4 Coursebook development



CREATING A BUSINESS ENGLISH COURSEBOOK FOR ACADEMIC NEEDS: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

BORKA LEKAJ LUBINA

Department of Business Foreign Languages

Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb

Croatia

blekaj@efzg.hr

BOGLARKA KISS KULENOVIĆ

Department of Business Foreign Languages

Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb

Croatia

bkisskule@efzg.hr

MIRNA LINČIR LUMEZI

Department of Business Foreign Languages

Libertas Business School, Zagreb

Croatia

mirnalincir@

Abstract

Business English (BE) is often referred to as the lingua franca of the business community. It has therefore become an indispensable element of business school curricula where it plays an important role in developing students' competencies required for academic achievement and professional success in the business community. BE coursebooks therefore play an important role in the education of future economists and business professionals. Yet, most BE publications only partially cover the needs of language learners at higher education institutions (HEIs). This is because BE syllabi at HEIs vary to a large extent and because BE student groups vary in size and ability. The creation of a syllabus-oriented BE coursebook by language teachers working at HEIs is therefore a logical step in targeting business students’ needs.

The aim of this paper is to present the challenges of writing such a coursebook and the solutions that a group of language teachers teaching BE at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, Croatia found while creating a syllabus-oriented BE coursebook. The paper discusses major challenges: a lack of professional expertise in creating economic content, a lack of financial resources and specific requirements of class organization and target student groups. The paper then offers the authors’ solutions to these challenges. A close cooperation with business and economics professors in the process of writing helped overcome the lack of expert knowledge, while the focus on plentiful language exercises helped in the acquisition of word partnerships typical of language for specific purposes. The organization of units in line with the task-oriented rather than communicative approach helped overcome the problem of teaching to large student groups.

Even though the focus of this paper is on the creation of a BE coursebook, we believe that creating a coursebook for academic audiences in other courses and areas taught at HEIs faces similar problems. Therefore, the challenges and solutions presented in this paper might contribute to broader discussions of what constitutes a good academic coursebook.

Keywords: Academic coursebook, Higher education, ESP, Business English, Teacher-authors, Syllabus

1 Introduction

The problem of finding the right English for Specific Purposes (ESP) coursebook in the plethora of coursebooks available on the market is a well-known one to all teachers of ESP. This is especially true for business English (BE) taught at higher education institutions (HEIs). The choice is difficult in HEIs because there is a very specific content taught, and the syllabi vary largely from one school to another. That is why teachers often embark upon the long and time-consuming journey of compiling materials from various books, often ending up with an impression that these compiled materials do not fully match the needs of their students and they are not consistent, attractive and student-friendly. The dream of having high-quality course materials that entirely meet the needs of their students and teachers thus often remains an elusive one, sometimes causing a lot of frustration, both for teachers and students.

This is why, after years of teaching, teachers in higher education often undertake a task of creating coursebooks of their own. Their experience along with their pedagogical and methodological expertise being their most valuable assets, they usually have a clear picture of their students’ needs, teaching and learning methods and desired learning outcomes. On the other hand, being primarily language teachers, they inevitably face problems related to the lack of competence in core business and economics content. Besides, BE coursebooks are very specific as they should contain authentic texts, audio and video materials, which make their publishing expensive and demanding. The fact that they are usually tailored to a specific syllabus and that they target a relatively small audience makes their publishing even more costly. Unfortunately, at the same time HEIs often do not have large funds for coursebooks at their disposal, especially in small countries like Croatia, despite the fact that all the official EU documents stress the importance of foreign languages in higher education (European Commission, 2008; Council of Europe, 2014). As a result, teaching materials often need to be produced with fairly limited funds and that is why authors are sometimes forced to make compromises. To summarize, the process of creating a BE coursebook for HEIs often proves to be a long and complex one. However, the result is often very rewarding, both for teachers and students.

This paper describes our experience of writing a BE coursebook for the Professional Degree programme at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, Croatia. The book was created by four teachers of BE who have been teaching at this programme for years. As our work involved not only writing methodologically appropriate materials, but also a lot of research, piloting and technical issues, we think that this paper could help other authors organize their work more efficiently, and get prepared for the challenges they will face on their way.

Our aim is also to raise some issues related to the production of ESP coursebooks for higher education and academic coursebooks in general. After dealing with the difficulties and challenges that we faced during the writing process, we will suggest solutions to these problems and draw conclusions from this hard, but very fulfilling experience.

2 The Role of Coursebooks

Coursebooks are often the cornerstones of language teaching. As they are frequently written by course developers themselves, they strongly reflect the learning objectives and syllabus, and the need to meet learners' expectations. However, in other situations, a coursebook can sometimes even define the framework for a course, provide its syllabus and give the main content and language input. In some cases the coursebook can determine what kinds of activities will be done in a class and influence the teaching style of the instructor (Zohrabi, 2011, p. 214).

