Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science (Dec 2011)
BUSINESS ENGLISH COURSES ONLINE SUPPORT
Abstract
The paper deals with the project called Online Study Support for the Subject of Business English within the Fund of Higher Education Development of the Czech Republic. It will be created in the form of a twelve-module course in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) on the B1 level of the Common European Framework of References for Languages. Moodle is an open source Virtual Learning Environment which is free, developed by a worldwide community and is used for study purposes. It allows the teachers to create online courses and the students to enrol in them. The course is focused on the development of business and economic terminology, on reading comprehension, listening comprehension and the work with up-to-date authentic audio-visual materials. The course comprises the topics such as business and its basic terms, business letters, business organizations, macroeconomics and microeconomics, personnel management, marketing, email, accounting and finance etc. Single units have the following structure: lead in, key words and definitions, specialist material, various activities such as filling in the gaps, multiple choice, matching, word formation, word order etc. These electronic activities are created in the most famous authoring tool in our field called Hot Potatoes, they can be stored on a central server and accessed from anywhere through the Internet. Online support will be intended for students of all faculties and fields of study at the Czech University of Life Sciences (CULS) in Prague, including incoming Erasmus students and academic staff as well as the students of other universities.