Sights & Sounds: BESIG conference 2008

A quick scan of my micro-sized office will reveal the remnants of a business English conference: brochures and catalogs on the floor, my ticket stubs tucked beneath the scanner, business cards propped up by a six-day old coffee cup -but drat, where's the American guy's card, what was his name again?

Is it in my purse? Hmmm...

Oh and of course, my ultra handy netbook is resting precariously on top of my filing tray - the mini computer looks like a cute toy even though it's actually more powerful than my laptop - he's (his full name is The Little Blue Guy and we're in love) just FULL of draft versions on the different sessions I attended at BESIG.

Ya, my work's cut out for me!

I'll be posting reports of these sessions up bit by bit, in between other lesson tips, ideas and reflections on teaching business and ESP English but in the meantime thought I'd quickly share some of the videos and photos I shot during the conference: made a little compilation which I hope you'll enjoy:

BESIG 2008- video by Karenne Sylvester is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. You have my full permission to download a copy or embed it into your own blog/website. To do so, go here. To learn more about creative commons, come here.

The BESIG organizers organized a very, very efficient event.

As soon as one entered the door, it was clear what to do, where to go and how. Coffee abounded, there was lots of space and most of the presenters were highly professional, prepared and interesting with much knowledge to pass on.

My feedback would include:

To the BESIG coordinators:

Timing - 40 minute sessions are too short.

Most of the presenters could not stay within the time frame, understandably. My personal recommendation would be to provide one hour sessions instead, asking trainers to present for 45 and leave 15mins room for questions and discussion.

Trainers:

Know your audience.

While the great majority of the sessions I attended were fantastic and I'll report on those, some weren't. Some were an utter waste of time.

The main problem seemed to lie in the fact that the trainer didn't know who he/she was presenting to.

Sometimes I felt like I was in someone's very tiny personal institute rather than at an important BE conference - sort of like being with a bunch of unqualified trainers who were being taught the first round of basics or being given information best saved for an in-company group meeting.

However, the reality is that in most sessions I was surrounded by at least one or two

• Authors

• Directors of Studies or Assistant Directors of Studies

• Entrepreneurs and freelancers

• Teacher-trainers
  

and in all the sessions:

seriously committed BE teachers.

It costs time, money and energy to make it to a conference - we're not on holiday, so

1) be prepared
2) involve your audience
3) finish your research before presenting it - we're not interested in what if
4) spend a little time with powerpoint* and get to know it, it can be your friend
*obviously it's not always necessary to use new media, when it's not used the presentation should still be commanding.
5) practice your presentation


Publishers' Panel:

This needs to be a double session (or at least 1.5hrs).

There was only time for 2, max 3 questions(?). The room was jam-packed: we had stuff to hear and stuff to discuss, we are your community: your purchasers, your reviewers, your critics - there wasn't enough time to do this in.

That said, great stuff the rest of you:

John Allison, aside from your fantastic materials, you're a clear and dynamic presenter and I am actually going to cave in and buy yet another Business English coursebook, if you're involved in The Business, I'll check it out. Emery, I may never ever fly again but I will pass on your details if I meet teachers who want to specialize in aviation English. Schofield, my students are currently reading/listening to your readers, enjoying them so far and I've asked them to write up the reviews themselves! We'll post the results up soon. Prof. Azennoud I really enjoyed learning about Morocco - it snows in Morocco!!!- and your developments there, thanks for coming to Germany to share.

Useful links related to the video:
BESIG

New Business English teaching certificate
Skylight, CTLC-C
Training in Aviation English for teachers and learners
Emery-Roberts

Macmillan Education
Aviation English Student's Book and DVD Pack
Business Upper-intermediate: Student's Book DVD ROM Pack

Langescheidt readers by James Schofield
Room Service (Summertown Readers)
Peril in Venice (Summertown Readers)
Summertown Readers: Ekaterina

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge English for...series
Cambridge English for Job-Hunting Student's Book with Audio CDs (2) with CD (Audio) (Cambridge English for)

Best,
Karenne

Where does the buick stop?

The news are currently a-buzz with corporations lining up to hold out their begging bowls in the hope that something, anything will rescue them from the worsening financial crisis.

One of the most ridiculous of these is quite probably the BIG THREE, the CEOs of the giant US automakers (Chrysler, Ford and GM) who somehow did not have the vision to implement a change to smaller, high mileage, 'greener' vehicles and who now need a bailing out to the tune of $25bn.

I say 'vision' somewhat sarcastically.

The last few years have seen an outpouring of commercials advertising their so-called greenness which suggests that they did indeed recognize the trends in the market yet hesitated about doing anything about it other than launch propaganda machines.

