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In June 2022 I was approached by Steve Krajewski on LinkedIn. Steve is a fellow Business English teacher who has also established an English teaching website, www.englishcoachonline.com.
Steve proposed an interview with me, to learn more about my experiences teaching Business English online and to get idea about my plans for ElevatorEnglish. The interview went very well and it has been great to have a chance to talk through my ideas with another professional operating in the same field.
Here you can find a short section of the interview and an ElevatorEnglish quiz so you can test your understanding, learn some new phrases and get feedback on your English.
You can also find a link to the full interview on Steve’s site below.
As you know, with English Coach Online, you have to have a digital presence if you’re teaching online.
Initially, my idea behind Elevator English was really a bit of a showcase to try and acquire more students from other places around the world.
Long term, I would like to transform the site into more than a kind of online CV. I think there’s a gap in the market because students are looking for meaningful content and genuine examples of speech, just like you and I are talking now. A lot can be gained from students listening to native speakers, or very proficient speakers, communicating in English. The icing on the cake would be to test students on their comprehension skills.
As for the Elevator English website, it is only just getting off the ground. I’m developing the website myself. There’s a very steep learning curve to getting an online presence. Overall, I’m testing things out – seeing what works and what doesn’t.
There’s a huge misconception about business English and communication and teaching English to business professionals online.
A lot of students go into this thinking they only need the business English vocabulary and that’s what’ll get them through. It just doesn’t work that way. I’ve worked extensively in lots of different fields. For example, the IT field is fascinating. I meet students who are technically excellent at what they do and their knowledge of English and vocabulary range are fantastic. However, what they’re lacking is the ability to communicate all of that to other people. They simply fall down when it comes to expressing their own views.
Hard skills are important. Students need to know how to write emails and so on. However, we teachers need to prepare students for the unknown and that’s why teaching soft skills should take centre stage. For instance, take the average meeting leader who has to walk into a meeting with their well-prepared agenda and list of key points. However, as soon as another person gives feedback and the conversation perhaps gets derailed or a new perspective crops up that they hadn’t previously considered, our meeting leader may have a hard time handling all of that.
All in all, teaching English to business professionals online, to an extent, revolves around changing the mindsets of students. When they’re thrown into a situation, they need to have the confidence to know that they don’t need some kind of set mechanism to deal with the unpredictable flow of a business meeting or negotiation and so on. They need to feel confident that they can comfortably deal with the ambiguity of English and they can respond to any unexpected views and arguments.
Yes, this has happened quite a few times in my career. I used to run meetups in Budapest with business professionals who’d come in looking to improve their English. Occasionally, people would ask me to improve their interview technique. I’d then ask them “When’s the interview?” and many of them would often reply “tomorrow”.
Personally, I’d insist on giving intensive lessons if a student’s interview was coming up very soon. Sitting down with them, running through everything. Just practising. Practising, practising, practising.
It’s vital that students put themselves in the interviewer’s shoes and reflect on why they are asking these questions. What does the interviewer really want to know? Very often this is simply “Would I want to work with this person?”.
Many students preparing for interviews might be tempted to just repeat set phrases or parrot something that they’ve heard as the “perfect response”. By doing this, they’re simply missing out because they not might not give honest answers and it’ll come across to the interviewer that they don’t have confidence in what they’re saying. They often assume that an interview will go exactly as planned and interviewers will ask these generic questions. My experience with interviews is that students need to take control of the conversation in terms of being able to talk about themselves freely, and by showing that they know the demands of the role. The tone of the interview needs to turn more conversational. By doing this, the interviewer won’t be able to ask awkward question after awkward question.
English language students need to be forward-thinkers
If students realise that English will be part of their future career, they should develop their skills and build their confidence in advance rather than adding more layers of stress on top of what is already a stressful situation, i.e. a job interview.
Many students contact me because they’re thinking of a career change. As a teacher, this allows me to say, well, we don’t need to practise job interviews now. We don’t need to be preparing for interviews every week for the next three months. It wouldn’t make any sense. I tell them that we can build on their foundation, build on their confidence in English.
We can look at different grammar points long before they have any interviews. Then they realise that when it comes to practising the interview technique, it’s seamless. If they’ve got a good handle on, for example, the present perfect, gerunds, talking about experience and shifting the conversation by changing the topic or choosing the topic, these students have the skills to handle a job interview.
Interview written and produced by Steve Krajewski.
You can read the full interview here:
English Coach Online – Teaching English to Business Professionals Online
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My name is Mike O’Malley and I am currently developing Elevator English and teaching Business English professionals like you online.
If you are interested in improving your English, I can help. Click on the button to learn more.
Elevator English is just getting off the ground. We are constantly learning and your feedback will really help us get to the top.
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