Developing Teamwork and Social Skills in the Business English Classroom

In our increasingly interconnected world, mastering Business English has gone beyond being a workplace necessity – it’s a pivotal component of career advancement. Whether a person takes Business English classes to get ahead in their career or to enhance their employability, they must not only learn the language but also be able to apply it in a professional capacity. Business professionals need social skills and the ability to collaborate.

By integrating teamwork and social competencies into the training, Business English teachers can offer more comprehensive training that prepares students for real-world application of their language skills. Let’s explore how you can transform your Business English classroom into a thriving environment for professional growth and interpersonal excellence.

Why is it important to incorporate teamwork and social skills into the Business English classroom?

When it comes to staying competitive in the modern workplace, especially in a culturally diverse environment, having a repertoire of hard skills comes with a lot of advantages, but it’s the soft skills that set professionals apart. Business English learners, in particular, need a strong command of the language alongside other technical skills to work with or lead multicultural teams.

Strong social and teamwork skills in addition to language and technical skills set employees apart from the rest, as soft skills are increasingly valued by employers. Workers with strong communication and collaboration skills can interact with international clients and collaborate well with peers on projects and tasks.

This is where integrating 21st-century skills into the Business English classroom becomes crucial. In business, these skills are often called transferable skills, but essentially they typically include soft skills like creative and innovative thinking, critical thinking, collaborative and interpersonal skills, and leadership. Teamwork and social competencies are particularly important for Business English students, as they are essential skills for professionals, and they are skills today’s employers are looking for.

In the Expert Series webinar, Developing Teamwork and Social Skills in the Business English Classroom, Business English trainer Andreea-Katia Nechifor emphasized the need for these competencies.

“Collaboration is essential in the sense that we work in teams,” she said. “It might seem easy because we are social beings, but in fact, it’s not that easy, especially in multicultural teams, so we have to learn how to work remotely, collaborate with people from across the globe, from time zones, with different traditions, expectations, and work habits.”

To watch the webinar lecture and access a full library of on-demand ELT webinars, join the Expert Series community. Earn Certificates of Professional Development with each Expert Series webinar you complete, and explore learning paths ranging from Business English to 21st-century teaching.

How can you develop social skills through interactive activities?

When creating Business English lesson plans that teach collaborative skills, it is first important to consider incorporating tasks that will allow students to practice those skills. As Nechifor stressed, “When teaching soft skills, it cannot be academic. It has to be hands-on. The students can learn by doing. It doesn’t have to be direct instruction – they can learn without actually knowing they’re learning.”

Be it task or project-based activities, there are a variety of ways you can encourage Business English learners to work in teams and collaborate effectively. For example, the following ideas can be tweaked and adapted to the topic or target language you’re working on in class:

Role-playing
Solving case studies as a group
Email correspondence
Group presentation
Event planning
Podcast creation

In addition, your students’ needs and the typical situations they face should also be a guiding factor when choosing the most effective tasks for them. During the lecture, Business English instructor Ruth Nabaasa highlighted this consideration. “You need to know the specific needs of your students as you think of tasks you might want to assign your students during class,” she shared. With this said, it may be helpful to find out beforehand the most common types of interactions they have at work as well as their goals. Do they work on organizing events or activities in the office? How often do they attend networking events? How do they communicate with their counterparts abroad?

Explore our suite of 21st-Century Teaching Skills Micro-credential courses, or bundle all of them in the 80-hour Teaching 21st-Century Skills TEFL/TESOL certification.

How do you incorporate teamwork into Business English lessons?

With the criteria and activity ideas above in mind, let’s look at some activities you can incorporate into your Business English classes to teach teamwork and social skills and how you can get your students working together.

Job interview practice

By conducting mock interviews, students can help each other with answering challenging interview questions. Additionally, they can practice giving and receiving feedback from their peers, which encourages them to listen and consider other members’ perspectives.

