Abstract:

Due to the expansion of the Erasmus program and to globalization, European universities have significantly increased the number of courses taught in English during the last decade. This tendency has been exacerbated in the field of business, in which most European universities usually offer a number of courses that allow both foreign and local students to develop the necessary skills to work in an international business environment. However, the professors teaching those courses are frequently confronted with a number of specific challenges such as students’ limited understanding, the adaptation of teaching materials to a different language and the cultural heterogeneity in the classroom. Professors frequently have to devote intensive working hours to better prepare and adapt the class materials to a different linguistic and social context. In addition, an extra-effort is also needed to engage the students in teaching dynamics and to obtain acceptable levels of participation. In this paper, we provide resources and practical guidance to efficiently prepare engaging business courses for non-native English speakers. We contend that teaching business in English language is more an opportunity than a threat and emphasize the several advantages derived from it. In particular, resources available in the English language are by far more abundant, accessible and accurate than in any other language. In addition, students are frequently highly motivated when they confront the international atmosphere and the specific nature of the course. We provide strategies to take advantage of these upsides. In particular, sources of case studies, slides, exam questions and software, teamwork activities, videos and short films, etc., and most importantly, we suggest ways to use these resources and address the pros and cons of each one.

The paper structures as follows: first, we focus on how changing the language significantly affects the learning process. Specifically, we analyze how to adapt to those changes:
1) before (how to adapt the teaching philosophy, the students’ and professors’ goals, and the teaching materials),
2) during (how to adapt the communication system) and
3) after (how to maximize the learning results and grading).

Second, we offer resources and advise to overcome these challenges. Finally, we provide some conclusions and identify problems that remain unsolved.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, research projects.