English for Business: teaching writing online

[gwynedd_owen]

Hi all,

I've just started to dabble with online language learning and one question seems to be on my mind constantly. The writing component is crucial in an English for Business course, eg. writing resumes, reports, memos, etc. Considering the current wave of technology, more and more people are too busy to attend face-to-face classes and thus are turning to online learning courses that can be taken at their own convenient time and place. Unlike classroom English where teachers are still around to guide students, these online courses lack that support. The question is, how will guidance be provided to the students during the writing component in the online course. Who checks what they have written? How will the students know whether they are writing the "right" way?

I would appreciate it if you could offer your thoughts or guide to some reading materials about this.

Best regards!

[Tdol]

There are plenty of sites offering such services for a fee- such work on the internet isn't cheap because it's quite labour intensive.

[A.Russell]

There are a number of useful software solutions for teaching online.

I am not sure what you mean by teaching writing. If you mean for kids just learning to write, then I'd have to say classroom lessons would be the best way to go. However, you can teach typing (software package plus conferencing).

If your learners are adult and have the basics of writing down already, you can have them do writing assignments and share/ collaborate with other students using something like http://moodle.org/, an excellent, open source, php based course management package. I'm starting to use it with some of my university classes and the response has been very positive.

For all ages, you can get them involed in a key-pals program. Here is one that I have used: http://www.epals.com/. Participating schools and classes all have various interesting ways of using the program and you can get yiour own students involved.

[gwynedd_owen]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. The group of students I'm referring to are the experienced learners such as working people who enrol in online business English courses as part of their career development. The writing here refers to report writing, resumes, business letters, proposals, etc.

Best regards,
gwen

[A.Russell]

Moodle would be good for that. It's free, too.