is a co-a ..read more