Teacher Discussion Forums

I would like to talk with anyone with experience teaching telephone English. I am interested in new ideas, any teaching materials that exist, common rates that are charged for this type of course,etc.

I taught one student in France. What do you want to know?

I would appreciate information regarding how much you charged as I will be also teaching a student in France, as well as ideas on materials. How exactly did you go about the lessons? How often and long were the lessons? Did you use a text? How did you prepare for the lesson? Thanks for your help.

How often and long were the lessons? Did you use a text? How did you prepare for the lesson? Thanks for your help.

Just an idea: you might want to consider discussing some of these points with your student. How you approach teaching should, to my mind at least, be governed to a certain extent by your student needs

Iain

Exactly what Iain wrote.
I worked for a language school, so I don't know what they charged. I only know what they paid me.
Also, they (the school) gave me some background information about the student. Usually, the student expressed her concerns and I would take it up from there.
There is no way to really prepare for a telephone conversation without knowing your student.
The student I dealt with was working in the French Film Bureau for Censorship and something....I forget. So, she wanted to know a lot of slang, idioms, and jargon related to her field. Of course, we got off topic and discussed several other issues...but it wasn't a typical classroom instruction.
Oh, and she specifically wanted an American instructor because of all the Hollywood zombies she encountered. ahem!

Hi!

I also teach this.
Sadly the books I use are aimed at German students,
the main emphasis is on Business English!

Sita

Thanks for your help. Of course, the student's input is most important. However, I am looking for a little guidance from others that have taught as I have never done a course like this before and I do feel it is necessary for a teacher to be prepared to answer the student's questions about this type of lesson. So, even if the material is aimed at other populations I would love to hear about it so that I can get some ideas. Thanks again.

sita wrote:Sadly the books I use are aimed at German students, icon_mad.gif
the main emphasis is on Business English!

Having lived in Germany myself, I'm curious to know: why the sad face?

Iain

I meant that sad face because a lot of the teachers' instructions in my books are in German
so non German speakers can not use them
that is why I put the sad face there.

Siân

Hi!

I give you an extract how I teach telephoning:

The first impression! (appear efficient)
telephone phrases beginning and ending a call

Obtaining and Giving Information
telephone phrases

How to deal with complaints
"
Making excuses IMPORTANT!
"
teletactics, useful strategies to calm an irate caller etc, etc

I teach large groups though, they sit back to back behind screens.
this makes it more realistic!

That was just the intro if you wish to know more please contact me via email or my site

Best wishes
Sita

I agree with Sita's suggestion, it's good to break down the subject of 'Telephoning' into smaller units and then try to do each one in turn.

Other modules you could try are things like making appointments, postponing appointments, cancelling appointments, confirming appointments in writing (fax, e-mail...).

If you're teaching a French student, watch out for the famous 'faux amis', in other words, terms that appear to be the same in both languages but which have quite a different meaning.

One more thing, are these face to face lessons or by phone?

Mine were always on the phone. One of the biggest advantages to telephone lessons is actually putting your lessons into practice. By that I mean, role play.
Since the French student was concerned about certain situations in the film industry, I would act out an irate Hollywood producer, or director, or their crew ...and we would create situations just to get her to practice her English. Her problem was more about understanding Americans speak, so I would just talk and have her summarize our dialogues.
I didn't have much of a structure to the lesson because she was at a high intermediate level, and needed more conversational skills (understanding native spakers).
But I had another student who was looking for a job, and we would practice job interviews specifically on the phone. That lesson would be more structured. I never prepared a lesson (I never had a standard lesson plan) before I had learned about the student.

Hi Strider!

Nice to receive feedback.
I have a telephone training seminar next week at Uni.

Take care
Sita

For a general text, BASIC TELEPHONE TRAINING, by Anne Watson-Delestree, isn't bad. ISBN: 0906717426

I suggest assignments where the student actually has to make various phone calls for a certain reason. For example, I've had my students call theatres to obtain ticket price/seat availability information. The situation was that their boss had asked them to get tickets for a special client who was coming to town.
Others:
Reserving plane tickets by phone. (They do have to provide a credit card number, but they can call back and cancel within a certain amount of time.)
Calling office supply stores and asking for prices and availability (instead of doing it online).
Calling a health club and asking about the various membership plans and features available.

The student should have a worksheet to fill out. Or, if you're giving private lessons, you can just provide the setting/situation and have the student generate/write down the sort of questions she thinks she might need to ask.

It's great if you can have the student call using a speaker phone. Then you can take notes as you listen to the conversation. Similarly, if you're teaching a class, it's great to have students leave YOU a message on your voice mail. Then have the entire class listen to the message on the speaker phone and take a message. When no one in the class understands a certain word the student is trying to say, the student really understands that she needs to work on a certain aspect of her pronunciation.

I can send you a sample of a worksheet that my students had to complete for the theatre tickets and health club. IM me or e-mail me at [email protected].

Consider using AUDACITY software to record messages for your student. Send her the file via e-mail. She must either transcribe it or fill out a message. You can send the answers via e-mail as well. The software can be downloaded for free, the sound quality is excellent, and it's very easy to use. (It looks just like an old-fashioned tape recorder!) I save and send them as WAV files. I've found that most people can open those files without downloading any extra software. However, don't make the message too long. If the file is too big, the server may reject it. In any event, it's wonderful to have the messages on your computer so you can use them over again in different situations.

Hi folks, hi strider!

This is v. interesting stuff. Making calls is a good idea, but only if they can call an office in an English-speaking country Audacity is also a superb idea, but very time-consuming.

I made up a list of situations and the kind of standard phrases that you would use in conversations. It's by no means comprehensive, but it's really handy to have such a list. I generally use it by describing the situations, asking what people would say, then correcting them if necessary and giving suggestions. A lot of people asked for the list after lessons, so I just emailed it to them.

It's good when you're in a seminar rather than a class setting. 20 people who want to get back to work don't generally want to sit around talking to each other, and would prefer a more intense 'lecture'.

Russians generally have a really terrible, abrupt telephone manner, so a lot of it was about teaching them to be a little more friendly and patient.

Teaching them not to try to talk as fast as possible also seemed to be useful- speaking more slowly also helps to slow the other person down a little. I've found that if someone is speaking fast on the phone, the foreign speaker tries to keep up with them or go even faster!

Otherwise, yes, like strider said - if you need to fill out the lessons a little so that it doesn't seem like you're teaching from a phrasebook, you could add hundreds of general situations. They might not be seen as telephone-specific though?


Sita - can we swap some ideas? You send me yours, I'll send you mine?