Instead they dined like kings, sipped Cristal champagne, earned upwards of 40k A DAY and now, surprise, surprise, they must go to PapaUSA (i.e. the American taxpayers) for a little cash injection.

How long will it be before other global car-makers, except Toyota LOL, rock on up with the same plan?

It's not their fault? Pah!

But their errors, if left unsolved, will cost the world's employees in jobs, be the end(!?) of a stable global economy - opinions range and are as hot as they are indifferent - yet can you imagine what will happen when hundreds of thousands worldwide (millions if you count semi-related industries, especially in the US) lose their jobs?

Can you imagine the knock-on effects?

The US government and our governments will probably have no choice but to rescue the car-mega-corporations and their factory workers.

How very, very careless you have been Mr Mullaly, Mr Nardelli and Mr Wagoner (yes, even if you just recently took on your jobs). Shame on you.

Do you really expect the man on main street to pour yet more capital into your extravagant business models with narry a word on how you will effectively restructure and clean up your shops?

Lordy B, I can't help but muse on whether or not big OIL will need bailing out next!

Anyhoo, my rant's over...

Just stirring up the pot to show you how highly controversial and topical this subject matter is and how you can use it to make an exciting ESP lesson: be it with your financial students or those in the automotive industries.

As usual I'll just provide you with tips & some sources, so go on ahead, browse around and use what's useful then construct the lesson the way you'd usually do it...

Articles on the big 3

(3 levels given especially for your mixed ability groups-different articles to different students)

• 'Simpler' English (int: B1-B2)
  

Bloomberg
International Herald Tribune

• A little harder (upper int: B2-C1)
  

LA times (full of good idioms)
US News:6 myths debunked
NewsOK

• Tough going but really worth reading (upper int/adv: C1-C2)

Editorial, truth about cars

• Your audio learners (radio)

4 interesting, short segments from the BBC

Videos

Note: Most of these vids are made up of various car ads and a report on the 'SEXYgreenCARshow'. You can not make this stuff up - if you teach ESP:automotive students you'll have a whale of a time with this video, the language is generally slow and clear.

The "Ripple Effect" video at the end is well, seriously scary - a nice finish to a lesson on this theme (it's fast though so have a finger ready for the pause button).


Sidebar:
In 3 of my classes today, the craziest thing occurred while showing the GM never-seen-before ad - the men (one banking class, one insurance, one automotive) all talked back in English, involuntarily, to the projected screen and text/images.

Some just named the models as they whizzed by - all mentioned Opel, others 'hmphed' and made fun of the philosophy underlying the video. Most interesting -definitely a keeper.

To download the entire playlist or to simply choose which you'd like to use in your class(es), go here.

Karenne's lesson ideas

• divide up and set the various articles as homework by sending on the links to your students (if you can't do this, get them to skim for gist in class).
  

If by the time you read this blog entry, decisions have already been made you might want to look for new articles. A pre-search link to googlenews is set here - as a general rule (in my experience) bloomberg and reuters tend to have shorter and easier business articles, iht is a good link for students because it has translate-a-word functionality, BBC and Guardian Weekly often have topical worksheets for language learners prepared; financial press and blogs tend to be harder - full of lower frequency words. As much as possible try to vary the "slant" if you want your students to really discuss!

• review the vocabulary students had difficulties with, especially concentrating on chunks of text and idioms used in a business context.

• show one or two of the videos as a pre-task, intro and/or to review vocabulary (not sure how to download video? go here) If unable to do this, send your students the playlist and let them choose what they'd like to watch.
  

• discuss the articles for comprehension or simply get them to summarize their articles' slant or positions introduced - encourage students to agree, disagree and generally opine.
  

• ask how this issue is being reported in their own media - should the automakers get bailed out? Why, why not? Are car makers in their own countries turning up with hat in hand?
  

• Roleplays:

Big class - split up your students and ask them to play the role of Nardelli, Wagoner, Mullaly; other students play the role of the government (Pelosi, Obama, Bush, governmental economic advisers etc) and yet others play the role of the union bosses. The rest of your learners can play the man on the street: factory workers and normal joes (themselves).

Ask your students to design the focus of the roleplay themselves, getting them to spend some time thinking of what they will say - then hold the debate.
Small class - with 3 students or less, ask students to play the role of the President's economic advisers who will be interviewing the CEOs. Their task is to prepare hard-hitting questions (regarding future plans, how the bailout money would be spent and on what).

