If you haven’t heard of BESIG (and I hadn’t until a few months back when I started following their Twitter posts) they are the business English special interest group of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). IATEFL is based in the U.K. and draws the bulk of their membership from outside the U.S. but, like TESOL in the U.S., they are a global organization useful for English teachers worldwide. And, in my opinion, BESIG stands out in the variety and depth of its resources for teachers of business English.

 

A new activity for them is a series of  professional development workshops that are given online.

Seventeen English teachers and trainers arrived at the TOEIC® Propell workshops last month with little idea what to expect. It was the first time either they or we at AMIDEAST’s English4Success Division had experienced Propell and in fact the first time ETS had ever offered Propell for TOEIC in the United States.
 

The workshops proved a very interactive experience that got rave reviews. The two days, one focused on TOEIC Listening & Reading and the other TOEIC Speaking & Writing, were quite different from each other, but both provided participants who in many cases were familiar only with academic English tests such as TOEFL the opportunity to come together to share best practices for teaching English, and specifically the types of English needed for on-the-job communication and TOEIC test preparation.