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EL CENTRO POR DENTROBUSINESS ENGLISHCOURSE 2006-2007British Council Madrid Adults Centre is now in its third year of collaboration with ElCentro de Estudios Garrigues in its Business English classes. A sure sign of thesuccess of this collaboration is this year’s huge increase in demand for places onthese courses, up by 40% from last year, and we now have 7 groups from Mondayto Thursday covering all levels from pre-intermediate to pre-proficiency.Mark MitchellManager Corporate Contracts / British Council Madrid Adults CentreThis year we are using one of theprincipal Business student course-bookson the market as abase for all our courses, but we are supplementingthis with the material mostappropriate to the needs of the studentsand the various Masters coursesthey are studying. In particular, we arecooperating closely with the Garriguescourse coordinator (Rebeca Fernández)to make sure that our input is relevantand timely, as well as lively and fun.Some of the main areas of study willinclude: negotiating skills, meetings,job interviews, ‘dinámicas’ (debatingskills) and presentations. The final presentation,given by all students of alllevels at the end of the course, is assessedand counts towards the finalmarks, but preparation and practice forjob interviews, for example, will take thestudents beyond academic evaluationand into the ‘real’ world of finding a job.In addition to the course-book inputand the focus on specific businessskills, we also concentrate on teachingvocabulary which is related to the Masterscourses which are taken here. Inthat way the students learn terminologyand expressions related to the fields of,for example, Human Resources, Companylaw and Banking and Finance.During our classes we ensure that studentsparticipate actively in class as afundamental part of our methodology isthat learning a language is a skill whichhas to be practised, not simply learnedor memorised.Our main focus in class therefore is toimprove the communicative ability ofour students and one way to achievethis is by setting up speaking and listeningactivities where students speak inpairs and in groups about economicquestions or current affairs and in thisway improve their fluency. Afterwards,when the teacher evaluates their contributions,the students learn from theirgrammatical mistakes and examineany words that have been mispronounced.One of our main objectives duringthe course is that students will be ableto function in a wide range of social andbusiness situations and feel confidentabout speaking English, whatever theirfinal level.British Council Madrid Adults Centrehas for many years been working closelywith educational, financial andgovernmental organisations in Madrid.At present we are working closely withthe educational authorities in the Communityof Madrid, and also in the Bankingand Pharmaceutical sectors,among others. The seriousness andacademic rigour demanded of its studentsby Garrigues makes the BritishCouncil an ideal partner in these Mastercourses.31