Advanced levels - with your higher students control (!) their language, encourage them to flex their grammatical muscles: to use the future continuous, perfects, passives and perhaps even use some 3rd conditional in natural context! ;-).

Another video, from Sabine- thanks, worked like a charm- but man, rough stuff!
Here are the lyrics.


Purchase conversation lessons:

SimplyConversations prompt cards plus SimplyQuests:

• finance & investment
• auto industry

€1.49 individuals
€4.99 institutes

More lesson-tips blog postings for teachers of ESP-Financial English:

• fatally financial
• company secrets

If you've got a top tip related to this theme, don't hesitate to share - simply click on the green line that says Comments and add your opinions, lesson ideas or any relevant links to websites, blogs on the same topic - I don't mind!

Best,
Karenne

Uncommonly creative

The other day I was training a group of teachers on developing their learners' speaking skills and one of the participants asked me where I got my pictures from and whether this was all on the "up and up."

It suddenly dawned on me that actually a lot of EFL and ESL teachers, materials authors, newsletter, journal, blog and freebie ELT magazine writers don't actually know about creative commons.

So what is creative commons?

Creative Commons is a type of license that is added to a piece of work (photo, music, video and more) and rather than assign copyright to it the author gives permission for this item to be used by whomever, as long as they appropriately attribute it (put the name of the author).

The simplest way to cross-check against the different sources of creative commons material is here:

http://search.creativecommons.org/

You can also do an advanced search from google, yahoo or directly in flickr, blip.tv, spinXpress.

How can you use it in class?

The sky's the limit.

I use it to create interesting worksheets, make the cover pages for my commercial worksheets, make games to divide up my training groups, use photos in my blog entries to make them look interesting ;-) LOL, have even used a piece of music as backdrop to my video, etc.

The bottom line is that you can have as much fun and be as creative as you like.

For free! Of course, it's always a nice idea to give back too and these days I walk about with a camera and have been uploading my own stuff into flickr and of course, my blog entries are CC'd too and institutions or teaching associations are welcome to use them in their magazines.

Can you do anything at all with the stuff you take?

Well, actually there are six different types of creative commons licenses so I generally do an advanced search and specify how I'm going to use something and then go from there.

I also try to make sure that I respect the originality of the work and its creator by letting him/her know when and how I've used something. They always like this ;-).

Anyway, this might seem like a lot to take in so here's a great video explaining it all here:

A longer, more in-depth, video and explanation behind the philosophy and concepts of creative commons can be found here.

For a general reference on the types of licenses, I've cut and paste from Wikipedia as follows:

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

Attribution (by) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

Best,
Karenne

Teacher, Teacher, please fix my grammar

As I strolled into the Haus der Wirtschaft I was immediately struck by two things: the gorgeous setting amidst statues and art pieces and the sheer quantity of English language teachers milling around.

Lindsay Clandfield: materials writer, author of the Macmillan Straightforward series, web contributor for OneStopEnglish, columnist for the Guardian Weekly, highly commended for the Duke of Edinburgh award was in the Haus, and man, us teachers were looking forward to a great training session.

Oh and I've a confession to make! Around three years ago when Macmillan asked me if I wouldn't mind being observed teaching by Lindsay and his editor, I had zero idea of who he was and said yes with barely a blink. Nowadays, knowing all he's done in his life, for teachers and the world of ELT, I'd be way too intimidated to do that again. Ha! Ignorance is bliss, eh?

It was a gorgeous German Friday afternoon in November. Lindsay, on tour with Hueber and Macmillan, was here in Stuttgart doing a workshop on how to make great grammar explanations.

Time to polish up those old rags and tune up the tools, guys!

He started off his intro' by telling us that good grammar teachers:

• explain things clearly
• make explanations memorable
• are economic

There are different schools of thought on achieving this:

• teacher-centered teaching (lecturing)
• student-centered training (coaching)

You often see these reflected in textbooks along with these learning methods:

• inductive - students get given the examples then work out the rules themselves
• deductive -students get given the rules then apply them to examples

Which is best?

Well that depends on you: your teaching style, your philosophy, your students' learning styles and their needs. Sometimes, when it comes down to teaching grammar, inductive student-centered training is simply not economic.

Sometimes one, or the other, leads to frustrations for the learner and obviously, the teacher. Change tact when and where necessary.

Lindsay then opened up his toolbox and brought out:

The hammer

• don't start with grammar

• prepare

• be brief

• break your explanation down into stages and steps

• give tangible examples: sentences clearly related to your students' lives, the context of the classroom - something, anything that your students can understand and practice using
  

• use humor and imagination
  

• provide mnemonic devices

e.g. we use since to say /the day/ when it started

Diagrams and board work

Lindsay headed over to the flip-chart and sketched a line which he then broke up with slashes at the bottom, top and middle then called out "What's this?"

