Job Discussion Forums

[Iam]

Hi folks,

I taught my first ever 2 live lessons yesterday, other than the teaching practice ones of my Celta course, & despite difficulties (class A having already done the unit of the workbook I'd been told to start them at, & class B not even having the workbook I'd been given & told they were using) I coped, & had a good time, & even think the students learnt "stuff" too

What this brought home to me, amongst other things, was the usefulness of the students' books.

What I'm posting about now is how do you teach "In Company" classes, without said books it seems?

I'm in Spain, & as well as the work I've landed at the school, have the offer of in-company work, both eventually from the school I have my regular slots at, & much sooner from another employer/agency ... however, the work from the latter apparently may or may not involve using course books.

It strikes me that without course books, having to create my own material, indeed, my own course perhaps, I'm going to flounder - badly. After all, I've just 3 & 1/2 hours experience of teaching.

Although I can create supplementary material for course books, creating everything will be too much work for me.

So, how's it done?

Do you buy course books i.e. a Teacher's book & one Students' book, & photocopy away? Copyright may well be a problem there?

Or, is it just plain unusual to have in-company classes without each student having their own Students' Book?

Or indeed do you simply create all materials, which means I'd probably do well to avoid in-company work until I'm more experienced &, frankly, better?

Any advice, or info re in-company classes would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Iam.

[sigmoid]

Sorry to be such a jackass to a new guy, but wasn't this stuff covered in your CELTA course? Or why doesn't your employer/school provide you with materials?

Anyway, you should start collecting texts and handouts and some 'realia' [god! I love that word!]. Your school should have a least a small library of books. Or head to the local TEFL bookstore and invest in a couple. A number of books thesedays come with photocopiable material. Also, search the internet for similar handouts that you can print out. Buy a newspaper and bring in some relevant articles, or a magazine. Get some photos and pictures. Do a gap-fill with a nice song for a change of pace.

Also, you can have them buy books. Often, they're included in the cost of the course. But many teachers find most books to be inadequate to base a whole course on.

It's not unusual to have a teacher design a course. Find out what the students objectives are. What's their level, in general? How long is the course? Figure out how much time you have and what can be realistically covered in that amount of time. Probably best to choose a text, select the most useful sections, have the students or company purchase the book and then supplement with other activities so that the students enjoy some sort of variety.

[ls650]

[spiral78]

I had the same experiences in the Czech Republic as a new teacher, and I know from experience now that it's a fairly common occurrence in public language schools in Europe generally. The schools often just give you carte blanche to design the courses as you wish.

I agree with Sigmoid that you can cobble together stuff from internet, photocopiable books, and etc. But I'd add to that advice that you could probably profitably spend an entire lesson doing a needs analysis with your groups. Ask them how they need/want to use the language. Ask them to describe situations where they need English, to bring the materials they need to work with in English, if they have them. Ask them for an analysis of what will be most useful/important to them. Take a poll. Ask for examples of times when they needed language they couldn't produce. Ask about the gaps between what they know and what they can actually use. Ask what genres of language interest them most (wide range here from tabloid English to 'reputable' news-style English to specific types of technical/professional English).

This can give you a much more focused basis for pulling together whatever stuff you will use, and/or help you to choose some books to use.

Good luck! And don't worry too much - your students will have likely had the same situation with previous teachers - you're not alone!

[Iam]

Thanks for the replies folks ... using realia & producing our own materials was covered on the Celta course, but designing a course wasn't.

Assessing students' levels was not covered, or at least not as far as I remember - it was over 6 months ago that I did the course, though.

Certainly, the impression I had from the various books on Tefl that I read at the time of the course was that course design was something for the Dos/experienced teachers, & I've expected students to be graded by someone ... well ... other than myself.

At the school I've started at, all this is the case - I just have to teach the books/supplement/ignore them as I see fit.

The potential in-company hours are the concern ... these are being offered by a different school, essentially acting I suppose as an agent between me & the workplace I'd go to. The budget seems to be tight, too ... I'm a little dubious as to whether the employees on the course will be shelling out for Students' books. If I'm expected to produce my own materials for it then I can see two problems :

1) I'm likely to spend an aweful amount of time doing it ... & I'm talking about 2 to 3 hours of prep for each lesson hour

2) I'm not likely to do a very good job of it.

Possibly I lack the experience & ability to do in-company hours, as yet ... daresay those will come with time ... & should avoid the in-company stuff, for the time being.

The school I am currently working for also, from time to time, offer in-company work, so it appears there will be later opportunities for it.

Thanks again,

Iam

[Jizzo T. Clown]

spiral78 is spot on. If you see the students as colleagues who are working together toward a common goal (in this case, to get the most out of the course), then they'll respect you and things will go a lot smoother. Check out this site:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/Business/Analysis/index.htm

I found that a negotiated syllabus was the best thing to do for my business classes. After all, nothing is better than having the students plan the course for you!

Of course, you'll still need to do your prep, which will include lots of time making photocopies and surfing the web, but in the end you'll find the process both educational and rewarding...plus you'll have all of those materials to use for the next course.

