Business English and English presentation skills

A recent e-mail brought to my attention the British Council "Innovation Awards" for new and better ways to teach and learn English. I had a look at the list. Amongst the finalists in the advanced category were "Splendid Speaking" by Flo-Joe and "Intelligent English" from Pearson Longman together with The Economist. I could add Business English Podcast to the list of similar services although it did not make the British Council list. I explored these services on the web. I guess I would never go about learning " business Russian" in this way. Why not?

As an intermediate or better  Russian learner,I would want real authentic content. I would rather listen to and read real content from a novel, news story or other articles intended for native speakers than listen to what "Splendid" or "Business English" offer. I would never want to go through the tedious exercizes that "Intelligent English" provides.

The quality of the recorded voices is important. Stilted voices and unnatural recordings do not turn me on. For an English learner there is a wealth of content intended for native speakers that address the issues of presentations and how to speak in a meeting, or how to write a report etc.. Many of these are freely available on the Internet. I would get all the authentic material of this kind, aimed at native speakers, and import them into The Linguist. I could even import content from the programs I listed above. Then I would imitate the words and phrases and structures used in these contents.

In any case I would want my own style of presentation. I would look at many different resources and decide how I wanted to make presentations. I would build up my basic ability in the language by focusing on content that I enjoy, even if it is literature. If I build up my overall skills in the language, the presentation skills or business skills will be much easier to acquire.

I believe that learning business English, or academic English or other specialized English is secondary. Building up a solid base in the language, with natural phrasing and rhythm is the first thing to do.  I found these candidates for the Innovation Awards rather un-innovative. The language resources, especially for English, are all out there. The innovation will come with systems like The Linguist which make this plentiful content more easily accessible for learners and put the learners in charge, and get away from the traditional teacher-oriented format.