Teaching the Course of Business Communication to Large Classes in Pakistani Universities: Challenges and Suggested Strategies

The purpose of this study is to explore Pakistani ESL university teachers’ experiences of teaching Business Communication to large classes. It specifically aims to find out the issues related with teaching business communication in large classes and make some suggestions to manage these large classes. Using purposing sampling technique, researchers conducted semi-structured interviews from 10 university teachers who were teaching business communication course in eight private and public sector universities in Sindh, Pakistan. All the teachers were teaching the course to large classes where the number of students were in between 40 to 150. The findings indicated managing and controlling the class, focusing on the topic, assessing their work and providing feedback were some significant challenges for the teachers. The participants also made some suggestions such as pedagogical strategies need to be changed when there is a possibility of teaching more students in the class for better learning of students. The suggested strategies included modifying the course to the lecture/lab structure, limiting the amount of writing, separating students into different groups, encouraging peer assessment, equipping classroom with projectors and multimedia, and allowing the instructor to teach fewer courses. Keywords: Business Communication, Large class size, Lecture, Teaching