Job Discussion Forums

[voodikon]

i'm supposedly teaching business-related english at a software company and was given some sound recordings of presentations given by employees at the company's american counterpart with the strong suggestion that i use them as teaching materials in class. these tend to be hour-long clips presenting a new product or somesuch, communicating with clients, etc. given by a native speaker, at native-speaker speed.

now, some of the students (all 20- to 30-something IT professionals) are able to understand much of what the slower speakers are saying, while others are nowhere near that level. this is one concern. for those who are at that level, i was trying to think of creative ways--actually, any way--to implement this type of "real" data (which, the managers admitted, went over most of the employees' heads) in the classroom. the other teacher has been playing the sound clips, pausing after each sentence, and having the students repeat it back or explain the information contained therein. this tedious drill struck me as extremely dull--i could hardly pay attention long enough to answer the questions--and many of the students seemed close to dozing off.

it is true that they could benefit from native-speaker input (other than mine), but is this really any kind of way to go about it? since the company has made it clear that it's vital that the bulk of instruction materials be business-related, i was thinking about showing movies or tv shows that depict office life. does anybody know of any that are particularly appropriate? (my initial idea was the drew carey show--hi, depressing--that'll quickly squash their oft-expressed desires to work in the u.s.) or does anybody have ideas of how i can make the aforementioned sound clips interesting to teach? i'd love to bounce some ideas around.

[burnsie]

Yes, analising a speech sentence by sentence is boring and will put them all to sleep.

Why don't you get them to review these presentations in their own time? Do you have transcripts? If you had them you could analyise them with the class, make new suggestions and try and relate it to their situations.

Can you split the class into two? Or is this asking too much?

What you might want to do is get them to prepare presentations for the class.

Sorry, I'm not trained in this area so I can't offer too much advice.

In terms of videos have you thought about 'The Office'? It might be quite difficult and more of a comedy really. There are many management training videos around but I don't think in China.

There are a couple of websites that may be of interest to you. I don't have them with me but I will post later.

[burnsie]

OK, here are some websites which are business related.

www.test-best.com - english language based for ESL teachers - basic stuff but you might be able to pull something from this. It has some .mp3's you could use.

http://www.bized.ac.uk/educators/16-19/business/index.htm - this is business related again but not for ESL teachers.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

[Multilingua]

Dear Voodikon,
You said you wanted practical suggestions, so here goes....You might be able to use the same clips over and over, but vary the tasks as their English improves.

For example, you could have them listen to a 2-minute segment and identify the topic, or the product involved, or the speaker's tone, or the grammatical tense, or whatever you decide to focus the lesson on. Once they've grasped that, you can have them do several more segments of the same length to practice.

Next, you could start with the same familiar clip, but make it a three-to-five minute segment. Ask them to do more complicated listening tasks, such as filling in a cloze exercise (which, of course, involves your time in creating said exercise!). Gradually increase the length of the clips used, and of course the complexity of the tasks based on those clips.

Another source of stimulating materials for your class should be the company's own internal documents and its external/advertising documents. You say there is an American counterpart to your company, so ask them to give you brochures, a prospectus or two, a training manual, etc. These things should be available, but they may not ask for them unless you push for materials as "authentic" as possible.

A transcript is a must for your planning, though, as you will need to have it tagged with time references so you can stop and start the clip at the right times or repeat it when necessary. If the presentations are on cassette tape, try very hard to get a tape player with a tape counter, or you will spend frustrating minutes every class trying to find exactly the right place on the tape. Since it is a software company, however, I hope that the clip is actually a media file in a computer, in which case just jotting down time references will serve you well enough to go back and forth.

Hope this comes in handy! Good luck!

[Dalaoer]

How about concentrating on punctual topics? Try to identify what would be in their interest to learn from the recordings. E.g., isolate a short clip (if you have it) of a conversation with a client, say. Then, you could get them to do their own skits (homework, if their timetable allows for it) and guide them through the procedures. A 'This is how you talk to clients: do's and don'ts' sort of thing. That's a whole lesson out of a 2-minute clip, and you can skip the rubbish.

How's that?