Coursebooks also provide a structure for teaching and learning: they ensure that units follow each other in a logical fashion both in terms of content and level of difficulty. They recycle and reinforce material from previous units to enhance deeper learning. The material is presented in a consistent format, which makes learning easier. They also make teaching material easily accessible for teachers. Less experienced or under-prepared teachers find reliable material in published coursebooks, which can help them save time, make certain pedagogical decisions and boost their confidence (Li, 2014, p. 69). In this way, coursebooks make it possible for teachers to “focus on other tasks such as monitoring the progress of their students, developing revision materials and activities” (Nunan, 1998, quoted in Tekir and Arkan, 2007, p. 3).

If we look at coursebooks from the learners’ point of view, with a coursebook at hand, learners have a source of reference about the course and the language; they can use it to revise, or for self-directed learning. Coursebooks foster a sense of progress in learners: by being able to follow how they advance from unit to unit in the book they can track how their knowledge of the foreign language is growing (Harmer quoted in Zohrabi, 2011, p. 214). This can be very motivational.

Several researchers, however, warn against relying too much on coursebooks. According to Cunningsworth (1995, p. 7) “coursebooks are best seen as a resource in achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs. They should not determine the aims themselves or become the aims. We are primarily concerned with teaching the language and not the textbook.” Tomlinson (2008, p. 4) found that “teachers responded to [his] worldwide enquiry about why a particular global coursebook was so popular by saying they used it because it meant they didn't have to spend time preparing their lessons but that they felt sorry for their students because it was so boring.” In Tomlinson’s (2010) opinion, teachers should “make use of [coursebooks] as a resource and not […] follow them as a script.” He also criticizes some published work because “it seems that most classroom materials are written for teachers and students to follow. It also seems that many of them are not driven or even informed by principles of language acquisition and development.” This makes them less effective and less useful in helping students learn the language.

2.1 The role of coursebooks in ESP classes

ESP courses are typically developed to serve the needs of learners who need something more or different from what a general English course can offer. The subject content of coursebooks used in ESP courses is specialized and technical in order to satisfy the needs of the target learner. Teachers rely heavily on these coursebooks because their main field of expertise is in teaching a foreign language and not in another highly specialized field.

BE is a field where there is no lack of published material. It is, in fact, one of the three areas best catered for in Britain, along with English for science and technology (EST) and English for academic purposes (EAP) (Cunningsworth, 1995, 132). It would seem that teachers of BE should be able to find books that fit their objectives. Yet, what we see in the field of ESP today is that the needs of learners become more and more narrowly defined and courses are becoming increasingly fine-tuned to meet those very specific needs. In this environment the BE coursebooks available on the market are sometimes not suitable enough. Cunningsworth (1995) and Gatehouse (2001) suggest that teachers can solve this problem by relying on a coursebook and supplementing it with appropriate materials: “curricular materials will unavoidably be pieced together, some borrowed and others designed specially. Resources will include authentic materials, ESL materials, ESP materials, and teacher-generated materials” (Gatehouse, 2001). Both authors, however, point out that this is very time-consuming and difficult for teachers.

The problem that BE coursebooks are not satisfactory is even more pronounced at HEIs. Most BE publications only partially cover the needs of language learners at HEIs. This is because BE syllabi at HEIs vary to a large extent and also because BE student groups differ in size and ability. The creation of a syllabus-oriented BE coursebook by language teachers working at HEIs is therefore a logical step in targeting business students’ needs.

3 Teachers as coursebook developers

At HEIs, perhaps even more so than in other learning environments, the production or choice of relevant literature often constitutes the structure of the course syllabus. This is one of the major reasons why teachers working at HEIs develop their own course materials. As Robinson argues, coursebooks provide “a framework for a course, forming in essence a syllabus” (1991, p. 57). Clearly, the inextricable connection which exists between academic course materials and teachers at HEIs is emblematic of the environment where academics are expected to publish works in the fields of their expertise. In other words, academic coursebooks are the results of extensive research and the teaching practice of their authors. They often represent highly estimated authors’ contribution to their research areas and careers. Simply put, it makes sense that academic coursebooks are developed by those who are the most competent in their respective academic fields.