With barely a pause we yelled out "adverbs of frequency."

Did you do it too? We're such ELT geeks, aren't we!

After that we pooled our different symbols, signs and the sketchings we often use with our students. Given the setting, it wasn't really that surprising to find out there were a number of artists present.

Analyzing text

Lindsay discussed the use of written texts (authentic or not) - that's when you find a news article, a speech or a passage from literature and get students to do the work, to find examples of a specific structure and:

• underline
• circle
• speculate why the author may have used that particular wording (e.g. modals)

or encourage them to use a text to look out for:

• phrasal verbs
• gerunds and infinitives
• collocations

or perhaps to ask them to:

• find examples, circle then underline the word which is being referred to (e.g. the, it)
• find examples and change them (e.g quantifiers or a tense: make a past, present)

Life stories

One of the highlights of the afternoon came when Lindsay told us all a very personal family story entitled:

How Clanfield became Clandfield
or how our family name was changed

We were engrossed as the story of his great-great-great grandfather's arrogance lost his ancestors an inheritance and how a man's pride can lead to an alternative legacy.

If Papa Clanfield hadn't tossed a ball of rags into a lake, we might never have had the opportunity to see great-great-grandson Clandfield in action - he'd be sitting in a posh manor instead.

It was highly entertaining, we had a good giggle at his expense but it was also serious grammar teaching - the story he used reviews gradeable and non-gradeable adjectives.

Do you have a story?

I just bet you do - I've got a list of them: 3rd conditional spills the beans on a man I once loved and lost to monsoon rains and oh, what could have been if I hadn't slipped; past perfect tells the day I met an orangutan in the jungles of Borneo and the events that had happened before this chance meeting; can&can't will reveal the sordid details of how I conned my way into a job on a yacht despite not being able to sail at the time; futures will invite you into my daydreams of one day becoming a famous film scriptwriter. Ah...

What are your stories and how do you use them in your classrooms?

Generative situations

After that, Lindsay moved on over to the whiteboard, took out a black marker and began sketching again.

He called out "What's this?"

We looked, a man, a face? "A man" we cried tentatively.

"Where is he?"

"In HOSPITAL"

"What's wrong?"

"He has a broken...." Lindsay drew the cast. "leg."

Then he drew another circle.

"Who's this?"

"A woman."

Lindsay laughed and filled in her hair and eyelashes.

"What's her name, what's their relationship?"

And so it continued, Lindsay eliciting, getting us to supply the setting for a story, until:

"The window's closed but the man is hot, what does he say?"

"Could you open the window please?"

"The man is thirsty, what does he say?"

"Would you mind pouring me a glass of water?"


This simple concept, the idea of eliciting requests and offers can be adapted and changed by teachers simply drawing out pictures while prompting for grammar:

• a memorable holiday (practice adjectives, past simple)
• a sales representative and customer (present simple, conditionals)
• planning a long trip (futures, reason clauses)

Of course one thing to note is that when explaining grammar, it can take up vital communicative, speaking-in-the-classroom time, so think carefully about how often you want to use these methods and focus on the ones that encourage the most response.

At the beginning of this posting I mentioned that there are three important steps to being a great grammar teacher:

• explain things clearly
• make explanations memorable
• be economic

We haven't really talked about the economic part yet.



Translation

Straight translation is, as Lindsay said and I agree, the most economic method of all.

I confess to not doing much of this myself - English only classroom rules and all of that - however I do allow it as part of a post-task activity (my word for homework).

Basically my thoughts are, if the students have a very low level of English it takes up an extraordinary amount of in-the-class learning time to explain something and with some aspects of grammar perhaps a quick overview in their own language might be more effective.

If a structure is totally new, it should be presented most thoroughly in the maximum of methods and styles to ensure saturation of knowledge. The entire toolbox should be used. Being amusing, being personal, making it relevant.

With higher level groups my philosophy is that it is also important to go backwards, tune the machine, fix those rusty screws and set students back on track, wrenching them away from bad habits - the more entertaining the more likely it is that it'll stick - your explanation will serve as a bridge to what was actually taught.

Of course when there's one student in a group, with one particular area of stubborn weakness, the most economic path in my opinion, is sending him a quick link to Grammar 330 with the instructions of practice-practice-practice.

What do you usually do?
How do you feel about this issue?

And finally, I'll leave you with huge BREAKING NEWS:

Lindsay will be launching his own blog next year:

it'll be reflections and thoughts
you and the countries he visits,
the teachers, the materials,
the road
and...

sssh - mustn't tell you too much, yet!

