Applying entrepreneurship education into teaching English
Part 1: Find a good, informative and
scientific article/video on applying entrepreneurship education in your subject
field. The purpose is to create a library of information that all students can
use in Task 2.
I found this is a bit tricky task, as my subjects English
and Russian language, as well as intercultural communication, are not
vocational, but general subjects. On the other hand, that’s why English classes
can be designed to suit any professional context. The most obvious ones for me,
considering my backgound in tourism business and international companies are
business and tourism studies. Thus, while the business students learn about
entrepreneurship in other classes, I can expand on vocabulary, dialogues etc.
in business negotiation situations, interviews and so on. Therefore I have
chosen some literature on those fields, because the search for
’entrepreneurship education in English teaching’ did not produce any results,
at least what could be considered appropriate or scientific.
The first article that I picked is an abstract of a study
carried out among the Business Administration students on curriculum factors
influencing students’ entrepreneurship intentions. Here is the link:
The research was carried out by
interviewing teachers of Business Administration and comparing the interview
results with results obtained from the Entre Intentio survey. Among the good
practices identified, the most important were the learning in teams, working with practice enterprises, developing
entrepreneurial skills and attitudes through dialogue, as well as co-operation with businesses. The
findings indicate that after the first year of studies, entrepreneurship
intention factors are emphasized only for the students who choose the
entrepreneurship orientation.
Business time article author claims that effective
entrepreneurship education must be built around real-world experiences, not
textbooks. So far teachers have not been expected to bring real
entrepreneurial experiences into the curriculum, which is strictly defined by
the K-12 objectives.
http://business.time.com/2012/05/23/why-were-so-bad-at-teaching-entrepreneurship/
Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/05/23/why-were-so-bad-at-teaching-entrepreneurship/#ixzz2OjbQAKxm
This third article on How Entprepreneurship can fix young
America (why not Finland) provides top tips of teaching entrepreneurship, which
can be applied by a teacher:
1)
Combine academics with the real-world
2)
Investing in and mentoring young entrepreneurs
3)
Teaching technology inside and outside the
classroom (I can relate to this!)
Task 2. Write an entry in their
blog/or post here on how they would integrate the methods in your coming or
post teacher practice.
I studied an article, provided by Teemu and written by
James O. Fiet on The Theoretical Side of Teaching Entrepreneurship. Mr. Fiet
suggests that there should be a solid study of entrepreneurship theory present
in teaching, not just giving real-life example of success stories.
Ideas/principles: looking the world through other
lenses than our own. In English classes, we can read selected literature on the
theory of entrepreneurship, then combine the task with finding central
vocabulary, making mini presentation in pairs in English and, to incorporate
the aspect of creativity, to have a written assignment, for example, a blog
post on students’ views and ideas about their own entrepreneurship, and how the
material relates to that. Then other students could leave comments. Another
task could be brainstorming with business theories with Popplet as the whole
class. This could be a homework, each student working on a shared Popplet. The
results and thoughts would be discussed during the next class.
I as a teacher could also simulate business
negotiations in a role play in English, where different students play different
characters, like an aspiring entrepreneur, foreign corporate CEO, a fellow
entrepreneur, bank/investment institution etc. One role play idea that is a lot
of fun for the students is to have two characters: an entrepreneur and a
potential client, to whom the former will try to sell his business plan that is
a real-life example, preferably his own that has been developed in other
business classes or courses. There are two more people involved: those who
verbalize the character’s thoughts. In other words, there is an actual
conversation going in English, and those verbalizing the participants’ thoughts
will also speak up after the character they are playing. This exercise combines
a lot of elements. Another objective would be to encourage students to use
English in spoken situations without taking themselves too seriously, because
the Finnish students tend to be very shy to speak English publicly.
The teaching style, suitable for my purposes is
project-based learning. First, the students have created a business idea and a
business plan in another class. Then we would study central vocabulary. Then
more vocabulary and phrases will be detected from a reading material, which is
closely related to entrepreneurship, either theories or lessons. Then the
students will give the mini presentation, and finally, they will incorporate their
knowledge in the role play, where they are encouraged to use the vocabulary and
other things they have learned. The topics which could be covered during the
lesson are taken from the article (p. 3), and are as follows: strategy/competitive
analysis, managing growth and discovery, idea generation,
risk and
rationality
, financing, and creativity.
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