Teachers as coursebook developers are also quite common among ESP courses taught at HEIs. As Dudley-Evans and St. John suggest (1998), course design and materials development is one of the key roles of ESP practitioners. The main reason for this lies in the nature of ESP teaching which is designed to target very narrowly defined and highly specific needs of learners. As ESP courses are not readily taught according to any pre-ordained methodology, as Strevens points out (1998, p. 12), ESP teachers can hardly find a single catch-all course material on the market which would target the varied and very specific academic, professional/occupational and other needs of their learners. In addition, tertiary education foreign language learners represent a very heterogeneous group so it is hard to find a finely-tuned coursebook which would address an audience whose language competences range from A2 to C1 (CEFR) in a single course. Similarly, the existing BE coursebooks are not suited for contact hours available in academic courses as the timetable often follows the practical logic of semestral organization rather than the logic of language acquisition as a long-lasting process. Taking all that into account, it is clear that a number of ESP teachers - and especially ESP teachers at HEIs - find it hard to work with the existing coursebooks available on the market as these coursebooks do not address all the specific needs of ESP students.

Teachers at HEIs who develop coursebooks enjoy the benefits of that endeavor. Firstly, as they develop the material, they are able to systematize, organize and present knowledge in a methodologically suitable way. The process of writing also allows authors to sharpen their focus on the learning outcomes and deepen their awareness of students’ needs and abilities. It is clear that material development has a huge potential of bringing teachers a step closer to students as throughout material development authors use didactic and pedagogical principles which steer the learning process. Furthermore, coursebook development allows authors to learn about themselves as educators, writers and collaborators. As Zohrabi puts it, they can discover their own potential, limits and abilities in imparting knowledge (2010, p. 214). It should be added that the process of learning about one’s own limitations is even more pronounced as a significant number of academic coursebooks are a result of team work. By joining their writing efforts, co-authors learn from other each other, distribute the workload and therefore save time. Talking about the benefits of team-writing, Masuhara (2006, p. 43) says that several authors give more “depth“ to writing, provide each other with support, feedback and motivation.

Even though it is quite customary for course developers to create their own materials in the academic environment, it should be said that there are several disadvantages accompanying teachers’ efforts to develop their own materials. Firstly, scientific research skills and teaching skills do not necessarily guarantee that a researcher is necessarily a good coursebook writer. Coursebook development requires a different set of skills, especially those related to didactic and pedagogical principles of learning. Secondly, team work can become a problem. Jordan (1997, p. 261) mentions several of the most common problems: deadline ignorance by some writers, differences of opinion, and personality clashes. Another problem which is specific for academic coursebooks is publishing. These coursebooks are often written for relatively small markets and some of the major publishers with the most resources are reluctant to publish them as they are not cost-effective. That leaves authors with the possibility to collaborate with small, niche publishers with fewer resources. Needless to say, this can affect the quality of coursebooks.

3.1 The authors’ motivation to create the English for Business coursebook

The four authors were motivated to embark upon the journey of coursebook development driven by a mixture of necessity and eagerness to work with high-quality materials. The first idea for the book came at the onset of the reform of the professional degree study program and its syllabi at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb in 2011/12. Even though similar courses had been taught within the “old” professional program, the new organization of the professional study program made it impossible to teach the book used previously. The second factor which motivated the authors to develop their own coursebook was the fact that no published material available on the market suited the needs of our students, class organization, and learning outcomes. Thirdly, the authors wanted to write a coursebook whose content would reflect the Croatian business reality. It is very rare for BE coursebooks available on the market to address, or even mention, the specific features of doing business in small countries such as Croatia. The inclusion of Croatian specificities in the coursebook makes this material really stand out from similar publications. Finally, it should be mentioned that the authors’ efforts to write academic coursebooks are rewarded in the reappointment procedure, which proved to be a significant external motivator for the authors as well.

Apart from being motivated, it is important to note that the authors were well-prepared to embark upon the process of writing a coursebook as they are all experienced teachers. Two of them even had prior experience in coursebook development in other areas of EFL teaching. All the authors have taught BE courses to professional degree students for a number of years. This means that they were familiar with the content material in the new syllabi as well as with the typical student learning profile at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb. Most importantly, the authors knew from their experience how the learning objectives in the syllabus translated into practice. This is especially important for BE courses at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, because they are often taught in conditions not conducive to high-quality foreign language acquisition.

4 Developing English for Business, a syllabus oriented coursebook

After the explanation of our motives and reasons for deciding to create a coursebook for the English for Business course, this section describes the practical steps of the process itself.

4.1 English for Business courses and their syllabi

The English for Business course at the Professional Degree programme offered at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Zagreb was to supplement the content of the core courses offered at the programme. The Professional Degree programme is comprised of three majors: "Accounting and Finances", "Trade Business Operations" and "Tourism Business Operations." During the six-semester program, students from all three majors follow the same courses in two semesters, while they are offered major-specific courses from the third semester onwards.

