Brainstorming is an essential problem-solving skill in business that builds teams and generates creative solutions.
Incorporating brainstorming techniques into your lectures can improve students’ communication skills and prepare them for real workplace scenarios.
Why Teach Brainstorming?
There are many good reasons!
Brainstorming:
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- Improves Communication Skills – expressing, assessing and defending ideas
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- Develops Critical Thinking – promoting analytical and structured thinking
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- Promotes Creativity – helping students think outside the box and put forward innovative ideas
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- Prepares for the Real World – learning a workplace skill
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- Provides Variety – learning by doing rather than by passive listening
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- Consolidates Learning – using and repeating vocabulary and concepts
How to Teach Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a technique students may have already learnt in other subject areas in their studies or working experience. Even if they have not, teaching basic skills just takes a couple of minutes.
Define the Goal
Identify the problem or topic you want to brainstorm, for example:
How can brands can connect with customers?
Set the Rules
Set a time limit for the brainstorming session and stop when this time limit is reached
Record ideas – you can use whiteboards, flip chart paper, post it notes or an online tool such as padlet
Participate – students learn more and have more fun
Do not comment on, criticise or judge ideas during the brainstorming session
Be inspired by other people’s contributions and build on ideas
Respect other people – no idea is too stupid or too far-fetched – sometimes the best ideas come from what seems crazy at first.
Next Steps
Review and evaluate all the ideas and suggestions.
Then put the ideas into different groups. This is part of the structuring process which is so important in Business English – for example students can generate the material for a presentation or report that has a clear structure and logical flow.
In this process, students look for different categories and decide which ideas fit into which category. They identify overlaps, links or ideas that can be rejected and/or do not fit into a category.
For example, the question:
How can brands can connect with customers?
could produce categories such as:
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- marketing
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- customer experience
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- operations.
Follow-Up
Example activities include:
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- Write a report
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- Prepare and give a presentation
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- Design an action plan
By integrating brainstorming techniques, you can create engaging, practical and valuable learning experiences that not only enhance language proficiency and communication skills but also prepare students for the real world of business.
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