Honestly saying, that's not just about a litle bit more of vocabulary, but also a lot more of knowlegde you have to possess. I wouldn't dare teach students for the BEC Higher exam, as most likely my knowledge of English wouldn't be enough, whereas teaching CAE or CPE is not a problem. That means to teach BE you need not only a skilled Teacher, but also a skilled Business Person.

It could be true for lower levels (up to B1), but why not to make more profit, if it is, after all, called Business English...

I agree with Anna and Dany. In my short 20 years of experience as a teacher, I found out that when I teach with the Top Notch series, for example, my students want to develop more linguistic related skills such as pronunciation, listening, specific vocabulary for restaurants, etc. When I teach BE students, I’ve noticed that, in addition to developing fluency, they also need to learn specific skills such as preparing a PowerPoint presentation, or chairing a meeting, or writing an agenda in English. I have now identified a new BE student profile: lots of young professionals join the professional market each year. Most of them were exchange students some years ago, when they were teenagers. However, when they find themselves in the corporate environment, they discover that they still speak the language like teenagers. They know slang, they use contractions, ellipsis, but they lack the more appropriate business jargon. Last year I successfully taught a group of young professionals with this profile. They were fluent, they knew when to use the simple past or the present perfect but they were unable to talk about a marketing campaign in English. I used with them the Intelligent Business Skills Book published by Pearson.  It fit like a glove. As an instructor those classes took me much longer to prepare because I had to do a lot of research not only on specific vocabulary but also on marketing, world economy, finance, environment, etc. So I do think I deserved to make more for those classes. J

I spend 24 hours a week teaching Business English and although I don't expect any financial differentiation between what I'm paid compared to my colleagues teaching General English, there's no doubt that my students expectations of me as a teacher are quite different. Not only do I have to prove myself as a teacher but they also expect me to demonstrate 'business credentials', be able to converse easily in a business context as well as having some background knowledge of their specific market - be it automotive, banking or energy! Keeping abreast of all this is a real challenge.

Here in Iran, most business English students are from companies who do not like to study in private language institutes. They usually come in groups and like to have classes in their own organizations. That's why they pay more and as a result, business English teachers are paid more.

Dear Nick,

You are right. The first time I started to teach business English, my students acted to be as my teacher. But I think we must be familiar with the business words before we enter the class and that's enough because we are not business men so we don't need to know the import export regulations.

I've been teaching Business English in  companies for over 20 years. Fortunately, before I became a teacher I had some experience in business, which I think gave me a lot of credibility in the classroom. Plus, as a freelance teacher, I actually run my own business as well.

Of course we can never have all of the detailed know-how that our adult, experienced businesspeople have in every sector, but I do think it's our obligation to have as much general knowledge about what's going on in the business world as possible. I read The Economist faithfully, for example.

Recent trends in teaching professionals indicate that the umbrella term "business English" may become passé anyway--ESP is growing by leaps and bounds. We will probably have to specialize to a large extent in order to keep up with these developments.

The excellent Business English Coursebooks which are now available make it easy for even a beginner Business English teacher to get through the rudiments of emails and telephoning, so choose your field if you want to stand out!

This discussion began by suggesting that the only difference between teaching Business English and General English is "a few bits of vocabulary". Since there are many dictionaries of Business English on the market, I would say that cannot be the case. Not to mention the huge amount of specialized vocabulary needed for any sector of business you would care to name!

That said, professionals in any given field usually are familiar with their own jargon. What they need is the bits that go between their specific area of expertise. So you could make a case for just teaching them General English and letting them fill in the blanks with their lexicon as needed.

But somehow I think this strategy would be missing out on an important aspect of Business English, which involves the skills people need to do business. Traditionally these have been such items as telephoning, correspondence (now pretty much all email), meeting skills (including discussion tactics and gambits) and negotiation. Business English coursebooks are full of practice on these topics.

While General English may include some of the above, I doubt if it would be the core of the syllabus. So I do insist that teaching Business English requires not only a knowledge of business, including up to date facts and figures, but also some idea of how businesses run, both large and small. This means having some idea of what a Human Resources department does, what project management is, a glimmer of financial organization...well, I could go on and on but you get the picture. You have to know a lot to get street cred with your professional learners. Talking about hobbies, food and holidays isn't going to cut it.

So...a scam when Business English teachers and trainers ask for a little more compensation? NO WAY!