English for Business is taught in three semesters in a total of 72 teaching hours (6 lessons taught in 4 days in each of the 3 semesters of English for Business). English for Business 1 and 2 provide an introduction to economics. This material is the same for all three majors. These two courses familiarize students with a wide range of topics ranging from types of businesses and management to marketing and CSR. On the other hand, English for Business 3 is a specialized BE course focusing on accounting and finance, trade or tourism, depending on the students’ majors. Every course also involves a number of business skills, from writing business letters and describing graphs to telephoning and participating in meetings.

| |MAJORS |

| |Trade Business Operations |Accounting and Finances |Tourism Business Operations |

|SEMESTER II |E for B 1 (all students) |E for B 1 (all students) |E for B 1 (all students) |

|SEMESTER III |E for B 2 (all students) |E for B 2 (all students) |E for B 2 (all students) |

|SEMESTER IV |E for B 3 Trade |E for B Accounting and finances |E for B Tourism |

Table 1: The organization of the English for Business courses in three semesters.

Our job as course content developers was to ensure that students were given enough language input to make them effective communicators. Given that there is an insufficient number of contact hours scheduled with students, we were forced to find the most effective and economical way of imparting the required knowledge to students. Two additional factors that we had to consider were that 1) we were not able to offer separate courses to students with different levels of English due to scheduling difficulties; 2) group sizes are large (up to 140 students/group). During the planning of the course we found that there are no books on the market that are suited for these specific features and that the books that were used in a prior version of the programme were outdated and did not fit the new syllabi.

Under the circumstances described above, we decided to undertake the task of creating our own coursebook. The expected learning outcomes of the course are that students are able to communicate effectively in a business environment, that they obtain the relevant professional terminology; they develop the necessary reading skills to be able to understand texts that they may encounter in their professional lives and acquire traditionally taught business communication skills (telephoning, meetings, presenting, business correspondence, etc.). While taking into consideration these desired learning outcomes, we designed a coursebook that corresponds to what students learn in their core courses in terms of content.

4.2 Planning and creating the structure of the coursebook

The syllabi defined the structure of the book and we decided to organize the material into 4 sections: the first encompassing the syllabi of English for Business 1 and 2, the second dealing with trade, and the third covering accounting and finance. Tourism has not been included in the coursebook as it is a more demanding area in terms of coursebook creation as it requires a lot of authentic and up-to-date materials, which entails copyright problems. Besides, there are good English for Tourism coursebooks on the market that entirely meet the needs of our students. The fourth section involves business skills which are taught throughout the three courses.

We decided to cover the following topics in four sections:

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMICS

UNIT 1.1 Economic Systems

UNIT 1.2: Different Sectors of the Economy

UNIT 1.3: The Public and the Private Sector

UNIT 1.4: Types of Businesses

UNIT 1.5: Recruitment

UNIT 1.6: Entrepreneurship

UNIT 1.7: Management

UNIT 1.8: Corporate Social Responsibility

UNIT 1.9: Company Structure

UNIT 1.10: Setting up a Company

UNIT 1.11: Marketing

UNIT 1.12: The Marketing Mix

SECTION 2: TRADE

UNIT 2.1: The Distribution Channel

UNIT 2.2: Domestic Trade

UNIT 2.3: International Trade

UNIT 2.4: Methods of Payment in International Trade

UNIT 2.5: Documents Used in Exports

UNIT 2.6: Incoterms

UNIT 2.7: Exchange Rates

SECTION 3: ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE

UNIT 3.1: Sources of Finance for Businesses

UNIT 3.2: Banking

UNIT 3.3: Insurance

UNIT 3.4: Financial Reporting

UNIT 3.5 Securities

SECTION 4: SKILLS

UNIT 4.1: Presentations

UNIT 4.2: Business Meetings

UNIT 4.3: Telephoning Skills

UNIT 4.4: Writing and Saying Numbers

UNIT 4.5: Describing Trends in Graphs

UNIT 4.6: Writing Business Emails and Business Letters

Each section was divided into units according to the syllabi. Every one of the four authors was assigned approximately the same number of units, according to their personal preferences and expertise. In order to avoid any serious inconsistencies in style and structure, before starting our work we set very clear rules on the form of each unit, i.e. the approximate length and the form of the main texts, the number, sequence and the types of exercises, etc. We decided that each unit would take the following structure:

• lead-in questions,

• pre-reading task,

• main text,

• comprehension questions/tasks,

• vocabulary check,

• language exercises,

• shorter text,

• follow-up pair tasks or follow-up group tasks,

• revision.

In the fourth section, units covering business skills are less uniform as their structure is dictated by the topic they cover.

We strove to achieve structural uniformity of units to make the planning of classes easier and to help students recognize exercises quicker. In a way, we wanted to simulate coursebooks published by big-name publishers where each unit has a certain number of pages, with similar exercises and structural parts following each other in a given order.

