Business English Ideas: The Trainer's Learner Autonomy Scorecard; Assessin...: As an addition to my post on the BESIG World Blog, I would like to share some more ideas on fostering learner autonomy in the Business Engli...
A very useful post from Charles Rei. It's tied to my thinking about how I teach people who don't need to learn a lot more English.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
On the tip of my tongue, but...
Today I am thinking about how students can overcome problems of forgetting words during a conversation.
Some of my students say they are okay with reading and understand almost everything they read, grammar is okay, etc but when they get into a conversation they often get stuck because some word they want to say just doesn't come to mind.
I feel guilty because this is my job, to solve such problems.
My students use a cd I have made, a melange of short stories that they listen to over and over in their cars. They say it helps to have those words " ringing in their ears" and when they chat the words come more easily. Actually, i made the cd for someone else, and gave it to these students just for general listening and pleasure. So, by giving them the cd, I really just got lucky! I guess that's okay even though it isn't such a "professional" solution. Really the students found the remedy-- or at least it's a partial remedy--themselves.
That's what we really want to do,isn't it: let the students take initiative. Teachers can be a resource and a guide.
Part of the problem comes, of course, from living in their native language environment where they must spend a large part of the day " out of English"
What else can I do? I could make another cd for them, maybe include some listenings that are relevant to their work or typical of conversations they are having in English .
Some of my students say they are okay with reading and understand almost everything they read, grammar is okay, etc but when they get into a conversation they often get stuck because some word they want to say just doesn't come to mind.
I feel guilty because this is my job, to solve such problems.
My students use a cd I have made, a melange of short stories that they listen to over and over in their cars. They say it helps to have those words " ringing in their ears" and when they chat the words come more easily. Actually, i made the cd for someone else, and gave it to these students just for general listening and pleasure. So, by giving them the cd, I really just got lucky! I guess that's okay even though it isn't such a "professional" solution. Really the students found the remedy-- or at least it's a partial remedy--themselves.
That's what we really want to do,isn't it: let the students take initiative. Teachers can be a resource and a guide.
Part of the problem comes, of course, from living in their native language environment where they must spend a large part of the day " out of English"
What else can I do? I could make another cd for them, maybe include some listenings that are relevant to their work or typical of conversations they are having in English .
Integrate traditional lessons with Internet teaching
I am really pleased with the series of lessons I have had with some upper intermediate learners recently. The overall topic was money.
The first lesson involved a traditional printed on paper article about universal currency. It dealt with challenging Vocabulary of international money markets (e.g. exchange rate, transaction fee, etc.). In addition the text was structured as pros and cons of a universal currency, so we debated those and formed opinions. Homework was to create a vocab test based on the words and give it to another student.
Second lesson: buy nothing day. Focus on overconsuming, wasting money. I emailed a link to a website about BND. Students read it and discussed the idea. Homework was to write a persuasive email to their boss suggesting a BND be organized for employees. Teaching point pragmatics, and expressions were elicited From which students chose for wording their email.
Third lesson: mark Boyle, the economist who lived for a year without money. Students got a check list of keywords from a video about Boyle. Task was to tick words as they heard them while watching the video.
One thing I've always been interested in since I heard the expression CALL for the first time, in 2002, is how to integrate it with traditional pre-CALL methods. This series worked very well from that point of view. The students tend to print or photocopy whatever I give them, look up any words they don't know and write them into the text in L1. With this series of lessons, we included that tradition with listening to a video online and ticking what they heard, so we moved gently to an integrated style.
The first lesson involved a traditional printed on paper article about universal currency. It dealt with challenging Vocabulary of international money markets (e.g. exchange rate, transaction fee, etc.). In addition the text was structured as pros and cons of a universal currency, so we debated those and formed opinions. Homework was to create a vocab test based on the words and give it to another student.
Second lesson: buy nothing day. Focus on overconsuming, wasting money. I emailed a link to a website about BND. Students read it and discussed the idea. Homework was to write a persuasive email to their boss suggesting a BND be organized for employees. Teaching point pragmatics, and expressions were elicited From which students chose for wording their email.
Third lesson: mark Boyle, the economist who lived for a year without money. Students got a check list of keywords from a video about Boyle. Task was to tick words as they heard them while watching the video.
One thing I've always been interested in since I heard the expression CALL for the first time, in 2002, is how to integrate it with traditional pre-CALL methods. This series worked very well from that point of view. The students tend to print or photocopy whatever I give them, look up any words they don't know and write them into the text in L1. With this series of lessons, we included that tradition with listening to a video online and ticking what they heard, so we moved gently to an integrated style.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
BME writing exam business letter homework, due on Monday April 2
Dear students,
Your homework is a complaint letter.
