Chinese Business

So, teaching Business English classes consumes about 85% of my schedule.  I teach it at the Sophomore and Junior level - some of those classes are Non-English majors (which makes teaching pretty difficult) and others are English majors ().  I wasn't really into business in college, and only took a few classes related to it (mostly entrepreneurship-related ones) so at first I was kind of at a loss at what to do with these kids.  I spent my first week or two awkwardly teaching from their awful textbook, until I had an epiphany.  

I would have them start their own businesses.  In class, of course, as kind of a role-play sort of thing.  I had them organize themselves into groups, and told them that for the rest of the year, that group was their company.  Then I had them make whatever kind of business they wanted in that group.  The only restrictions I put on their creativity at this point were (1) Whatever product/service they were offering had to exist today, (2) It had to be legal.

Since the inception of all the companies, I base each class over different things businesses have to deal with and once a week, I give each company-group a problem they have to solve and then the following week, they have to give a short presentation on what the problem was, why it was a problem and what solution they decided on.  Sometimes I give each group an individual problem and other times I give the whole class a big problem (which requires more thought/work/impressive presentation).  The two big problems were "How do you plan on advertising your company and attracting your target market?" and "Hiring!" (Also tied into resumes and interviews.  Three birds, one stone).

I won't lie, its still a little bit hit or miss at this point (Non-English majors class is a smidge more chaotic to communicate with than my English-majors classes), but it gets them thinking outside of a textbook and forces them to listen when I teach for tips and to try to learn business vocabulary to prepare for the solution presentations.

Here is a short list of companies that they came up with:


GV (General Vehicle) Bicycle Renting Company: You come to them on certain streets/parks, and rent a bicycle.  There are different stations all over the city where you can return it.  The cost is determined by either the amount of time you rented it, or the mileage (if you go from one side of the city to the other on the bike, it would be more expensive than if you just went to the other side of a park).


Kingdom Digital Company: Sells specialized phones to children and the elderly.  Larger buttons/screen, fewer unnecessary features, simple designs, easy-to-use speed dial and GPS (so children can't get lost).


Yummy Hots: A restaurant that specializes in Ma La Ta (I probably murdered that word). It literally means 'Hot Hot Hot.'  But its a spicy noodle-vegetable-soup dish that is pretty popular in Changchun. They want to try to open restaurants in America and make it very popular there.


Barbie Company: A shampoo company targeting young girls.  Their main attraction is that they use only natural products to create their shampoo and no synthesized chemicals.


Xiao Xiao Milk Company: A milk company in Mongolia.


RSCR LTD. Co: This company creates new energy cars (ie: Green technology), and they are trying to sell them so a person on an average income can buy them.


Magic Company: (Originally they wanted to call their company 'BP', but when we were doing this, it was in the middle of the Gulf oil spill and I told them that 'BP' was a bad name) They are a woman's fashion company with a huge emphasis on customer service and international markets (they basically wrote a page about all the things they are going to do to help customers that come to them).  I had a lot of fashion companies actually, but I will only put this one up.  


E-Shine: An international five-star hotel/entertainment center. I give this group a lot of big problems because of how big of a company they decided to make.  Bigger company = bigger problems.  But some of the smarter people in the class are in this group, so I think they can handle it.


JunYi Hotel: A small, local hotel that tries to cater mostly towards the very wealthy.


Cake House: They sell cakes, obviously.  They have the cool idea of being able to order/design your cakes online and then picking them up later or having them delivered when they are done.


Letters To The Future: The idea is that you come in, write a letter and pay them to keep it safe and send it at a certain date (like, ten years later).  Yes, its like that one movie that I can't remember the name of right now.

 2nd Hand Books: Local business.  They buy textbooks from college graduates and sell them back to current students at a lower cost.


Mr. Dodson Co: (I love this one.  Yes, its named after me) Originally, this was Dodson Travel Agency, but they decided that with the bad economy, no one was travelling so that went bankrupt and they started 'Mr. Dodson Co', which is an electronics company, with a focus on video games.


Dream Home: An apartment building chain/company, that tries to attract recent college graduates with lower rates.

Its kind of interesting to see what they thought would be a good business.  Some were a bit more abstract and less sure than others, but there is a market for everything.  

All of the pictures I used were of the mock interviews my non-English majors class did last Tuesday.  I told them to dress up...but they didn't.  My next set of classes will though.  I'm sure of it.  

Go business!

- Andrew

PS: My brother just reminded me that I wanted to say this with his comment.  But, like I said, I'm not a business major or person or anything, really.  I'm kind of casual about my business learnings.  So if anyone has any cool ideas with problems I could give any of these companies/business models to face, let me know.  Or if you have a good idea for a big problem that I could give the entire class, even better.