We also tried to adopt a more or less uniform style of writing. However, the authors were free to make minor changes in the structure of some units and add other types of materials if the topic of the unit required it. This way we wanted to avoid producing materials that are too monotonous and uniform in structure, without jeopardizing the consistency of the materials.

4.3 The process of writing the units

After the planning phase was completed, our next step was the writing of the units. We needed to research a number of expert books on economics and business, existing BE coursebooks, newspapers, magazines, and internet sites on economics and business. In some cases, we had to consult a number of professors of economics and business professionals.

When the first version of every unit was finished, it was sent to the other authors for peer-review. All the comments were discussed and changes were introduced where necessary. After that, one of the authors was appointed to compile all the materials into one single document, to make all the necessary adjustments and to format it in a uniform way.

Next, the materials were piloted in class during three consecutive years. All the teachers were asked to note down their comments in their copies, mark any spelling mistakes and take notes on the reception of the materials in class. It was of the utmost importance to go through all the exercises and tasks in class and to note down which of them worked well in the classroom and which had to be modified or even removed. Students were also asked to make comments on particular texts and exercises. Besides, they had to fill in standard course evaluation forms at the end of semester which, among other things, contain course material evaluation.

Thus we were provided with valuable comments and insights that helped us proceed to the next step: changes were made according to students’ evaluation and teachers’ comments. The whole procedure was repeated three times, in three successive generations of our students. Every time the revised version of the materials was peer-reviewed by all the co-authors before being piloted again in the next generation. Piloting of the materials also resulted in the slight reorganization of the syllabi. One unit was removed from the syllabus of English for Business 1 and moved to that of English for Business 2.

During this whole process several university professors and business professionals, namely experts in finance, trade and marketing, were consulted on a number of issues, most of them from our faculty. Although they were not officially involved in the writing process, they were more than willing to help us with their advice and comments.

Finally, in order to be published as a university coursebook, our materials needed to be reviewed by three independent reviewers, one BE lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, one at the University of Split and one professor of economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb. Their comments were further discussed and final changes were made where necessary. Before proceeding to publishing, the materials also needed to be proof-read by both Croatian and English language editors which resulted in further changes.

4.4 Technical issues

Finally, one of our tasks that was not related to writing itself was finding a publisher. At the beginning, the authors negotiated with a well-established publisher on the market (Profil-Klett) which refused to work on the project. Even though this publisher’s decision was never clearly clarified, it can be surmised that they were not attracted to a project which would bring little if any financial benefit to them. The authors then decided to turn to their own institution, the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, to support the project. This means that upon the Dean’s approval, the institution agreed to cover the costs of publishing and reviewing the texts. In some cases, fully employed authors of the institution may be entitled to a small fee for their work. In other words, the authors received rather small fees, and, what represented a far more serious concern for us, the overall graphic design had to be pretty modest. We were therefore involved in the preparations of the graphic design, helping designers to find the best solutions for the layout under the circumstances.

The authors made important decisions about the format of the book, the number of copies and the final price of the book in order to make it affordable to most students. The format we chose was A4 so that students can freely write solutions to exercises and make notes. The quality of paper therefore had to be conducive to writing with a pencil and erasing. As for the number of copies, we made a projection based on student numbers in the piloting phase. The final price was calculated on the basis of the number of copies made, bearing in mind that the price should be low enough to avoid photocopying. Namely, photocopying copyright material in Croatia is quite commonplace despite legal sanctions which are rarely implemented in practice. This is why big publishers have increasingly been wary of signing new projects as the price they would set for a niche product would be too high for Croatian students to bear.

5 Our challenges and solutions

The writing of any coursebook is full of difficulties, problems and challenges; ours was not an exception. The previous sections of this article have already touched upon some of these issues, and here we will summarize them and explain what kinds of solutions we found for them.

5.1 Heterogeneous and large student groups

Student groups on the Professional Degree programme are large and heterogeneous. This, of course is not an ideal setting for an ESP course. Gatehouse (2001) suggests that in the interest of making sure that all students are able to follow and benefit from a course, “entrance standards must be established in the areas of language level, motivation, and prior education and experience. Most importantly, these standards must be strictly enforced at the time of placement.” This is important because “variations in language level, prior education and work experience can be accommodated only to a certain extent.” Due to an inadequate teacher-student ratio, however, we are unable to separate our students into sub-groups according to language proficiency. This causes the problem of having advanced students and lower-intermediate level students in the same large group. Teachers in such groups cannot really monitor and evaluate the individual progress of students as in small groups and employ a communicative approach to teaching where there is a lot of interaction between students themselves. As a result, students with lower levels of proficiency usually struggle to keep up with content-based tasks. Knowing this before we started work on the coursebook, we decided to create a text-based, content-oriented coursebook which is also suitable for self-study and lots of out-of-class revision.

