In-company Business English: negotiating wants, needs and a mixed level
You are designing a 30-hour in-company Business English course over 10 weeks, with one 90-minute session per week. There are 8 learners. HR says the goal is 'conversation'; the learners say they want 'fluency for meetings'. A needs analysis shows that 6 of the 8 write at least 20 emails a day, 2 give weekly presentations, and all 8 attend international video calls. A placement test puts 3 learners at A2, 3 at B1 and 2 at C1. One learner is the line manager of another in the group. The company has bought a general intermediate Business English coursebook. The learners have agreed to a short progress review at week 5 and a final assessment in week 10.
1. How would you reconcile the learners' stated want ('fluency for meetings') with the observed needs and the HR goal?
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Treat wants, needs and lacks as separate data. The stated want is motivationally important: meetings and video calls are the visible face of the job. The observed needs show that email writing is the most frequent task and that presentations affect two learners directly. HR's 'conversation' is too vague to plan from, so it needs operationalising into observable tasks: participating in a video call, clarifying and checking understanding, writing a request email, giving a short update. Reconcile by building a core strand around spoken interaction in meetings and calls for all eight, because that matches the stated want and is a genuine need. Add a differentiated email strand for the six heavy email users and a presentation strand for the two presenters. Explain the rationale to HR and the group: the course is not ignoring 'conversation'; it is defining it through the tasks they actually perform. This preserves motivation while addressing frequency and impact.
2. Propose a syllabus model for the 30 hours and justify it. What would you do about the coursebook and the manager–subordinate pair?
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Use a negotiated, proportional syllabus with a task-based core. The core cycle is: authentic video-call or meeting task → noticing useful language → rehearsal → repeat task with feedback. Around this, allocate proportions: roughly 60% spoken interaction, 25% email writing, 15% presentation work. The coursebook becomes a resource for language input, not the syllabus; select units that support the core tasks and supplement with real emails and recorded call extracts. This model is justified because the learners need performance in their own contexts, and a general intermediate book neither matches the C1 learners nor the A2 learners.
For the manager–subordinate pair, establish ground rules early: no public correction of each other, no line-management discussions in class, and mixed pairing that does not always put them together. Use individual tutorials at week 3 to check comfort. If the dynamic becomes a barrier, approach the manager privately and agree a professional boundary.
3. How would you assess progress validly across A2–C1 in week 5 and week 10?
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Use performance-based assessment, not a single written grammar test. At week 5, run a short simulated video call in pairs, recorded, with an analytic rubric covering task completion, comprehensibility, interaction strategies and target language. Add an email task based on a real workplace scenario. At week 10, repeat a comparable call and add a short presentation or meeting contribution for the two presenters. Share the rubric with learners in advance so the criteria are transparent. To handle the range, use the same tasks with differentiated expectations: A2 learners are judged on communicative success and basic repair strategies, C1 learners on precision, register and flexible interaction. Triangulate with a self-assessment and a short portfolio of real emails. Record and moderate the speaking samples for reliability; with eight learners, this is manageable. The final judgement should report progress against each learner's starting point, not a single class average.