Many, many thanks go to Hueber for bringing such a dynamic professional over to train us here in Stuttgart, for free: you rock!

Best,
Karenne

I hate the words "Blended Learning"

I woke up this morning thinking about tags.

Aside from the fact that tags are things which hang off the collar of your shirt, tags  - in the world of the web - are used by people who create content (text on web-pages, blogs, media etc) and they are used to bring these like items together.  The tag system is at its finest form on delicious where they have even gone a step further and created bundles (a way of creating uber categories for your tags) but you can also find them on youtube, slideshare and just about any web 2.0 website.

Examples of tags include the blue labels at the top of this and all my posting - they're there so that if you want to find another blog entry which is similar then all you have to do is click on one of those and travel around.



But I'm getting distracted.

Back to my point, the reason for writing this post:: I really, really, really, hate the term blended learning.

It doesn't say anything to me - a blended what? A mix of... oh man, what does that mean exactly?  Are we talking about mixing skills or are we talking about mixing styles... I mean if I use a tape-recorder instead of my smartphone to listen to an audio recording then I'm now not blending?   Why is that device any different to any other device.... And how exactly do I tag that in my posts - using the keywords blended+learning? Nah, don't like it. I just can't do it anymore, I simply cannot get my fingers to type this phrase nor to make my mouth to move that way.  In fact I can't even get my head around it.

I even looked it up on wikipedia and then got a rather in-depth explanation that even they'd like to be cleaned up. The explanation brought me somewhat closer to its meaning, I guess, but sorry love the concept hate the brand, way too stuffy for my tastes.

So, you know what... from now on guys, I'm going to refer to the whole teaching with technology as  TwIT: http://kalinago.blogspot.com/search/label/TwIT

There's a little irony in there but ya kno', it says what it is.


Best,

Karenne

Projecting projects

A good language institute will consistently make an effort to keep its teaching staff up to date on modern teaching practices and new methodologies and Tom Carlson, DOS of Linguarama Stuttgart, certainly excels at this.

Although his training style can sometimes be teacher-centered, I can honestly say that over the last four years he's provided me with many new ideas and overall been a great influence. I've learned so much from him and look forward to much more!

Anyway, this latest workshop was entitled Projects in the Classroom and in this blog posting, I'll review some aspects of Tom's transparencies, go through the quotes he presented for us to reflect on and at the end of the posting provide one of my own tried&tested project concepts.

Great theme, isn't it, and so vital for long-running courses. Have you ever tried doing a project with one of your business English groups?

It's such a smashing way to engage students and encourage collaborative learning.If you've done any project work in your adult EFL/ESL classes, don't hesitate to add your tips and tricks in the comments - even if they weren't BE oriented. We discovered, after careful searching, that there's really little out there, in print or on-line and yet there's a strong market for this type of work and age group.

If you're a materials author or a wannabe.... this is a niche! Just quote me and Tom in your acknowledgements, ok!?

Why do a project?

• to encourage speaking in a natural and realistic setting
  
• to focus the course in a motivating group activity that requires English
• to counteract some of the "same old, same old."
• to work on a specific lexical set over and over again
  
• to provide an opportunity for feedback based on a series of classes

What projects are not:

• task-based-learning activities

The Framework
The project should include the following:

• clear language learning aims
• relevance to the business students are in, the field or market
• a defined final result

Notes when planning:

• when doing and for how long
• where
• resources that will be necessary
• process the teacher will use to monitor language
• process the students will use to record language

Why bother?

• collaboration leads to confidence, is highly motivational and provides continuity.
• projects give students ownership; students buy into working together not just as a learning activity.
• provides realism and is highly communicative.

Potential pitfalls, problems:

• unexpected or extended absences
• if students don't 'buy in' right from the outset
• students lose interest or feel the work's beyond their level
  
• marginal results

But as Tom said:

Planning ahead is the best weapon you have for avoiding these problems so you still need to be ready to think on your feet!

Tom then handed out a few quotes from Project Work, Diana L. Fried-Both, OUP 2002, to all of us teachers - we had to think about what the quotes meant, what effects would be desirable in a language course and how our students would be affected.

We also had to think about problems which could occur when planning or implementing projects.

Project work draws together students of mixed ability and creates opportunities for individuals to contribute in ways which reflect their different talents, creativity, language goals and styles.

As colleagues we agreed in general with the quote and thought about how projects encourage team cohesion, how it feels natural to the students (reflects their lives, simulates their professional work) and gives the students an opportunity to learn something about themselves.

