Attached you’ll find a recent presentation given at the VHS Leinfelden in June.
Below this, in order to provide a slight interactive nature to this posting, you’ll find numerous links to posts I’ve written about in the past as well as a number of questions - do please feel free to answer these, ask further ones or to continue the discussion on in any way.
Why do students with mastery level in the English language keep taking classes?
Students recognize:
English is not like math, it’s like music.
Use it or lose it.
1. Can you think of any other reasons?
What do they usually want to learn? What do they usually need to learn?
Students want to increase vocabulary, practice difficult grammatical structures, erase fossilized errors and maintain their own identities in another language.
They’re also looking for ways to develop cultural awareness.
Principally, advanced learners need to develop their range of vocabulary especially through situational phrases, look at more complex expressions and idioms and also work on issues like their tone and register.
2. In your experience, what other areas need to be worked on?
Patty, Verena, Frances, Corina, Gayle, Stefanie, Beate, Barbara and three Susannes gathered with me on a sunny Friday two weeks ago for some teacher training on using role plays, real plays and other dramatic activities within the Business English classroom.
We started our session off with a suggestion I took from Lindsay Clandfield on using images to create scenarios and beamed a photograph on to the wall encouraging the participants to tell me
where we where we were
what we waiting for
how long we’d been waiting and
how they felt.
A series of fantastical dialogues started off very quickly – exposing just who in the room knew the most about art and modern-day artists!
Later we chatted about the relevancy of this activity in the language classroom and how giving students visual clues helps stimulate their ability to converse and covered the questions of
why drama should be used in the language classroom
when to use it
how to manage the activities
Based on those issues, we chatted about the appropriacy of using dramatic activities with adult Business learners and discussed things which can go wrong when doing these with students.
We all agreed that one of the factors to watch for is that adult business students often think the activities will be a total waste of time - or that they look at the page and aren't able to make a personal connection to the scenario described and also, often, can't see the connection to the language they just learned.
Issues related to structuring drama activities (should one, should it be left to chance?) came up quite a bit –
some participants feeling very strongly that role-plays should have a very clearly defined outline and others feeling that going with the flow helps students to find their own voices.
In the 2nd part of our workshop we looked at published role play and real play activities, covering those provided by Market Leader and Intelligent Business, as well as photocopiable materials from:
Business Roles
Business English Pair Work
InCompany Case Studies
Midway through our session we did another activity based on Ken Wilson’s Be Someone Else (from his book Drama and Improvisation in the Language Classroom).
This activity calls for students to recreate another personality all together and answer questions.
This led us, naturally, on to talking again about the differences between providing real plays (a.k.a simulations) and clearly fantasy experiences.
As mentioned above, often adult students studying Business English, prefer activities where they are still themselves.
However younger adults do often jump in to do the crazier activities with enthusiasm.
In some respects this does come down to the teacher’s attitude to drama him/herself.
Lindsay’s suggestions in his Straightforward guide on using realia to set the scene was very useful - we talked about how the simple things in an office, when a teacher is working in-company, can really help to set a scene.
In the 3rd part of our workshop we reviewed using my Conversation Control sheets as a method of providing feedback related on emergent language and entered the last part of our session with a video from Taylor Mahil (here), finishing our day with the participants creating their own scenarios: based on both realia and/or textbooks and we shared what everyone came up with.
All in all, it was a day full of fun, drama and we all learned much!!
p.s. If you have any questions about any of these slides or what we discussed during the workshop, don’t hesitate to post your questions here by clicking on the word comments below.
Last week I had a lovely time working with a group of English language teachers who came to the VHS in Ludwigsburg for a workshop entitled
Pepping Up Your Business English Course Book!
Our objectives included looking at different ways to increase student-centered learning in our EFL and ESP classrooms and on making lessons exciting even when the teacher is required to use a published material in their curriculum.
The slides from my presentation are at the bottom of this posting. If you were there, you can use these to refresh your memory of some of the points we went through during our workshop and if you weren't, as you’re an EFL teacher too, you’re welcome to have a look and learn with us.
