Back to the Chalkface? Teaching Business English in the Post-Pandemic University Classroom

At some point we’ll be returning to the campus, but will it be ‘back-to-normal’, or something better? Building on last year’s workshop ‘Teaching Business English Online’ (September 2020), we invite you to share further insights and experience of teaching online, and collect new ideas and formats for teaching and assessment in the post-pandemic, post-digital classroom. The workshop begins by considering issues faced by us all, before turning the spotlight onto a specific area: teaching and assessing L2 writing skills online.

Organized by Stephanie Ashford and Nathan Keeves, DHBW Villingen-Schwenningen

Program

15.00-16.00: The post-pandemic university Business English classroom  

Nathan Keeves will report on a survey of Business English teachers’ attitudes about the prospect of returning to the ‘physical’ classroom, and use this as a springboard for discussion about what we have learned from our experience of teaching online that might be of benefit when we return to the physical classroom. Drawing on the survey results and the discussion, we will collect and document ideas and suggestions for improvements in six key areas: teaching approaches and methods, use of technology, classroom environment, timetable changes, and the curriculum itself. This will provide the basis for building a shared vision of the ideal post-pandemic Business English university classroom.

16.00-16.15: Break for mingling in breakout rooms

16.15-17.15:Teaching and testing L2 writing skills in the age of neural machine translation

With the growing sophistication of machine translation technology, translations can be generated that are often ‘good enough’. So it is hardly surporising that the use of free online machine translation services has increased in higher education, raising questions about the curriculum, academic integrity, and fairness in assessment. Stephanie Ashford focuses on the implications for teaching and testing of writing skills where English is a second language (L2). With ‘fitness-for-purpose’ in mind, she proposes tweaks to the curriculum and assessment policy, presents ten task types suitable for teaching and testing L2 writing skills online, and encourages your contributions.