Of course, one area to watch out for is the possibility of having team members who are really very dominant!

Your role is perhaps the most vital in trying to maintain an overview and inspiring confidence so that your students feel they are learning by working towards their objectives.

As long as aims are formed and clarified by the group of students, we agreed with this statement.

We felt that clear strategies should also fall within the process of planning and that the teacher's role should include regular feedback to ensure that they themselves can see that they're learning.

To get a copy of a good, simple speaking skills feedback sheet - from my website, go here.

The irony is, the more passive you appear to be, the more successful the project is in terms of learner autonomy and independent learning.

Funny concept, the idea of passivity. It's a scary theory and it's even scarier in practice - 'til you're practiced anyway. ;-)

However we all agreed, if you do less - the students do more.

Student-led activities require teachers to step back.

The line has to be carefully defined, the borders firmly in place because passiveness in the classroom can also be perceived as laziness on the teacher's part and some students, depending on their cultural backgrounds, will strongly object if they aren't actually being controlled!

Transparency is clearly important.

On the other hand as Jim mentioned, when doing projects there's actually more opportunity to feedback to the Training Officers/HR managers regarding the students' English levels and abilities to deal in a team within another language setting.

It was a very good session - ta, Tom!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a PROJECT idea
-tried, tested, true.

Where-oh-where's my business angel?
by Karenne Sylvester

Objective: find funding for a new project
Duration: minimum 10 lessons x 1.5ue (works best with 15)

Overview:

Students have to create a company (or use their own/one in their field). They are required to define a product or service, establish the objectives and mission of this work - it does not need to be something serious, they work out the financial viability of their concept, create a presentation for venture capitalists, present the presentation and win funding (or not).

Notes:

Best with a large group so that you can make at least two competing groups but not essential (have also done this activity with a class of 4). Best results occur when you can find another BE EFL class within the company or institute who will be prepared to act as the venture capitalists. Working with another teacher is lots of fun and their class can research millionaires and take on their personalities (see Forbes 500 for list of global millionaires). Failing this, in the final lesson you can also act as if you are one.

Language resources:
Supportive photocopiable sheets from Business Communications Games, Business Builder, Business English frameworks to discuss: mission statements, company structure, corporate culture, company history, company image/designing a logo, sales figures, trends and graphs, employee morale.

TwIT (Teaching with Technology) resources:

• Youtube playlist (here)
  

• Slideshare presentations
  

| Get your Presentation Pack

Procedure:

In the first lesson, present the idea to the students. Explain what materials you have which can support the activity. Get them to decide what they would like to do, how they will create both company and product and what supportive materials they think would be a good idea to use in order to learn the necessary lexical steps (I usually give them the books and let them choose but you can bring in photocopies of relevant sheets and let them do a scan of them and decide). Get them to do a full project plan and curriculum timetable, ask them if they would like to establish roles and decide who's doing what.

In my experience, each time that I have done this project with BE adults, I have been wowed by the results and out-of-class effort the students have put in. One group created a new bicycle and then found pictures of future bicycle concepts and photo-shopped them to carry "their" own logo.

One group presented the most complex and detailed sales projections I've ever seen, one group invented a cup which connects to a computer to stay warm with revolving photos.. part of which apparently now exists...

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but even at one company I worked at, our sister class who had become the millionaires took the project very seriously indeed, reviewing the presentations with the utmost of sincerity, eventually granting "5million" to one of the teams!

Have you got a great idea?
Go on ahead and share too - click on COMMENTS - a box will open up and you can write out your project there. Or, if it's something you typed up you can e-mail it to me and I'll stick it somewhere with a link to it. If it's already on your blog or website, simply write the link for us all below.

Best,
Karenne

Personally, speaking

I received an excellent question via email about a month ago and it made me sit, think and try to work out how to give a reply worthy of the value in the q'. There's nothing harder than having to analyze the very nature of your teaching style, which I'm sure you know too!

Anyway, while drafting up my response, I got to thinking that instead of just replying to my emailer, it'd be best to share it with all of you...

This was her letter:

Dear Karenne

I’d like to thank–you for running such a great teacher training session on promoting fluency/ speaking skills. I’ve been thinking about student-centred learning (again) and have been re-evaluating my teaching techniques (again).

I have a Cambridge CELTA- so my techniques are fairly student-centred.

What REALLY impressed me was the way in which you got the teachers to do the work/learning, through a series of stages that built upon an initial task. I know the power of this type of teaching. I learnt through “doing/ self discovery” as opposed to being “told.”

There is a saying that goes something like this: Tell me and I will forget. Let me do it for myself and I will remember.

