Job Discussion Forums

[dagi]

Until now I have only taught kids. In two weeks I'll start an in-company training for real estate agents. The company is top-notch, a big business.
I'll have two groups of 4 people, different levels but basically I'll just to the same stuff twice.

Thing is, one session will be 2 1/2 hours!! I am used to 70 min. lessons, but 2 1/2 hrs
Any tips on what to keep in mind to create some interesting lessons? Anything I need to keep in mind when it comes to teaching adults e.g. managers?

[Atassi]

That's an interesting switch of jobs dagi....can you tell us more about the situation? Where are you first of all? Where are your students from? What level are they at, and what are they going to use the English skills to do exactly?

If you are overseas, who will these real estate agents and managers be speaking English to, and in what context? Some answers to these questions might help those on the board to give you better ideas.

Good luck.

[Roger]

I don't see how anyone can give you any meaningful answer if you do not provide us with basic information such as WHERE you are going to teach adults.
To give you an illustration of what's in it for FTs in a foreign country: I often teach CHINESE adults, but it is widely opined in FT circles that a Chinese ADULT essentially compares with a Western teenie between the ages of 15 and 20.
Their grasp of English is deceptive at best, entirely based on school leavingt certs that we know are totally unreliable.
Their interest in the language is primordially conditioned by material gains.
In a situation such as yours, I would try to mix their professional background with a heavy dose of entertainment in my course. The professional background would be welcome to give them a feel of "deja vu", familiarity with a subject that plays a role in tyheir daily life, but the entertainment part would help get their minds focused on something not too reminiscent of their daily routines and job-related frustrations.

Also you need to think about the OBJECTIVE of your course! In CHINA, people often tell you "we need oral practice", for which, inb my humble opinion, no teacher is really needed since anyone can practise with their peers anywhere in the world. I then identify their real need - and that usually is COMPREHENSION. Since they are virtual simultaneous interpreters for themselves, they do not realise how much gets lost in their translations. This slows the speed in their dialogues, and for these dialogues to be fruitful they need to learn to understand the target language without understanding every locution from their mother tongue point of view. In other words: they need to be trained to understand whole sentences and even texts rather than word after word.

[dagi]

Sorry for being a bit vague! Here's some more information:
I am located in the Netherlands, the course is for a company in Amsterdam. One of the biggest real estate agents in the city.
The participants are all managers and high ranked staff and it's for teaching German, btw. They all seem to have some basic language skills e.g. an average of 3 years at secondary school.
They do get a lot of clients from Germany and basically need to be able to show the client around, make phone calls, know a bit of real estate vocabulary.
The whole course will be 60hrs, each group.

See, with the kids at school I often play little games and activities to enhance their oral skills or practice grammar in a more fun way. Ok, now I don't intend to sing songs with those managers but it seems a bit boring to me to only offer them those boring text book exercises.

I was thinking about recording some programmes from telly, like business reports, news, etc. to use it for practicing listening skills.
Hell, this stuff is so new to me I don't even know what specific questions to ask!

[guangho]

Adults are open to games too. I'm thinking about stuff like roleplays and dialogues. I taught an IT guy in Guangzhou and one lesson was spent going over Michael Jackson's "Beat It". After we sang it a few times, I had him ask and answer q's about the lyrics and that moved into a discussion about Black Americans and then American History.