Help with teaching Spanish/English Workplace Literacy

[kannesee]

Hi there,
Starting in January I will be teaching a language class at a business that makes boats, airplane wings and other such things at a business that has many Spanish-speaking employees. My class will consist of 15 Spanish speaking employees and their 5 English-speaking supervisors. The purpose of the class is that those who speak Spanish will learn English for work and those who speak English will learn Spanish. This is a new program for the literacy program I work for and I am not sure if anything like this has been done before. I am wondering if anyone has any tips for me on how to go about this? I am mostly concerned about having both language groups fully-engaged and learning at the same time. I'm nervous about presenting new information to either group without boring the other. Thanks for your help!

[joshua2004]

HI! I am teaching English down here in Mexico. We recently added a student who wants to learn Spanish from us. We started out with seperate classes for her. But, I thought to ask my students learning English if they wanted to try working with her to see what we could do. They all said sure! We have been doing it for about 3 weeks now, just two days a week but they love it! The key I felt is, as with any class, getting them to work together. Create an atmosphere of low stress and pressure. I found that when my student of Spanish helps the students of English, they become very patient for her when the roles are reversed. Bring them into the process. Teaching them at the same time can be done!

[kannesee]

Thanks for the input; I think we will be doing lots of group dialogues! Also, I know this is an ESL site, but if anyone has any ideas for good resources for teaching Spanish for the workplace, or even some websites with ideas for good activities, that would be great. Thank you!