Imagine that you have ordered some books, but there are problems. Write to the bookshop and complain
You can find the complete task in your book, on page 36.
In your letter you will include these points
- why you ordered the books by post
- the books you ordered, and what you got
- complain about the confusion of titles and delay
- say what compensation you would like
Write your letter. It's due on Monday, April 2.
Let's collect examples of complaint letters! In your browser, type in "complaint letter" print a good one and bring it to the next lesson with you. By the way, there are some YouTube videos about complaint letters, too.
Mary
Your homework is a complaint letter.
Imagine that you have ordered some books, but there are problems. Write to the bookshop and complain
You can find the complete task in your book, on page 36.
In your letter you will include these points
- why you ordered the books by post
- the books you ordered, and what you got
- complain about the confusion of titles and delay
- say what compensation you would like
Write your letter. It's due on Monday, April 2.
Let's collect examples of complaint letters! In your browser, type in "complaint letter" print a good one and bring it to the next lesson with you. By the way, there are some YouTube videos about complaint letters, too.
Mary
Saturday, January 21, 2012
BME exam practice: comparatives and superlatives
For your photo task, you may need to compare the photos. Use these practices to improve your grammar skill with comparatives and superlatives.
COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES
Good luck!
COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES
Good luck!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Listening Practice for the BME exam
On the right side of this blog in the LINKS list, you can find "Science, History, Health" listenings. These are 4-minute listenings about news of many things.
Practice listening two times with a 1-minute pause between listenings. Make notes and think about what you hear.
Science, History, Health listenings are from VOA special English. VOA means Voice of America.
"What did you say??"
Practice listening two times with a 1-minute pause between listenings. Make notes and think about what you hear.
Science, History, Health listenings are from VOA special English. VOA means Voice of America.
"What did you say??"
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| "Louder, please!! Can't hear you!" |
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| "Hmmm...let's hear that again..." |
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Wikis and teaching
I am thinking about wikis today. How do I use them in teaching business English? Before I answer my own question, this side comment: business English teaching is often not the stuffed-suit affair it appears to be. Using wikis to teach business English to business people is like playing with an octopus. Lots of arms, wiggling in different directions.
About a year ago, I created a wiki for a group of business English students. It was my slightly desperate response to their sporadic attendance in their weekly 90 minute face to face meeting with me. "Meeting" describes it well, because lesson it wasn't, in other words, no sustained or consistent teaching and learning was possible.
The octopus part: the wiki I made has about 8 arms, or pages. How they wiggle is the students grab different arms and give them a shake from time to time. Different students grab different pages of the wiki. One likes to follow the assignments page, and is methodically working through them, dressing things up with extra links, opinions and so on. Another goes for the page of grammar exercises and vocabulary (Quizlet-based, mostly). Then there's a guy who found some really funny youtubes and dropped them into the wiki. And there's one student who has never written a word.
That's not at all how I envisioned it! I thought the wiki would run parallel to our face to face meetings, providing a consistent source of learning and lessons that everyone would do in order and use when they couldn't attend the f2f. A way to keep everybody in step...
This use of a wiki is far from the wikis described in "the literature" but everyone, including me, is really happy with it. Recently I've started using bits of the wiki materials as warmers in our lessons, just to keep up awareness.
About a year ago, I created a wiki for a group of business English students. It was my slightly desperate response to their sporadic attendance in their weekly 90 minute face to face meeting with me. "Meeting" describes it well, because lesson it wasn't, in other words, no sustained or consistent teaching and learning was possible.
The octopus part: the wiki I made has about 8 arms, or pages. How they wiggle is the students grab different arms and give them a shake from time to time. Different students grab different pages of the wiki. One likes to follow the assignments page, and is methodically working through them, dressing things up with extra links, opinions and so on. Another goes for the page of grammar exercises and vocabulary (Quizlet-based, mostly). Then there's a guy who found some really funny youtubes and dropped them into the wiki. And there's one student who has never written a word.
That's not at all how I envisioned it! I thought the wiki would run parallel to our face to face meetings, providing a consistent source of learning and lessons that everyone would do in order and use when they couldn't attend the f2f. A way to keep everybody in step...
This use of a wiki is far from the wikis described in "the literature" but everyone, including me, is really happy with it. Recently I've started using bits of the wiki materials as warmers in our lessons, just to keep up awareness.
 |
| KEEP ON WIGGLING! |
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