Professional Development Videos

  • Teaching Workplace Preparation

The trend in English language teaching today is towards more and more specialization because our students have to learn to use English in very specific and often complex contexts, related to their occupations or professions. This topic captures key concepts and teaching techniques related to teaching these specialized courses that focus on the English required to communicate in specialized occupational contexts. It also includes the rapidly growing area of English language teaching that focuses on business and professional English.

A Basic Curriculum Design Framework

Many of the courses we teach to prepare students to succeed in a particular workplace have to be customized to meet the specific language and culture demands of that workplace. As a result, workplace preparation teachers often become course designers out of necessity.

Building Content for a Workplace Preparation Course

This course takes participants through a very simple framework for defining culture that can be used to analyze workplace culture. By applying this framework in an analytical process, you can begin to understand the depth and complexity of a workplace culture.

Techniques and Tips for Teaching Professional/Business English

Continued and accelerated globalization has put increased pressures on business people and professionals to be able to communicate in English at a more and more sophisticated level.

Using E-mail in a Professional Context

E-mail is well-established as an essential communication tool for any professional context. Unfortunately, many professionals get themselves into trouble by not understanding the nature of e-mail as a communication tool or by misusing it.