Job Discussion Forums

[woza17]

I started my new Business English course yesterday a 3 and half hour course that runs for 2 months, 25 students in all. I find this course a bit of a joke really because I have a class of students at radically different levels.
So to start off the course I brought in my 4 monopoly sets and got the students started, carefully explaining the rules and the object of the game and introducing vocabulary, such as rent, landlord ect.
Now what puzzles me is how do you expect to learn Cambridge BEC 2 if you can't master the meaning of the community chest cards.
I explained 3 times that you must own all the same colour properties before you can build houses or hotels, 10 minutes later when my back was turned a student had built a hotel on a single property.
I stopped the game and explained to the students this game does have a point , to listen and understand instuctions and think about the objective and how to achieve it. Also I have a rule if the students speak Chinese I take $100 off them, even though this money is not real it might as well be
judging from their reaction when I try and prise the $100 off them.
Three hours later with the students whooping it up and getting to know each other and me totally exhausted I came away with a very clear idea of my students level of English and intelligence, strangely enough the students with the poorest English were the better players .
Cheers Carol

[Roger]

A didactically inspiring approach, congratulations!
I also have a jocular order to fill - teach business English to college girls. Well, they are not past "how do you do?" and bilingual textbooks that teach them how foreigners can be duped into buying fake products made in China.

I dropped that crappy little book in favour of teaching them how to write a job application. FIrst thing, they have to write a job advert, then the application, then a CV.
Most have yet to learn how to string any five words together to a sentence.

But it has become quite fun in just three weeks!

[woza17]

Hi Roger,
I also think its rubbish and I teach all my classes how to write a good CV
and we do job interview roleplays. I also get them to bring in their e-mails and teach them how not to write like a lovely playful 12 year old, to me that is business English.
I have started teaching Hotel English, another story.
Cheers Carol

[fat_chris]

Carol,

I like your Monopoly idea as a good first lesson to assess students' levels. Best of luck to you in B-English.

I think your students were playing Monopoly with Chinese characteristics; that is, the student who had built a hotel on a single property must have had guanxi with some officials and paid them some kickbacks so he didn't have to follow the rule about acquiring all of the same-colored properties first.

[woza17]

Hi chris
You may be right . I did jokingly say to them that I was from the Central Building Committee and I am going to knock the bloody thing down.
I also taught them the 3 most important things in buying and developing real estate, location location location.
Maybe it should be relationshiop, relationship relationship.
Cheers Carol

[cheekygal]

How about teaching them COMMODITIES?