5.2 The structure of the book

It was rather difficult at first to develop a material addressing at the same time all professional degree students taking English for Business courses (semesters II and III) and then material suitable for particular majors (semester IV). The reason for this is the organization of the programme (see Table 1).

Since majors differ, we first considered the option of creating three separate books for each major, which would have overlapped in one part of content (the material covered in E for B 1 and 2). We rejected this idea because it would have been confusing for the students and not cost-effective. We also made a decision not to include material for the tourism major in the book because we found a commercially available coursebook containing valuable authentic materials that suited our purposes well. Besides, it is too demanding to produce high quality coursebook for English for tourism as it requires a lot of authentic and up-to-date materials, which entails the problem of copyright fees in a situation where the budget is fairly limited.

We also felt that the entire coursebook might be used as a reference book for later study by all students irrespectively of their major and hoped that they can then benefit even from sections that they did not cover in class.

With the help of this structure we wanted to prepare adequate communicators in the general business environment and, metaphorically speaking, open the door of their narrowly defined subject area, hoping that they can pick up the thread themselves and continue expanding their knowledge during their working lives. This approach, i.e., relying on self-direction on the part of students is specific to ESP because “ESP is concerned with turning learners into users" (Carver, 1983, p. 134), who after acquiring valuable learning strategies can develop their language skills on their own time as well.

5.3 The structure and style of the units

The problem of not having enough contact hours with students had to be solved by designing the structure of units in a specific way. We had to make the coursebook useful both in class and out of class. We anticipated that if not all exercises were done in class, students should be able to finish them at home and use the book later for self-study. The Revision section was specifically added to provide a short summary and suitable exercises for home study, keeping in mind that good ESP material allows “self-access organization of the learning” (Carver, 1983, p. 131). To make the self-study easier, we provided a comprehensive English- Croatian glossary of all the most important business terms at the end of the coursebook.

As the uniformity of structure helps students use the coursebook for self-study, we created strict rules of writing. However, our original rules for uniformity were not always possible to follow. Sometimes this was due to the content at hand, and other times it was a result of the different pedagogical views of the authors writing the units. The most obvious deviation from the general structure happened in the case of the units on skills. Considering our time restraints with students, we found that it would make no sense to start with a text and proceed as in the other units. We decided that we would let the subject matter dictate the structure instead. A similar situation happened in the case of the unit titled “Financial reporting”. Here the author of the unit had to introduce the basic concepts and vocabulary related to accounting and financial reporting and then deal with each of the three main financial statements separately. The result was five shorter texts with corresponding exercises as opposed to the regular structure. We felt confident in taking this approach, because, as Hutchinson and Waters (1987) put it: "ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for learning" (quoted in Gatehouse, 2001).

As it was mentioned earlier, sometimes the authors had differing approaches to teaching the materials. Although these differences became smaller as the book went through several peer-reviewing cycles described in section 4, we decided that students can benefit from slightly differing approaches if the general consistency of the book is kept. This is why some units contain cross-word puzzles, others put more emphasis on checking the Croatian translation of terms or focus more on gap-fills, mind-maps, guided speaking, etc. Hopefully, it made the book look less monotonous.

5.4 Team work

Working in teams clearly has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. Our team of four was comprised of teachers who have all had a number of years’ experience of teaching BE at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, both to BA students and to students at the Professional Degree programme. In this way we have all already possessed a certain amount of expertise in business and economics and were aware of the general profile of the students we could expect to be using our coursebook. Some team members were chosen by the head of the department and some joined at the request of the already chosen members. All the team members shared a good professional and personal relationship and we expected no difficulty in working with each other. Thankfully, our expectations were correct and in general we experienced no major problems in our work together. However, even in this very positive and supportive work environment, we experienced some frustrations due to problems with keeping deadlines or following the predetermined rules on formatting. Because the work environment was so positive, disagreements on subject matter were dealt with at face value and they did not affect the relationship of the authors with each other. Possibly the largest amount of disagreements happened during the writing of the marketing unit. Here well-known marketing coursebooks did not seem to fully follow the reality of marketing as it is done in practice. After numerous discussions and extensive research, the debate was decided by a professor of marketing working at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb. This is where we learned that marketing has moved on from the ideas described in the coursebook. Had we not worked in a team, the author of the marketing unit would probably not have become aware of the anomaly.

Another positive outcome of writing in a team is the built-in possibility of peer-review. This is an excellent tool for producing high-quality material and we feel that the book has definitely benefited from it. Due to the numerous adjustments that happened in the reviewing cycles, the style of the texts became uniform and the fact that they were written by four different authors is not obvious. However, the technical dimension of peer-reviewing (i.e. sending the master copy to and fro, from one person to another) at times proved to be rather complicated even if the authors appointed one person as the editor-in-chief. Occasional deadline breaches also hindered streamlined peer-reviewing.

