On December the 1st I uploaded my seventh English materials site, and my tenth site overall (if you include my free ESL sites list, a test site and this blog).
I got the idea and bought the domain for BusinessEnglishMaterials.com two years ago but didn’t actually start getting round to making it until April this year.
I wanted to make a Business English site with a difference. There are plenty of great sites out there that cover the “traditional” stuff like presentations, meetings, talking about graphs, etc. I wanted to make one that focused on the world’s biggest brands, so I wrote down a list of the world’s top 100 brands and that was my plan. I had fun writing the 100 articles and learnt a lot about the world’s top companies.
I hope this concept is interesting enough for teachers and students to use and find useful. Each lesson has all the skills, recycles vocabulary and has students creating projects and getting them involved in business role-plays. New to this site, I added activities based on spelling, punctuation and capitalization, which I know my students like.
As I was making the first lesson, I decided to make it bigger than the lessons on my other sites. I eventually produced a 20-pager, that I was happy with. I accompanied the PDF with the 8 online activities and MP3 file that I do for my two News English sites.
Please let me know what you think of it, AND tell me if there are mistakes in the content or links that don’t work. Within five hours of the site being uploaded, one keen visitor pointed out to me that Siemens was not headquartered in Berlin (as I had written), but Munich – Thank you for that 
Tags: business english
Congrats on your new website! You are a ESL GENIUS!
Thank you Jennifer
We (other teachers and myself) love your websites, but we find the mp3 recordings a bit stilted. Could you read it a bit more naturally? That would make it more useful for focusing on aspects of connected speech, such as weak forms or linking. Thanks!
Thanks Alison
The recordings seem to be my biggest problem – I get more feedback on them than anything else. Several years ago a man asked if I could find someone to read who at least sounded alive
I’ll try and make things a little more natural.
Best wishes,
Sean
Hi Sean,
I am a native English teacher in France and have been for the past 20 odd years having been born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland.
First of all I want to congratulate you on the amount of material and work you have put into these sites which I discovered a few months ago, they are great and I am using them regularly with my students both at lycée level in France and with my older students at university level either as a basis for classes or as complimentary work for them to do outside the classroom.
As, I believe we should always try and give something back for what we get and following on from the previous comment about the mp3 recordings which I actually find quite good but maybe they could do with some variety in the voices, I would like to offer some help to you. What about some other native speakers doing some of the recordings for you? That way there would be a nice variety of different people speaking, both men and women if possible. I don’t know if this has been proposed already. Of course, I would be willing to do some as you see fit. I am also a semi-professional musician and used to recording audio so there would be no technical problem here.
Anyway, let me know what you think and keep up the good work!
All the best for 2011 and am looking forward to your new stuff…
Armando
Thanks for sharing your resources. Very inspiring!
I believe it would be more interesting and helpful if some authentic text materials (perhaps extracts or links to the company website) can be used here.
Yes, I agree that the voice recording can be improved; but this is better than having none at all – some learners can still make use of it to learn the pronunciation of the written words in the articles.
I am a teacher of English and I’m curious about this very much. I’m trying my best to expand the langauge as much as possible.
Thanks
You are genius!!! I wish I could make up lessons as easily as you! Thank you very much! We all should be as hard-working as you in all areas of life: not only teaching, but also medicine, engineering and others. Then people would be much happier!
I own a small English school in Kyushu Japan, I’ve been looking at your sites and I’ve even used some lessons in class and I’ve had good student feedback.
I must say you are very prolific…where do you find the time to make and put up so many lessons ! ? … keep up the good work…
Thank you Saule
I teach English in various companies in France.I find your website very interesting,resourceful and useful not only to teachers but to students as well.Hence,I have been using it for years.The only drawback is that the recording lacks features of authentic English.
Thanks Abder – Could you tell me the sites on which my recordings lack authentic English and which aspects of my speech lack authenticity – then I’ll be able to try and rectify it.
Best wishes,
Sean
sean,
i figured i should say THANK YOU! I’ve been using breakingnews and famous people lessons for months! Really good job at both sites! Thank you for makin my job easier
saludos!
demet
I’ve just found your site. I haven’t gotten into it yet, but it appealed a lot to me. As an interpreter I’m always in need of new vocabularies. I’ve been participating in business meetings in which people talk about machine purchase, installation and repair. We, as interpreters, strugle to be able to do a good job translating everything according to their expectation. Sometimes it’s hard. I was wondering if you had any specific material to specific fields such as information technology, steel industry, mechanical engeneering, electrical engeneering, if you know what I mean. I hope I can find something I can use. As I live in a country were English is not the official language, I need to have tools so I can practice on my own and video lessons is a good idea.
I’m looking forward to using your lessons. I believe they are great.
Thanks a lot.
Jonair
I just wanted to say thank you for your wonderful sites. I will be making a donation today.
Thank you Nathan – Truly appreciated.
Sean
I found your Breaking News website about a month ago and I want to say a big thank you for making my life easier. Because there are several exercises, they are easy to adjust to private lessons. With so many articles to choose from, it is also possible to find something to suit different age groups and interests. Some of the exercises don’t obviously work with only one or two students but especially my older pupils like the lesson formula you are using.
Once again, thank you for making my life easier – and showing how to create an effective lesson plan.
Just wanted to say how great your lesson plans work.
The Breaking News site is very helpful and has spiced up
my lessons. Thank you so much for sharing!!
Thank you Judy
Thanks for sharing your resources. Very inspiring