Challenging Creativity in Business English Classes.

Teaching Business English is intimidating for the inexperienced teacher because of the huge quantity of professional terms that need to be introduced in the lesson and of the difficulty to grasp the real meaning and use in various contexts. Numerous materials and textbooks which have recently appeared on the market due to the globalization of the business world are extremely useful and seem to offer great support, facilitating the teacher's work and creating a feeling of comfort and relief. In fact, it is a matter of teaching students to deepen their language skills in order to use them successfully in business contexts, not about teaching Economics in English. However, at a certain moment, students may get used to the comfort of being "trapped" in this "business English routine" and may react surprisingly when asked to get out of this warm atmosphere. Students in business are not mentally structured to explore their imaginative skills; they are rather centered on the practical side of the issues they have to solve. Therefore, learning how to think outside the box is a matter of effort and dedication. For the teacher, it is mainly a struggle to make students understand the importance of developing the creative aspect, of generating original and exciting ideas. It's not common to demand creativity from technical English students but it's surely a challenge which needs to be dealt with great care. The present paper is about attempting to exceed some limits and see the reactions and feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]