5.5 Publishing

The problem of finding a publisher for our book was a central one for a very long time during the writing process. Originally, we had a tentative agreement with Profil-Klett that it would publish the coursebook when it was written. The fact that this prestigious publisher would want to work with us motivated us to make sure that our book is well-researched, accurate and pedagogically sound. Although the negotiations went on for a long time, after a while it became clear that Profil-Klett was not interested in publishing our coursebook intended for a small, specialized market. After that, we contacted the publishing house at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, who were more than happy to publish the coursebook. Losing Profil-Klett was not only bad news because we knew that we would not have funds available for including copyrighted material, audio recordings and images in the book. We were also counting on a professional and experienced editor to go through our work and give us advice on how best to structure and organize our work. In the absence of this, although one of the authors was appointed as editor-in-chief, we all edited each other’s work to the best of our abilities. The long time spent in limbo waiting for Profil-Klett to make a decision, however, was a blessing in disguise. It gave us enough time to pilot the coursebook to three generations of students, which definitely improved its quality and helped in the editing process. So, let us be comforted with Tomlinson’s words: "The hope, of course, lies with local, non-commercial materials which are not driven by the profit imperative and which are driven rather by considerations of the needs and wants of their target learners and by principles of language acquisition" (2008, p. 9).

5.6 Finances

The lack of funds in the production of academic coursebooks is a result of general economic circumstances in Croatia. The purchasing power of Croatian students is very low, certainly worse than in western-European countries. Also, we should probably mention that Croatia allocates a very small segment of its national budget to science and education (around 3% in 2015 according to M.F, 2015). In that light, financial assistance to small publishers or high authors’ fees are quite unrealistic. This is surprising if we take into account EU documents which stress the importance of multingualism and the significance of learning foreign languages at HEIs (Gjukić et al., 2013).

Our lack of finances has been already dealt with in the course of this article. After we realized that we would not be able to include copyrighted material, audio recordings and images in the book, we had to make sure that the coursebook we created worked without these important elements. We decided that the coursebook would be strongly text-based and made sure that those texts were all results of extensive research to reflect the authentic usage of economic and business terms and language accurately. We wanted to create material that was as close to the authentic as possible, given that we were not able to include authentic texts into the coursebook itself. The coursebook was also written with the idea in mind that teachers should be able to supplement each unit in class with material (especially video material) taken from the internet.

5.7 Piloting

Once the coursebook’s first version was written, we decided to pilot it. This was done primarily to see how it works and what changes could be made, and secondarily, because our negotiations with Profil-Klett were still ongoing and we were waiting for an answer. Piloting was extremely useful: we uncovered many previously hidden mistakes and illogicalities in the book, we checked students’ reactions to it and we tested it out as teachers to see how it worked in practice. We used the feedback to adjust the material to further match it to the needs of the students. Unsurprisingly, the most numerous changes were made after the first version was piloted. The biggest change was that of moving one unit (Company structure) from the syllabus of English for Business 1 into that of English for Business 2. This was necessary because we found that students, some of whom might not have learned English for a number of years prior to enrolling at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb, were overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of the materials in English for Business 1. We felt that they would be able to cope better with slightly more material in English for Business 2. The second round of piloting proved that this, in fact, was the case and that with this small change we managed to balance out the two courses.

5.8 Collaboration with outside experts

EFL teachers are experts in teaching a foreign language. ESP teachers tend to learn a lot about the specialized field of their learners, but it is unrealistic to expect teacher-authors to have an equal amount of expertise in both fields. The four authors of our coursebook were experienced BE teachers at the start of the project and all of us have spent a lot of time educating ourselves informally in business and economics. Although we are all very motivated to keep up-to-date with the newest issues in this field, we are not professors of economics and we also have no experience in working in business. Our lack of knowledge of business and economics was very frustrating during the writing of the coursebook. Although we researched the topics we wrote about, sometimes materials we found on the topics were outdated or contradicted practice. That is why when we had the first draft of the coursebook, we consulted professors of finance, marketing and trade whose assistance was invaluable. It would have been a good idea to contact experts earlier in the writing phase, and we believe that future authors should include experts in their fields from the very beginning of the project.

