Teacher Discussion Forums

Sorry for the cross posting but it is realted to adults and business english...

I am working in China teaching bus english to advanced adults who are software support consultants and they want to improve their telephone support skills.

I have introduced lots of telephone language and asked them to write and present telephone support scripts which works well but I am running out of exercises related to this.

Any ideas??

I am also teaching from the market leaders for the other half of the time.

Thanks

Adam

Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head:

1. Most software engineers have to do a lot of decision trees / flowcharts to find out what problems are, so it maybe helpful to get them to make a flowchart for a piece of software from scratch... Start by giving them a manual to a fairly simple piece of software e.g. a game. You can find plenty at http://www.gamefaqs.com/ Then get them to develop scripts from there.

2. Get them to participate in real software problems via forums for software.
e.g. http://reviews.cnet.com/5204-6122-0.htm ... 44&start=0
or http://forums.techguy.org/index.php If they don't have live Internet access you can use this to find questions to ask them...

3. Make them show you / volunteer how to use software in class.

4. Get them working on friendly stress and pronunciation.

5. Get them to write a techy manual in plain English.

6. Make them play Blindman's chess.... You need 4 people, 2 people follow instructions without questions and 2 people play, but they can't see the board. Helps to develop effective oral communication. (You can make it more difficult by saying they can't ask questions about what's on the board and/or they lose a turn if they give a bad instruction.)

James
http://www.jamesabela.co.uk/

cheers james,

ideas much appreciated!

Adam