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Summer Engagement Through Employability Skills: Tips for Teachers

As educators, one of our key goals is to prepare students not just for exams, but for real-world success, especially in the global job market. Summer offers a valuable opportunity to focus on building employability skills through English learning, helping students in higher education stay motivated, and build confidence in using English, particularly for professional purposes. With the right strategies, teachers can support students’ continued development even outside of the classroom. 

We understand that, like all professionals, teachers deserve a restful and uninterrupted summer break. To help ensure a stress-free holiday and to avoid the need for constant phone checks, email monitoring or notification disturbances, we recommend setting up a few essential tools before summer break begins. Here’s how you can help your students stay motivated and develop practical English skills this summer (and beyond). 



1. Set Goals and Track Progress

Setting clear, measurable goals helps students stay motivated and see tangible improvements in their language skills. Encourage your students to set specific targets that relate directly to workplace communication, such as mastering ten new business phrases each week or preparing and delivering a fluent two-minute presentation on a work-related topic. For example, students can learn phrases like “We need to find common ground,” “Let’s circle back to that later,” “I’d like to flag a potential issue,” or “Can we touch base on this tomorrow?” These kinds of expressions not only boost confidence but also reflect real-world business interactions. 

To support this, you can: 

  • Create Progress Logs: Provide students with simple templates or digital trackers where they record new vocabulary learned, completed tasks, or presentations they have given. This visual record helps learners track their progress over time. 
  • Mini-Assessments: Use pre-scheduled quizzes to reinforce skills and measure improvement over the summer.
  • Celebrate Milestones: Recognize achievements with certificates or positive feedback to build confidence and motivation. You could imagine a scenario where a student would take a pre-scheduled quiz, and the platform would send them a certificate or a reward upon completion. 




2. Mix Learning with Fun, Real-World English

To keep students motivated and enhance their listening skills and relevant vocabulary, it’s important to combine structured practice with engaging, authentic content. You can incorporate business-related TV shows, films, podcasts, and articles that reflect real workplace language and scenarios. This exposure helps students become familiar with idioms, cultural nuances, and natural expressions often encountered in professional environments. 

For example, The Office (UK or US version — our personal favorite 😊) is great for understanding workplace humor, office dynamics, and everyday business conversations. Suits focuses on legal and corporate language, negotiation, and professional dialogue. Superstore offers useful insights into marketing, advertising vocabulary, neurodivergence, and socio-cultural business contexts. Parks and Recreation follows employees in local government, and is useful for teamwork, project language, and public service contexts. Meanwhile, The Social Network provides a glimpse into tech startup culture and informal business English. NOTE: Millennials have authored this article, so these are only suggestions 😊 please choose TV shows that would be appropriate to the specific needs and objectives of your learners. 

Encouraging students to explore this content outside the classroom during the summer break keeps their learning active and enjoyable even when they’re away from formal lessons. Pre-assigned short clips or articles as light, manageable tasks, followed by casual (even online) discussions or brief reflections with their summer buddies or peer groups, help learners stay connected to English in real-world contexts, making summer study both practical and fun. 

3. Leverage Office Tools to Keep Students Engaged with Workplace English Over the Summer

You can help students build workplace English and employability skills by using widely available business communication platforms (we suggest using the freemium versions) during summer self-study.  

One effective approach for teachers is to establish a virtual workspace using free platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace (including Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Drive). These tools can help maintain professional boundaries while allowing students to stay engaged and organized. You can also introduce students to core workplace skills by setting up shared calendars, scheduling mock meetings in groups, and modeling professional communication. You can set up individual or group work before school ends. This not only minimizes disruptions over the summer but also teaches students valuable professional skills for the future. 

These platforms offer features such as chat, file sharing, video call, and calendars, which are perfect for organizing small weekly tasks—like writing emails, preparing presentations, or engaging in discussion threads. Assigning these practical, manageable activities keeps students motivated and provides hands-on experience with tools commonly used in professional environments. 

If they wish, teachers can monitor progress through calendars or task lists and provide timely feedback, helping students maintain a consistent learning routine. Meanwhile, students gain valuable digital collaboration skills alongside language practice, preparing them for real workplace communication. 

Using these accessible office tools encourages teamwork, communication, and time management, making summer learning both relevant and engaging.  



4. Create Vocabulary Sets Tied to Specific Job Functions and Summer Experiences

Instead of random word lists, we suggest that teachers use the time before summer break, to organize vocabulary by themes relevant to various industries like marketing terms, financial expressions, HR jargon, or travel-related language and connect them to summer activities. For example, students can learn travel-related vocabulary by planning a summer trip, booking their own holiday, or organizing a group travel itinerary. They can also practice marketing terms by creating a mock summer event campaign or working with local entrepreneurs to build their social media or other marketing materials. You could also ask your students to use freemium tools like Quizlet or Memrise, which automatically schedule vocabulary review sessions at the right intervals, to help with word retention. This is especially effective for learning large amounts of vocabulary over the summer without cramming.  



5. Integrate TOEIC® Preparation to Build Practical Career Skills
 
Incorporating TOEIC test preparation into your teaching provides students with focused practice on real-world workplace English. The TOEIC tests assess communication skills used daily in international business, helping learners improve listening, reading, speaking, and writing in relevant contexts. Preparing for TOEIC not only boosts language confidence but also offers students a valuable certification recognized by employers worldwide, an excellent way to motivate learners and support their career readiness.  



Sun, Skills, and a Summer of Growth! 

Summer is the perfect time to keep learning light, purposeful, and inspiring. By integrating employability skills into engaging, real-world tasks, teachers can help students stay motivated and connected, without overwhelming students (or themselves!). With just a bit of planning and the right tools in place, you can set your students up for a summer of growth and give them a head start on their future careers. Integrating TOEIC® preparation into summer learning adds further value, giving students targeted practice in professional English and a globally recognized credential to support their career goals. These strategies not only sustain engagement during summer break, but they also prepare students for long-term success beyond the classroom. Here’s to a season of sunshine, skill-building, and stress-free teaching! 🌞 

Interested in learning more about the TOEIC tests?