I’d love to move closer to this style of teaching and also to be able to write/adapt classroom materials that include more student-centered techniques. I was wondering if you have any advice and suggestions for reading material?

Kind regards,
S.F, Stuttgart

I'm going to go way, way out on a limb here and confess that chiefly "my style" of teaching and creating student-centered lessons actually comes from business guru style books rather than pedagogical/ teacher training manuals!

Yeah, Gods, I expect I'll be shot by the ELT teaching community for that comment!

You know the books I mean?

Pop psychology, basically.

Covey's 7 Habits, Stumbling on Happiness, Wisdom of the Crowds - that sort of thing.

Also, of course, my teaching has also been heavily influenced from traveling and the people I've met globally.

Way back in High School (in the US), when everyone was focused and organized or getting there, figuring out what they were going to be: doctors, lawyers, engineers etc, I only knew that what I most wanted out of life was to see the world.

I come from a teenie-weenie island in the middle of nowhere (sorry, Grenada) and have always found people and culture fascinating.



This doesn't mean I didn't like work - I'm often accused of being a work-a-holic - but it does mean that I didn't study to be a doctor or a lawyer.

Instead, in the beginning of my 20's I thought what I'd most love to become was a wine importer and exotically travel the vineyards of the world on glorious shopping trips.


Yeah, okay, right. But I did study to do this.

And, in an odd sort of way, it was the pursuit of this daydream that kinda, sorta led me to leave London for Australia even though I eventually got waylaid in Thailand on the way.

I was sitting on a beach in Java one late afternoon, after having been backpacking solo for about six months and a man came over and sat down next to me.

I don't have to tell you that initially I was pretty suspicious of his intentions.

But, pretty soon, following behind him tottered over two of his kids. They were adorable darlings and looked at me with wide beautiful brown eyes.

The man began to talk to me.

I tried to explain that my Malay was pretty basic (I had a book I was learning from to pass time on buses - Malay is very similar to Indonesian) - it was definitely not enough to manage conversation.

Part of me just wished he'd go on his merry way so that I could just chill out and watch the sunset. But he continued rambling on and I found myself listening.

A very, very strange thing started to happen.

I knew what he was talking about.

He was telling me about his life, his wishes and his dreams.

He used the sand to describe where he lived, what his house looked like but it was much more than just the scribbles on the sand, there was something magical in his very intent to communicate his experience to me and in my willingness to concentrate.

What can I still tell you about that 2hr conversation with an ageing Javan dressed in a colorful man-skirt, over 15 years ago?

Yes, I still do remember most of it.

I don't remember the small-small-talk about the fine evening, have a vagueish memory that the sky drifted off into deep oranges and purples but I do clearly remember that he was married and had 5 children.

His dreams were to give his kids a good education so that they wouldn't end up having to work the land like he does. He was puzzled by politicians and the future of his country, was Buddhist and thought that the world would be a better place if everyone just loved and talked to each other.

His wife was a good woman who argued with him often (about money) and one of his children was sick.

He wanted to know who I was, who my family were - why I was traveling alone, wasn't I afraid that someone would hurt me?

He was actually quite worried about my safety and he wouldn't like for one of his daughters to grow up to be like me! ;-(

I learned then, right there on that beach, that we are all passionate about ourselves.

This sounds kind of "selfish" but it's not really.

I mean that what we think matters to us.

And what we think about what we think is of great importance.

Sometimes we will share these very deepest beliefs with an absolute stranger, they are that important to us.

Recognizing this intrinsic human quality and applying it to language teaching simply makes sense to me.

Our students want to talk about themselves.

They are learning English in order to discuss their company, absolutely, however actually they want to discuss their relationship to their company. Their job, their project, their colleagues.

They are learning English to discuss the weather appropriately but more than likely they want to talk about their own experience and feelings about sunshine vs. cloudy days. They are learning English to tell their personal stories.

Textbooks all too often are passive, dry and safe.


They are designed to specifically cater for the highest percentage of student ratio: across age, education, occupation and experience. They are designed to be commercially successful and they are produced in a set framework, the publisher's style, (or whom else's that they deem most popular over the last x years - no matter the faults) and the author's frame of reference.

They specifically aim not to offend and in that very lack of risk, they fall flat and don't live up to our students' communicative needs.

Yes, there are exceptions -I'll blog my praise of them later- and no, I'm not dismissing published textbooks nor their value in general. I also acknowledge the enormous quantity of work that goes into producing them.

However our role as EFL educators is to make sure that our tools and materials (even when we're using a course book) successfully elicit student response. We are there to improve their communicative skills.

