How To Write Business English Materials: Training Course For ELT Writers, #21

By John Allison

John Allison is well-placed to share his expertise in the Business English teaching and writing world. He has been teaching Business English for longer than he cares to admit, and he is the author of two editions of the best-selling course 'The Business'. In this ebook, his aim is to provide a set of practical activities that he would have welcomed when he started out. Through a series a carefully-constructed tasks, John shows how to create material that is relevant and appropriate for the Business English context, while keeping the balance between being serious and fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ELT
• Release date: Mar 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370028443

John Allison

Born in a hidden village deep within the British Alps, John Allison came into this world a respectable baby with style and taste. Having been exposed to American comics at an early age, he spent decades honing his keen mind and his massive body in order to burn out this colonial cultural infection. One of the longest continuously publishing independent web-based cartoonists, John has plied his trade since the late nineties moving from Bobbins to Scary Go Round to Bad Machinery, developing the deeply weird world of Tackleford long after many of his fellow artists were ground into dust and bones by Time Itself. He has only once shed a single tear, but you only meet Sergio Aragonés for the first time once. John resides in Letchworth Garden City, England, and is known to his fellow villagers only as He Who Has Conquered.

Book preview

HOW TO WRITE

BUSINESS ENGLISH MATERIALS

John Allison

TRAINING COURSE FOR ELT WRITERS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other titles by ELT Teacher 2 Writer

Core modules

How ELT Publishing Works

How To Plan A Book

How To Write And Deliver Talks

How To Write Audio and Video Scripts*

How To Write Critical Thinking Activities*

How To Write Primary Materials

How To Write Reading and Listening Activities*

How To Write Secondary Materials

How To Write Speaking Activities*

How To Write Vocabulary Presentations And Practice*

How To Write Writing Activities*

Market-specific modules

How To Write Corporate Training Materials

How To Write EAP Materials

How To Write ESOL Materials

How To Write ESP Materials

How To Write Exam Preparation Materials

Component modules

How To Write Film And Video Activities

How To Write For Digital Media

How To Write Graded Readers

How To Write Teacher’s Books

How To Write Worksheets

Our paperbacks

How To Write ESOL Materials

How To Write Reading and Listening Activities

How To Write Excellent ELT Materials: The Skills Series (This title is a compendium containing the six titles asterisked in the list above.)

For further information, contact us via our website at eltteacher2writer.co.uk

How To Write Business English Materials

By John Allison

© 2017 ELT Teacher 2 Writer at Smashwords

www.eltteacher2writer.co.uk

Contents

About the author

Introduction

Warmers and coolers

Listening

Reading

Speaking

Case studies

Writing

Conclusion

Sample answers

Glossary

About The Author

I come from a family of teachers, so when my dad suggested I should consider going into banking, it was easy to say ‘no, I’m not at all interested in business, I’m going to be a teacher’. To my surprise, over the years I’ve become more and more interested in all aspects of business, so I sometimes wonder if Dad was right after all. However, probably the most rewarding experiences in my career have come from writing, something I would almost certainly never have done without first becoming a teacher.

My first experience of teaching English came straight after my finals at Cambridge. I had obtained a place on a PGCE course at the Institute of Education and was keen to move to London as soon as possible, so I needed a job to pay the rent over the summer. I was lucky enough to find work with a language school who were keen to give me a week’s training before letting me loose in the classroom. I arrived on the first Monday morning to be told that a colleague was sick, so I was needed to teach. Thrusting a book into my hands, the Director pointed me up the stairs to the room where the class of teenagers and young adults from around the world was already waiting for me. Fortunately, there wasn’t even time to panic; we had a ball. Not only were the classes, excursions and various social activities great fun, I also got to know Brigitte, the school’s charming French secretary, who would later become my wife.

Teaching practice in German and French the following autumn was a different kettle of fish, or another pair of sleeves as the French would say. Trying to persuade sullen teenagers in an all-boys school to say more than Oui or Nein was an extremely frustrating experience, so much so that at the end of the year I decided to follow Brigitte to France and go back to teaching people who really wanted to learn. At the time, I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to get paid for spending several hours a day teaching, but also learning about business from, bankers, chemists, engineers, marketing and sales people, accountants, lawyers and many other professions. I have to say I think I got the better part of the bargain.

Since those early days, I have done most of the TEFL jobs you can think of, from repairing the toilets to cold calling, sales and marketing; from tea boy to director and management trainer. For the last twenty years or so I have been a sleeping partner in the language school where I now work as a teacher, DOS and teacher trainer, moonlighting as a Business English writer.

For some years, I drove the 90km from Lyon to Grenoble every morning and back again every evening. It was only when I stopped the gruelling daily commute that I discovered, much to my surprise, that I still had some energy and ideas in the evening and at weekends. That was when I decided to start doing some serious writing. At the time, we needed new materials for teaching by phone; thinking there must be other schools with a similar need, I sent out samples to several publishers. I was delighted when Macmillan got in touch to say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ for the telephone materials, but would I be interested in doing some writing for the In Company teacher’s books? That marked the start of a fruitful partnership; since then I have worked on In Company, In Company Case Studies, The Business, and most recently the Supply Chain Management and Logistics titles in the In Company 3.0 ESP series.

Writing Business English materials has made me think hard about what I do in the classroom and improved my own teaching and teacher training skills; it has allowed me to travel, meet and exchange ideas and experience with hundreds of teachers, and to work with some of the best authors, editors, marketing and sales teams in the EFL business. But perhaps the greatest satisfaction is also the simplest: just switching off the computer and going to bed, knowing that I’ve cracked a grammar problem, finished a neat listening, or come up with an exercise that will work really well with my class. I hope this ebook will help you share that simple pleasure.

Introduction

Like almost any task in life, the hardest part of writing is getting started. Every writer knows that sinking feeling when you sit down in front of a blank page wondering how on earth you’re going to produce the two or three thousand words you promised yourself you’d write today. Many teachers would like to write their own materials, but never get past that blank page – which is a shame, because once they start writing, most people find the main problem is when to stop. But I’ll say more about ‘less is more’ later!

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