Beyond Page‑by‑Page Training

How my corporate learners changed my teaching ...

It should have been published before the last three parts of “The Shift.” But …

Reversed knowledge hierarchy - PART I

When I started out as a business English trainer more than twenty years ago, I had a very clear picture of what “real professionalism” and “ a good business lesson” looked like.

It was her.

She walked into the glass meeting room with a slim business English coursebook and a calm, collected presence. Day after day, lesson after lesson, she took a group of senior managers through that book: page by page, unit by unit, exercise by exercise. They were engaged, polite, focused. They did the roleplays, they discussed the case studies, they filled in the gaps. From my newbie perspective, it was flawless. This, I thought, is what being a serious corporate trainer means. This is the gold standard.

And of course I wanted to be like her.

So when I eventually landed my first “serious” corporate client (more serious that all business groups before)– a legal setting, no less – I felt I had finally arrived. Under my wing I had a handful of lawyers and even a couple of judges. I came in with my carefully chosen business textbook, my lesson plans, my highlighters. We moved through the units more or less as I had seen it done before. I used all the “right” techniques: pre-teaching vocabulary, walking them through listening tasks, setting up pairwork discussions around the textbook scenarios.

On paper, it looked exactly like what I had admired years earlier.

But there was a problem: my lawyers were unimpressed.

They were polite, of course. They participated. They did the tasks. But there was a slight tightening in the jaw, a glance at the clock, an energy drop whenever we opened the book. They kept showing up, but they were not lit up by what we were doing. Despite the methods. Despite the small talks. And I remember feeling quietly frustrated with them – couldn’t they see how good this material was? The texts were authentic, the topics sounded “business-like”, the exercises were well designed. Even I, with my big black patent‑leather briefcase where that beautiful coursebook fit perfectly – always with a neat stack of freshly copied handouts – and those clicking heels that were supposed to announce, “real business is arriving”… Research into business English textbooks often highlights exactly these strengths: clear structure, relevant cases, solid language work.

It took me a long time to name what was wrong: for my lawyers and judges, there was nothing of their world in that book.

The “difficult negotiations” in the textbook were about fictional mergers they didn’t care about. The “challenging emails” were about logistics problems they would never handle. The “ethical dilemmas” were abstract, decontextualised, already resolved on the page. They could admire the material as a product, but they could not see themselves in it.

The book was good. But it was not theirs.

Back then, I still believed that professionalism meant mastering the textbook and delivering it smoothly, especially in front of “high-level” clients. I thought my job was to be the person who really knows the material: what comes next, which activity to skip, which grammar box to highlight. In a way, I was more loyal to the coursebook than to the people in front of me. And loyal to the language school I represented then.

Looking back, I can also see how much safety there was for me in that model. A solid business coursebook is a shield: it tells you what to do, it gives you ready-made topics, it signals seriousness. In the early stages of a career, that shield feels like a lifeline. And to be fair, coursebooks do have real value – they structure content, provide exposure, and give both teacher and learner a sense of progress. The problem begins when the book silently becomes the main character in the room.

What my lawyers needed was not another polished case study; they needed language and discourse tools to handle their cases, their courtroom dynamics, their negotiations with opposing counsel. They needed a space where their own documents, emails and arguments could appear on the table – with all the confidentiality and ethical boundaries respected, of course – and be worked on as the real curriculum. For them, the textbook was like a gallery of stock photos: nice to look at, but not where they lived.

Today, when I walk into a room with senior professionals, I no longer aim to be the person who “does the book properly”. I aim to be the person who can help them hear their own expertise more clearly in English. That might mean abandoning the unit halfway through because a real issue comes up in the conversation. It might mean spending an entire session on one messy, authentic email thread instead of “covering” two textbook pages. It almost always means letting their world, not the publisher’s world, define what counts as a “good” lesson.

If I try to put it in one sentence, it would be this:

Back then, I believed that a good coursebook would make my lessons feel professional. Now I believe that a good lesson makes the learner’s own work feel more thinkable, speakable and negotiable in English.

The irony is that my early admiration wasn’t completely wrong; it was just incomplete. There is something professional about consistency, preparation and a well-chosen syllabus. But true professionalism in corporate and ESP settings is measured less by how elegantly we can move through a book, and more by how bravely we can let go of it when it gets in the way of the people in front of us.

“I’d love to hear from you: When was the last time you felt brave enough to close the textbook mid-lesson? What happened next? Let’s share our ‘off-script’ moments in the comments.