6 Conclusion

Coursebook development clearly plays an important role in the academic environment. Coursebooks often constitute the main pillar of a syllabus and their development is an important part of academic careers. They reflect, or help shape, the learning outcomes of a course. This is especially valid for ESP courses at HEIs since the specific and narrowly-defined content and skills are accompanied by the practical exigencies of the timetable and class organization. We have seen that developing tailor-made ESP coursebooks at HEIs is therefore a necessity because of a number of reasons. First of all, no suitable material is available on the market that can satisfy the specific requirements of syllabi. Secondly, the material that is available does not contain translations of important vocabulary to the local language. Next, published coursebooks are not suited for the number of hours available for teaching at HEIs, or for mixed ability groups and especially for a large number of students in the class.

It is therefore very common that ESP practitioners at HEIs develop their own tailor-made coursebooks. In the case of experienced teachers who have familiarized themselves with the language of the specialized content and who teach according to the principle of “present-practice-produce” on a daily basis, the task of writing is, in a way, a natural continuation of their work in the classroom. Obviously, teacher-authors enjoy several benefits of teaching the material they have developed. First of all, they can best enjoy the fruits of their labour - the coursebook is, by the logic of things, as teacher-friendly as possible as it minimizes the element of the unexpected (e.g. unknown vocabulary, unclear instructions, etc.).

Keeping in mind the specific needs of students who will use ESP coursebooks allows authors to be attentive to ways of presenting materials in a student-friendly way. In the case of our coursebook, it is clear that it is geared toward satisfying students’ needs as much as it is student-friendly. It progresses in accordance with the topics of the syllabus, which helps students focus their studying efforts on what is relevant in a particular course. It also minimizes the element of the unexpected with its more or less uniform unit structure and visual layout. It prepares students to deal with the content competently through a number of pre-reading, post-reading and follow-up exercises. If the instructions are clear, the coursebook can easily be used as a self-study reference book. And last but not the least, if the material in the coursebook is studied thoroughly and with understanding, students are well-prepared for the final examination.

Unfortunately, while creating ESP materials for higher education can be highly rewarding to their authors, the entire project is accompanied with some challenges as well. First of all, ESP teachers are not experts in the specific content despite their methodological and pedagogical competence. Furthermore, student groups can be large and heterogeneous, the number of contact hours is often insufficient and team work can be a source of difficulties. In addition, the authors often have to deal with the lack of funds. Very narrow academic audiences and niche markets are a problem which probably exists beyond the area of ESP publications. Even though small niche publishers exist in the area of academic publishing, their resources are often lacking in terms of their ability to cover a high-budget production that most OUP, CUP and other big-name publications usually have. Copyright obtained for using authorial or authentic texts, first-rate production of listening material, colourful and up-to date pictures and images, video material accompanying the coursebook and high-quality paper all add significant costs that small publishers simply cannot bear. Even though finance is a problem, let us not forget that big publishers do not always have a good insight into local learners’ needs and that authors working on a low budget can still target their learners’ needs best.

Despite these problems, what made the authors’ endeavor worthwhile was the ability to cooperate with economics experts from various areas. All of the colleagues who helped us with their advice, comments and corrections were more than willing to offer their assistance. Discussing their areas of expertise in the light of English language acquisition was beneficial to both sides, but the authors certainly profited from this collaboration. It is through discussions with economics experts that we learnt that sometimes English and Croatian terminology differ and that what is considered common knowledge in some BE publications is sometimes outdated. In short, we learnt a lot about the content we were writing about. That is why we would like to emphasize that the spirit of academic collaboration is one of the greatest assets that universities have and should promote. We think that the process of collaboration with experts as well as team-writing have made us better, more focused and informed teachers of BE.

In addition to the benefits of academic collaboration, there is another positive aspect of coursebook development that we would like to stress as it could help other, or future, teacher-authors. Teacher-authors have the unique possibility to improve the final version of the material through piloting, and it should be undertaken in several rounds, if possible. We have seen that the English for Business coursebook was piloted with several generations. Each round of piloting revealed areas which could be improved or corrected. Sometimes these were minor things, technicalities or typing errors, but most importantly, the teachers gained valuable insight into the issue of what is relevant, interesting and useful. Piloting the coursebook material with at least two generations of students before publishing the book is our warmest recommendation to future teacher-authors.

Finally, we hope that our experience might help future teacher-authors plan the entire process of writing a content-based BE coursebook efficiently. An ideal coursebook would be the outcome of wide-ranging collaboration between teachers of ESP and experts on the specific field of the content. Perhaps, experts in their fields could attempt writing texts on given topics, following the guidelines provided by ESP teachers. ESP teachers’ methodological and pedagogical expertise and the practice of piloting could further develop these materials to achieve the learning outcomes of the students. This could be the future of ESP coursebooks at HEIs. In this way, ESP teachers would not need to feel incompetent when writing about areas where they are not experts. Besides, HEIs should recognise the significance of the production of high-quality academic coursebooks and support them accordingly. Given our overall positive experience of coursebook development, this might be a feasible endeavour.

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