Do feel free to ask or answer questions!
We Asked the Question: Why Do Textbooks Need Supplementing?
You suggested things like they aren’t timely, they aren’t topical, sometimes they’re years and years out-of-date.
The books are sometimes very dull. Too much reading or too little reading. The role plays aren’t authentic or interesting.
The subjects don’t have anything to do with our students actual lives, professions or responsibilities. They’re generic – one size fits all. Sometimes a bit patronizing.
Vocabulary presented often isn’t the vocabulary our students are looking for. There’s very little review of vocabulary from unit to unit.
Not enough speaking activities.
What do you think?
Do you agree with our conclusions?
Then We Did a Study Of Multiple Intelligence:
And looked at images of
JK Rowlings
Stephen Hawking
Columbus
David Beckham
Ray Charles
Prince Charles
Barack Obama
Goethe
Dalai Lama.
In what ways are they all intelligent people?
We marveled at David Beckham’s enormous ability to not only get a ball to curve but that he is able to understand his body so well to make it move where he needs it to, his intelligence understanding the size and distance of a football field: intelligences none of us in the room could say we possess!
Have a look at the names on the list, who is intrapersonally intelligent?
Which ones are interpersonally, spiritually, musically, spatially, mathematically, verbally, naturalistically intelligent?
Do you think that intelligences overlap? Is there a 10th intelligence? What might that might be?
Hint: All 9 of the above examples probably have it – Prince Charles might be the debatable one…although given his recent talks on climate change – hmm, he fits too!* answer at the bottom.
What about the learning styles?
What role might this play in our classrooms?
We discussed what we would have to do if we were the English teachers of Beethoven, Miles Davies or Louis Armstrong and had to teach them Business English!
Next We Reviewed the Practices Of Teaching Business People Business Skills In English:
What are we teaching our students? Don’t they know more about Business than we do? Shouldn’t we be focusing in on their knowledge, simply giving them the language to perform as well as they normally do?
What is it that they want to learn? How are we teaching this to them?
Are we paying enough attention to who our learners really are?
After That We Analyzed Supplementary Materials:
What is available from the Publishers, from ELT websites – which would we use, why these?
What are the intrinsic strengths in each exercise, what weaknesses lie therein; any opportunities? Are there any changes you’d make to the material, why?
Are they all feasible - with which kind of groups – what learners are they aimed at?
We Were Also In Awe Of Ronaldo Lima’s Very Impressive Class (who are blogging):
What happens when students choose to write articles and then see themselves published for the world to see?
Pop over there for a visit, http://finally5b.blogspot.com/ ask or get your students to ask his students how they do it & do let them know what you think!
Then I Showed Everyone The Products I Make Myself:
SimplyConversationsTM and SimplyQuestsTM:
What is the target group of SimplyConversations? What type of learners, what kind of intelligence?
Why are they fun to use? What sorts of skills do they activate?
How do students feel about doing 1.5hrs of strictly conversation?
What effect does choosing their own tasks in the SimplyQuests have when they’re doing their post-task activity (a.k.a homework)?
And Finally We Made An Action PlanFor Future Lessons
What will you be doing to pep up your Business English courses?
Don’t hesitate to continue the communication with me by clicking on comments (at end of posting).
Thank you for coming Sibylle, Christine, Birgit, Wilfriede, Irmgard, Sandra, Jim, Stormy, Ines, Eva, Elizabeth, Veronique, Helmut and Maulina! Thanks VHS Ludwigsburg for organizing the event and hosting us. Am looking forward to continuing learning, growing and sharing with you.
*The 10th intelligence proposed above is visionary: the person who is not only able to 'see' into the future but knows what to do with the way things are changing. Of course, this intelligence is hotly debated as to whether it is an intelligence, as is spiritual and naturalistic intelligence.
There are others too, of course. Read more about multiple intelligences here (lots of links).
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