How do we do that?

By making our students the first aim, the first objective of any lesson plan.

We must put their actual interests way up on the list of priorities. We can not follow a set index, - unit 4, page 32 - we must start with what do you need to learn?

Followed by what do you want to learn? (And sometimes vice versa).

And when we do this, when we get them to buy in to learning, they will learn - even if it's yet another textbook/case-study on advertising.

Because instead of discussing the merits of some random BT (British Telecom) ad from about 5 years ago that almost none of them has ever seen (as it was shown on the telly in the UK, not in Germany or Ecuador or Hong Kong and none of these students even know what British Telecom is, nor do they care!)

Ranting sorry...

But instead, as language coaches, we can turn that case study on its head and ask what ads are on the television currently in their countries and which of these ads are interesting to them.

Then we can encourage them to take charge of the lesson's material, change the case study themselves into something that they are interested in watching and discussing: a product that they are or not buying and while they are passionately engaged in their own experience, we can slide that new vocabulary and lexical chunks in like a nice new shoe and they'll adopt it: because they really need it in that moment, it has tangible value.

And with that last sentence, I'm brought nicely full circle to Stephen Covey's book, the 7 habits of highly successful people.

One of his major habits is "Begin with the end in mind."

What is the "end" we are teaching to? Our students' fluency.

so..
Begin with your students' interests,
start with what they need to say.

Questions, comments?

Don't hesitate to add your thoughts, opinions. Let's make this a conversation about conversation!

Karenne,


p.s. I've put a brainstorming sheet on my website which you can download and use to help determine a plan for your conversations lessons. Change it, adapt it, make it better & send me a copy... it's creative commons. Click here.

Politics, power and the media

What an amazing picture!

Don't they look like they're great friends here, discussing a project or working out how best to get things done - together?

Well, as we all know, they're not friends.

They're opponents in the great race for US Presidency. The story is being covered globally, in every newspaper and on every news website... on every social site. It's not as if we can run away from it, now is it?


This situation prompted me to think that this would make great fodder for an EFL lesson on the role media and social networking sites play in politics.

The effects of Joe the Plumber or the Obama Girl have been tremendous - it seems everyone's jumping on the band wagon so why not us, English language teachers, too.

However, I do wonder what effect this will have on politics around the world.

Will all politicians create their own Youtube channels? Will they too twitter and flickr?

I've a tough time seeing Angela Merkel being loved this much - but I could be wrong. Maybe this is the new way to reach 'the people.'

What do you think, is it an effective way to preach a message? Does it seem strange to you or is it fascinating?

Don't decide, get your students to!

And if you're hoping to do a lesson on this subject sometime over the next 10 days or so, check out the collection of youtube videos I've slapped together or visit the articles, images and more that I've saved on delicious.

You're welcome to send the links on to your students too. Get them to do the research at home and then come into class geared up for a great debate.

I've also made a "special edition" version of my SimplyConversationsTM: downloadable Politics set with a SimplyQuestTM for your students for free.

Don't hesitate to let me know how it all goes & may the best man win!


Here's an example video of social networking and media in action. This is a video which came via email. Very interesting - very effective.
5.11.08
If I was an American, if I was in the US, I'm pretty sure I know where I'd have been that Tuesday!! Although, I did celebrate in Germany!



Useful links:

Articles, blogs and more
Youtube videos (various videos in the lead up)
Wordle cloud images (great for pre-teaching vocabulary: search for Obama & McCain or politics - new versions updated regularly)
Flickr photos (good for prompting discussions)

If you're not sure how to download videos on to your laptop go here.

Added 5 November 2008:
He did it!!!

The Guardian UK have a fascinating interactive map which you can use with students to discuss the demographics of the voters (and of America itself). Click here.

Obama's acceptance speech:




Higher quality (full) video can also be watched on the Guardian, transcript to the speech here.
The Changing Minds blog has written a very interesting analysis of the speech. You can find this here.

McCain's gracious defeat:



Still not enough materials to smack together a great lesson? Here's a flickr photostream!




Download the photos (or your students can) and use to discuss the probable feelings and emotions during the different scenes - in the lead up, when it happened and the aftermath.

Would work well with A2 students and above.

"He was nervous, he looks sad... she seems bored, she's excited etc."

The direct link to the photostream on flickr is here.

If you also teach kids or young adults, get them involved in a letter-writing project to Obama, details can be found on Nik Peachey's blog here.

Karenne,

p.s. If you would like to purchase a set of conversation cards on politics, you can find them here (€.79 for individuals, €2.39 for institutes). Free samples of other sets, here.