Writing Business English Lesson Plans
em 20 de Fevereiro de 2020
Investing in yourself is the most important action you can take to achieve success, build your achievements through your career, and enjoy your future retirement worry-free on the beach in Ubatuba.
Today great companies require you to speak Business English at a high level, and they will reject new applicants "without" proficiency in English. Also, your future promotion opportunities will be limited without proficiency in English.
I teach professionals English every day and by trying to listen to their learning challenges, I discovered there was a deeper need for professionals here in Sao Paulo, and that is to have a deeper focus on presentation and pronunciation skills over what is normally taught here.
A Brazilian Business Professional who is intermediate, advanced, or even fluent in English who does not have great presentation and pronunciation skills will not advance to future opportunities where English is a requirement. This is a hard but true fact.
I want to point out here that “presentation and pronunciation skills” = Negotiation Skills. I want you to be armed with these skills so that you have a higher probability for success, and I have done my job in teaching you effective and useful business English, so you can negotiate your way in English, to higher grounds.
New vocabulary is great and important, but communication (presentation and pronunciation) is the only key you have for unlocking the door to your maximum career potential with international opportunities here in Brazil or international opportunities working overseas.
Your presentation and pronunciation skills will not improve through the use of generic methods and materials. English Learning Materials must be adjusted until you are improving, and you know you're moving forward with your English.
English schools usually don't consider the unique learning needs of their students, this is very apparent to me as all my students are very educated, determined and career-driven people, they do not require generic English learning materials to improve their English skills, they require materials they want to learn, and materials catered to the needs of their career.
I would go as far as saying that generic English learning materials and the choice of teacher is what mostly keeps a professional with "let's say - 5 years of English-speaking experience" stuck with bad presentation and pronunciation habits. This only hurts the career of the student, and the teacher usually could care less.
The business professional I have come to know here in Brazil understands how to learn, how to study, how to achieve, how to advance, and how to remain consistent, so generic English learning materials pose an unequaled challenge and provides little ROI on the overall time investment.
You are different and you are unique, this is the very root of why your English learning material needs to suit your everyday requirements and your future career desires.
You must practice and commit to the process and develop your own style and grace in the way you convey yourself in English and that comes from the right English learning materials for you in particular, and from your teacher who should understand this concept.
Your teacher also must work toward becoming more professional, and more invested in their business, more invested in better methods, and more invested in the relationships with the students.
The start of your new-found confidence in Business English is with your teacher. Your teacher must have confidence, your teacher must have been to university, your teacher must have experience and above all your teacher must be invested in your progress.
Your teacher should and must try to facilitate the growth of your personality and qualities in English, and not leave them hidden for when you are only speaking Portuguese. This is what it means to be truly bilingual.
My message here is to consider focusing on the presentation and pronunciation of your English over what you are already doing. The standard method schools are promoting here in Sao Paulo is generic and a “one size fits all” for the majority of the time. It is scary for a school to be an outlier and constantly reach for higher standards at the risk of embarrassment.
During the process of the new focus, you will pick up new words and phrases naturally, but more importantly, you will begin to develop a much more refined ear and capacity for listening.
The ultimate goal is to understand other people from other countries who speak English differently just like native English speakers can understand them.
You can understand the Portuguese People, the people of Angola, and other countries who speak Portuguese to a degree because you understand the syllables and flow of Portuguese.
You will be more likely to understand the Scottish, the English, the Americans, the Australians, the Indians, the Chinese and others who speak English when you focus on your pronunciation and breaking down the syllables to digestible bits.
This is why I believe presentation and pronunciation is so important, and you need it. You need to be able to promote and sell yourself, your ideas and your products to people all over the world, and they need to buy them.
Presentation and Pronunciation are fundamentals, they will help you negotiate yourself into more successful opportunities. But success will never arrive with esoteric vocabulary.
Clarke