Abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the possibilities of developing linguistics and communication skills in English for non-English natives through an entrepreneurship elective for high school students. This curriculum hopes to increase students' knowledge of key business concepts and developments worldwide and develop confidence in dealing with authentic reading and video materials, as well as with personal interaction in the English language. Finally, this material ultimately proposes to support the development of learner autonomy, intercultural awareness, and global competence. During COVID-19, teachers and students were forced into a fully online environment, and maintaining the engagement for such a long period was a challenge. Thus, with this curriculum, we intended to present create a journey with entrepreneurship to engage our multilingual students using a variety of strategies, as well as develop their language skills. During this ten-day course, students had the opportunity to meet with specialists, receive support from mentors, and open their own businesses. As for language goals, we focused on: Exposure to the target language; Development of reading strategies (Skimming and Scanning); Essential Listening techniques (content prediction, listing for gist, detecting signpost language, Listening for details, Inferring meaning); Participating successfully in oral interactions with international speakers and peers; Developing speaking strategies (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation; Being able to use phrases and expressions to state and ask for opinions, interrupting and handling interruptions, asking for and give clarification, delaying decisions, emphasize a point, and summarizing what was said. Therefore, this paper will go over strategies used to engage students in an online environment during the pandemic, review the entrepreneurship curriculum used on a 10 day elective with high school students from an international school in São Paulo, Brazil; and finally, it will discuss how such a course was able to develop English-as-a second-language skills.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, Language Learning, Online learning.