When Ingrid Hartmann-Scheer met Wolfram Brecht of the chamber of commerce and industry in Düsseldorf in 2002, their discussion lasted more than four hours. The English teacher from Comenius-Gymnasium in Oberkassel, a wealthy suburb of Düsseldorf, had a problem. Fortunately, Brecht had the solution.

Hartmann-Scheer wanted to introduce business English lessons at her school to help prepare pupils for their further education and careers. "We already had work-experience projects, but I felt the language of business was missing," she explains. Neither Hartmann-Scheer nor head teacher Monika Matthes had any doubt that the English taught at schools needs to change. "We focus too much on text interpretation, reading and writing, and do not teach pupils how to communicate," says Matthes.

Wolfram Brecht

Hartmann-Scheer's problem was that she did not know how to teach business English. North Rhine- Westphalia (NRW) had already established guidelines for introducing business language into the curriculum. "But there was no teaching methodology available to do this," she says. So she turned to Wolfram Brecht at the local chamber of commerce for help.

Her timing could not have been better. "For a long time, we had wanted schools to work closely with business," says Brecht, who is head of the chamber's examination board. In 2001, at a chamber conference to discuss schools and the economy, firms from all industries had complained that most school-leavers couldn't perform basic office tasks in English: they were unable to write e-mails, take telephone calls or even have simple conversations.

Gabriela Eilert-Ebke

"What excited me about the call from Comenius was that here was a school that intended to deal with the problem," says Brecht. Together with Gabriele Eilert-Ebke, head of business communication training at Henkel, Brecht had already developed business English courses accredited by the chamber. Now, he realized how they could help Hartmann-Scheer. "Henkel could provide the teaching methodology, and we could provide the accreditation," he says.

Henkel, whose headquarters are in Düsseldorf, is a typical global firm. Seventy-five per cent of its 50,000 employees work outside Germany and don't speak German. Even in Germany, there is a wide range of nationalities, and the company trains some 2,500 staff members a year in foreign languages. "Our employees have to work hard to make up for what they did not learn at school," says Eilert-Ebke. "By working with Comenius, we felt we would be doing something about the problem."

The result was a joint project of the chamber of commerce, Henkel and Comenius called Initiative Schule trifft Fremdsprache im Beruf, which began in autumn 2003. Henkel provides Comenius with up-to-date business English learning materials to integrate into its English lessons, and organizes workshops for the school's teachers. There is also a new, two-year business English course for the 12th and 13th classes. This leads up to an examination for a certificate accredited by the chamber of commerce.

You can learn more about the results of the Henkel and Comenius cooperation Initiative Schule trifft Fremdsprache in Beruf in Business Spotlight 1/05. Subscribe here!

Page 1: The missing language
Page 2: Preparing pupils for life
Page 3: Links