Methodology
The English for biz curriculum is based on the latest corpus research into what the language of business really is; it de-emphasizes a lot of the functional and structural input of the traditional course and places content at the centre of its syllabus.
English for biz recognizes that learners, who have already studied a lot of grammar, a lot of functions, and a lot of vocabulary, will not significantly improve their communicative competence in business simply by studying more of the same. What they need to develop most of all at this critical stage of learning is lexical awareness, the ability to combine and reproduce a lot of words they already know (like company and run) into partnerships they do not know (like run a company), and to see how building up a substantial repertoire of word partnerships (like meet demand) and fixed expressions (like we can hardly keep up with the demand) rather than individual words (like meet, keep and demand) speeds up language processing and is the key to real fluency. The language of business is information dense, and word partnerships, which are really concentrated packets, play a much more central role in business English than they do in general English, which tends to be more lexically diffuse.
The core syllabus of English for biz consists of restricted sets of business concepts (like companies, contracts and meetings, prices, products, presentations, and markets), all of which generate hundreds of 2, 3, and 4 word partnerships. Step by step the course takes learners through the whole world of business from product development to pricing strategy, from brand management to credit control, from advertising expenditure to management training.
Business English is a combination of the words, word partnerships, and fixed expressions, which are used in business life. We bring all this language together and places it at the centre of the students learning.