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Practical Legal and Business English Course
Thread poster: AlexMiranda
AlexMiranda
AlexMiranda  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:28
Portuguese to English
+ ...
May 20, 2009

I am a former (less charitable souls would say "recovering") attorney and am working with one of the (if not the) premier English schools in Brazil to develop a series of Legal and Business English courses taught using a model that is similar to the ones taught in American Law and Business schools. Most of the courses I have seen tend to concentrate on vocabulary development but leave something to be desired with regards to communicative competence and hands-on practice. Some of the courses wou... See more
I am a former (less charitable souls would say "recovering") attorney and am working with one of the (if not the) premier English schools in Brazil to develop a series of Legal and Business English courses taught using a model that is similar to the ones taught in American Law and Business schools. Most of the courses I have seen tend to concentrate on vocabulary development but leave something to be desired with regards to communicative competence and hands-on practice. Some of the courses would be taught as distance ones to allow working professionals to participate.

The courses would be conducted by means of simulations. For instance, a module on commercial agreements would be taught by setting up 2 groups of students who would negotiate a contract (say, a purchase and sale agreement). They would receive model form agreements, re-draft them and conduct actual negotiations via phone conferences and email in order to hammer out the details, much as lawyers do. The theoretical portion of the course would consist of classes and readings on legal concepts and doctrine.

I think that this could be something that could be of interest to translators who either specialize in those fields or who are thinking of branching out into them. The idea here is to go further than vocabulary development and give translators an idea of how the end users of their work product actually use the documents, where fights come from and what ideas underlie the sometimes tedious or overly technical prose of such documents. What considerations go into drafting them? What alternatives do professionals consider when drafting?

I am wondering if there would be any interest on the part of translators and am also interested to hear what would be most useful to the community. I think that special courses could be geared specifically for translation professionals.

Any thoughts?

Alex ▲ Collapse
 
Anne McKee
Anne McKee
Local time: 07:28
French to English
Would be interested in Legal Business English lessons online May 20, 2009

Hi,

I am an English teacher and translator in France, I teach English in a virtual environment and from time to time have requests from professional people looking for very specific legal courses. Online lessons or those in a virtual environment would correspond to their need.

So if you decide to do online lessons, please let me know, as I could send some potential students in your direction.
 
AlexMiranda
AlexMiranda  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:28
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Will do - what is your platform. May 20, 2009

Anne,

The face-to-face course is a definite go and now I am working defining the platform for content delivery that I will use in the distance modules. What platform do you use? I have used BlackBoard before and set up a call with them to discuss whether its has the audio and video conferencing features I need.

I'll let you know when it is ready to run, which should take a couple of months.
 


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Practical Legal and Business English Course






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