Lead-in: Break the class into pairs. Then, have each pair brainstorm and list the most challenging questions they could get in an interview. For a more gamified experience, you can bring a Snakes and Ladders game template to class. Then, elicit the interview questions from the students and add the questions to the board game template. Afterward, you can play the Snakes and Ladders game with the class. When a student falls on a box with a question, he or she has to answer the question.

Practice: In pairs, students practice a mock interview. Then, have each pair role-play in front of the class. Afterward, you can elicit feedback from other groups about the role-plays and discuss the most difficult questions and different ways to answer them.

Looking for more ideas? Read about 15 fun and easy ESL games for teaching adults.

Company case studies

Analyzing and discussing real company issues or business cases as a group gives students a chance to exercise not only their critical thinking skills but also active listening and problem-solving abilities with their teammates. You can use this activity for various themes, from marketing strategies to company mergers to product innovations.

Lead-in: Before getting to the group activities, make sure to introduce vocabulary related to the current theme. For instance, if the case studies are related to investments, you can teach nouns and phrasal verbs related to investing (e.g., stocks, shareholders, equity). Then, divide the class into groups. (For online classes, you can assign them to breakout rooms.) Afterward, assign a business case to each group. Have the groups discuss their business cases; each member should contribute ideas or answers to the questions. They can also take turns writing the ideas they’ve come up with. Then, let each group know they are going to present their ideas or solutions to the class, and each member should have the opportunity to talk during the presentation.

Practice: After the group discussions, have each group present their business case before the class.

Read about five reasons to consider English as a lingua franca when teaching Business English.

Company events

Planning corporate events allows Business English students to work on organizing and executing a project with a team, providing them with opportunities to practice delegating tasks and monitoring the progress of a project.

Lead-in: Brainstorm the different types of events that are typically organized at work (e.g., product launches) and have students share any experiences they’ve had with event planning. Then, break the class into small groups and ask them to come up with an event they’d like to organize.

Once each group has decided the type of event they want to plan, they have to build a list of tasks and assign the to-do items to different members. They can create a to-do list using collaborative online workspaces, such as Notion and Google Docs, in order to work on the project as a team.

Practice: When the groups have their to-lists created, introduce expressions for delegating tasks, monitoring progress, and asking team members for updates. Then, let the students know they are going to take turns asking and updating each other on the progress of their event planning (collaborative apps like Google Docs and Notion allow team members to tag each other when they provide an update or post a comment on the document). When asking for updates on the project, students should use the expressions you previously shared.

Learn about creating engaging multimedia content for Business English learners.

Teaching teamwork and social skills with Bridge Corporate Language Learning

In helping their learners meet the demands of today’s workplace and be equipped with strong teamwork and social skills, Bridge teachers integrate task-based learning into their Business English instruction.

“Teaching requires strong social skills, as well as creativity and methodological knowledge,” said Bridge’s Academic Director, Umut Ergöz. “So, we incorporate activities such as cultural exchanges, where teachers from all over the world speak with students about different cultures, along with mock interviews, team-based discussions, and role-playing scenarios. What’s better than a shared task that needs to be completed to enhance social skills, peer learning, and teamwork?“

Meanwhile, for Bridge Business English trainer Graham Sadler, incorporating role-playing and a variety of digital tools also allows him to help build his students’ social competencies and other 21st-century skills.

“I have incorporated business scenarios through role-play activities in which students practice for job interviews, phone conversations, and booking a hotel,” he said. “I have also used digital whiteboards and PowerPoint slides for presentations and activities to teach students reading and writing skills related to spreadsheets, charts, and emails. I also teach job-specific vocabulary through role-play, videos, and worksheets.“

Beyond teaching Business English language skills, teachers are supporting their learners as they work to achieve their professional goals and for this, soft skills should not be overlooked. By incorporating social competencies and teamwork when teaching English to adult professionals, Business English trainers can help students boost their career prospects, increase their employability, and develop skills valuable for today’s global workforce.

Gain the skills you need to teach English to adult professionals while emphasizing soft skills like teamwork with the Teaching Business English Specialized Certification course.