One of the terribly limiting perspectives that language schools have on teaching is the idea that they need a syllabus that clearly shows what content you’re going to do and when. I have a problem with that, because, while this might work for students at a language academy whose objective is to get an official certificate, it doesn’t reflect the needs of a business.
I’ve been teaching English at companies for over twenty years now and I have hardly ever been asked to teach classes that would prepare the staff to pass a specific exam. More often than not, companies are interested in enabling their workers to improve their English in general and when you speak to the staff themselves, very few people are actually interested in getting an official certificate.
So, why is that? This happens because a language certificate is usually a means to an end: graduating from university or getting a job. Once you’ve been taken on by a business, there is no longer a need for you to prove what your level of English is. But, naturally, as an active employee and a life-long learner who wants to do better and better, you want to maintain your knowledge and improve it if you can.
Assuming you don’t need to prove anything and your English is advanced enough, your situation as a language learner becomes very different. Your motivation for learning English changes, and, as a consequence, so do your objectives in this context. Basically, you can now focus on very specific areas of your English that you’d like to improve and you’re in full control as to what you learn.
Language schools may often be afraid to recognise this change, because it means that they can’t rely on books or their standard staff to teach you English anymore. After all, no book is going to be specific to your needs and teaching you will require someone who not only has experience working in a business context, but also someone who understands your business model and your value proposition. It would also be a bonus if the person teaching you was actually passionate about your business. It’s just a bonus, but it helps.
As there is no published material you can rely on to serve your client’s needs, this new model of teaching is based entirely on the content provided by the learner, where feedback takes centre stage. It’s a model where the teacher plays the role of a critical observer who has the language and business expertise to provide their client with highly relevant language help; a model which requires the teacher to be fully involved and go beyond the red.
And, again, such services are not something that many language schools will be able to provide if they rely staff whose main area of expertise is teaching general or academic English. Few schools pay their teachers well enough to require such a high level of commitment to their clients. After all, how could you even ask a teacher to record personalised audio files or maintain an on-going shared feedback sheet reflecting the whole history of the learning process if you pay them €20 per hour?
Any language academy that wishes to be seen as providing very high quality tailor-made service to their business clients, needs access to the kind of expertise that enables them to deliver such service and they need to be prepared to pay a premium rate for it. The same is true for businesses who want to organise language classes for their employees. Contracting a language provider who doesn’t understand your business model or value proposition, is like going to eat out in the first restaurant you come by and choosing the first dish on the menu: risky and quite likely not to live up to your expectations.