[Glenski]

My first teaching job was in a conversation school. I had 2 textbooks (3 levels for each one) that I was supposed to use for certain classes. I was told to finish chapter XYZ by a certain date and given full latitude on how to do that. The books were insufficient to cover an 80-minute class, so I had to create everything to fill the time with useful exercises. It was an enormous effort, and I relied on my 2 co-workers a lot in the beginning. I ended up taking tips from them on general lesson layout, and photocopying many things from the school's storehouse of sample texts. I have filled half a dozen notebooks with the materials (game boards, questionnaires, cards, pictures, info gap exercises, etc.). If students recognize your game board in lesson 30, because you used it in lessons 4, 16, 21, and 25, then you won't have to explain the rules all over again. Same holds for any other activity as long as you design it similarly again and again. Let your students explain the rules to newcomers, too, whether in L1 or L2.

I suggest that you work on the same principles. Don't be shy to ask for help. Your employer and co-workers should realize that you are green enough to need the help.

Learn to make lessons with similar formats. That is, present the point for the day (or warm up the class with something fun), work on 2 or 3 short exercises that develop from easy to more difficult, try to find some time to review vocabulary at the end (even 1 minute is good enough), and teach your students how to ask questions in English.

For my lowest level course, I wrote the following sentences on the board every day for the first half dozen lessons, then stopped because they had gotten the hang of them.
"How do you say X in English or Japanese?"
"What does X mean?"
When new students joined the group later, my initial students were giving this advice to them immediately.

Learn NOT to talk a lot in the class. Let your students do that. Emphasize that it is critical for them to make mistakes. Sitting there and being quiet while they ponder how to phrase the perfect answer or reply or question will only make their learning process take that much more time, and you can only fix mistakes that you HEAR.

Keep conversation classes fairly casual. Know your audience. It's usually not serious grammar teaching, so they need to feel comfortable.

You don't have to BUY textbooks that will help you plan lessons. Call the publishers (Oxford University Press, Longman, Thomson, etc.) and ask for catalogs and free samples. They are usually very generous with free samples.

[Mike_2003]

Hi,

Part of the needs analysis process is establishing the students� goals. Company lawyers will probably need to focus more on reading skills, sales representatives on speaking and negotiation skills, engineers on specific technical language, and so on. Find out what they need to use in their daily work lives, and also want the want to know, which may be different. Many in-company groups will have employees from different departments so make sure your course has something for everyone. Use this as your initial guideline to the course design.

Next collect a selection of business English books and go through them selecting the units which apply to your students. Assess what grammar is required to understand each unit and select exercises/explanations from other books or create handouts covering these areas. When selecting the units/exercises don�t forget to note down which skills they cover � try to mix them up and cover all the basic communicative skills. Make a lesson-by-lesson schedule.

Keep careful records. After each lesson assess the successfulness of the exercises and ask yourself what you could have done to improve it. Did it take too long? Was it too brief? Did the students enjoy it? Adjust your schedule after each lesson, looking at what you intend to do in the next lessons. Are they ready for it? Are they of a sufficient level to benefit from it? Does it link well to previous lessons? Don't forget your CELTA training, there was some useful information there regarding planning individual lessons.

One thing I�ve found particularly successful is to set a small project exercise towards the end of the course � a presentation, an extended role-play, or something of the sort. Give the students a few lessons to prepare for this and have the presentations made in the final lesson. Inviting their boss to the class to watch is always a good motivator.

It may seem like a lot of work, perhaps 6/7 hours to prepare a 30-hour course, but once you have this course designed you can easily adapt and reuse it in the future, reducing your course-planning time considerably. With careful notes and records you can build up an archive of good lesson plans for varying levels and employee types.

Mike

[memorabilis]

In my experience, Business English textbooks blow. They are usually worse than useless, as they are not focussed on learner needs. After students have bought this precious textbook (which the school has usually pre-selected without even a needs assessment) the students expect you to actually USE the stupid thing.

Bah!

It's far better to take the time to build your own stuff and borrow or steal from a variety of books based on learner needs. That's why this stuff is called English for Specific Purposes.

I'm teaching an in-comoany right now where the client and the school decided to focus on meetings. So off were dashed copies of Effective Meetings. What a truly stupid book. To top it all off, the whole friggin book is based around these video clips, but the company won't spring for TV/VCR. So I have to use the book without the key component of the course, the tape.

[Cdaniels]

[Iam]

Hi again,

I did take, & pass, the Celta - though over 6 months before starting teaching.

"In Company" classes were at best only mentioned.

It was a 4 week intensive course, &, I think, a good one.

During the course, all our Teaching Practice was based on the use of course books ... that seemed the standard way of doing things, with supplemental material of our own invention being just that, supplemental.

Course design/needs assessment was not - to my memory - covered (sorry if I mentioned this in previous post). Thanks again for the advice on needs assessment btw, Mike.

It seems all Celtas are not alike ... I remember someone posting here a bit back that they were at a loss when faced with having to use a course book, having used entirely own materials in their Celta - largely the opposite of my situation. And, obviously, a 4 week course is not a complete preparation for Tefl.

The job I'd applied for did not seem to offer much (if anything) in the way of support in terms of books, advice from other teachers. The school & actual job were over an hour's journey from my home, the owner spoke little English, & I'm not sure I'd have ever met any other teachers there. To call the place a school in fact is perhaps generous - it consisted of an office or three, &, to be fair, a bookshelf or two, but had no classrooms.

This is in Spain btw, where I've lately been told the government basically funds in-company English, with the result that it's there's a lot of it, but it's not perhaps taken as seriously as it might.

Anyway, I've not heard anything more from that interview, which is probably just as well, & am reasonably happy with my work in class at the other (actual) school.

Iam.