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[riverboat]

I have a 6 hour TOEIC preparation course to teach in-company. There will be 12 students in the group, and they'll have 3 x 2 hour lessons. Their company has bought them all a book: Tactics for TOEIC Listening & Reading, which I've had a look at and is pretty good: 2 full practice tests, and a coursebook of practice exercises based around specific tactics for each section of the test. There's als a vocab list and some vocab exercises at the back.

The students have all had general English lessons over the past year (about 1.5 hours per week each in a small group) but now their employer has suddenly given them all the opportunity to take TOEIC in January, so a load of them signed up, and the company threw in this special 6 hour preparation deal for them as well.

The problem is, most of them don't really even know what TOEIC is, they're doing it because they've been told it'll look good on their CV and because it's free. They all have a decent-ish level, but know nothing about TOEIC tactics.

So I have 6 hours to try to prepare them for this test. My rough plan is:

Lesson 1:
- 1 hr: Overview of the test, with a few practice questions from each section and feedback as a group
- 10m: Discussion of general tactics and approach to the test as a whole
- 50m: Practice /skill-building exercises for sections 1 and 2 of the Listening paper

Lesson 2
- 1 hr: Practice / skill building exercises for sections 3 and 4 of the Listening paper
- 1 hour: Practice Listening Exam

Homework: students complete the Reading Exam in self-timed conditions

Lesson 3
- 1 hr Review Listening and Reading papers (not sure of the best way to do this given there are 12 of them??)
- 1 hr: Practice / skill building exercises for the reading paper??



....but I'm feeling kind of unconfident about my approach, I've taught a bit of TOEIC before but never been responsible for planning a 6 hour course. Obviously the problem is that in 6 hours you can only skim the surface of TOEIC, but even so I want to try to make the best use of the time we have. Does anyone with more TOEIC experience than me have any suggestions?

[Glenski]

Do not spend an hour giving an overview of the test. 10-15 minutes ought to do. They need you to teach them something in their inadequate time frame. Don't waste it.

10 minutes for tactics? You must be joking. Half the class should be devoted to learning and applying tactics, IMO.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Focus on test-taking strategies: Dos and Don'ts, the exam's structure, that sort of thing. That's a ridiculously short time-frame to cover a test such as the TOEIC, but it's better than nothing.

[riverboat]