Chinese business students, pre-intermediate: help!

[jenviolin]

This week I will have my first classes with a group of primarily Chinese business students who will have a year of intensive English in preparation for an english-language B.A. in business. I will be teaching Speaking and Presentation Skills and Writing Skills. I have a lot of freedom in the topics I choose and the way I will run the class, but since I have never taught Asian students before, I would be very grateful for any tips and words of caution or advice you might have. I am particularly interested in hearing ways I can get them to accept that making mistakes is part of the process, and does not mean they are 'losing face'. We are not in an English-speaking country so they can't aquire the language simply by osmosis. Thanks in advance!

[Vytenis]

Hi there... I have never taught a group of Asian students myself, but last year I was taking a business English course together with the Asian students at the Unversity of Nebraska at Omaha. I was the only Europen student in the group - others were all Korean and Japanese. The subjects we took were in fact very similar to those you've mentioned: business reading, business writing, business presentations, oral communicaton practice etc. This program was a kind of intensive language course, perhaps similar to the one you're involved into... The quality of teaching was quite good, I believe. So if you are interested I could tell you in more detail what kind of activities or techniques did our course instructors in Omaha apply and what did we do during our classes. You can as well check this link of IPD main website: http://world.unomaha.edu/ipd/main.php?submenu=home

[jenviolin]

Thanks, Vytenis. Well, we've been gooing full steam for 7 weeks now and the problem seems not to be anybody losing face, but that the students seem to feel that coming to class is optional - not just my classes, but everybody's: grammar, culture, computer skills, management strategies, business studies... They know their grade will depend partly on their attendance record. This problem has me really puzzled!
Other than that, things are going well. Thanks for the web link. The IPD in Omaha looks very comprehensive and intensive (though expensive by European standards).

[Vytenis]

Well, I think adult students are like that all over the world. I used to teach adult evening classes here in Lithuania and I had exactly the same problem. Some of them would not show up until the last classes before the exam. I underatand them: they have their own lives and for some of them it may be really too difficult to attend every class. However, here I think I need to get tough too: if you don't attend the classes - fine. But please be so kind and study yourself then. One of the two. I just feel terribly irritated when a person tries to get away with doing neither. I guess nobody likes being cheated

Talking about what we used to do in Omaha: I liked the oral communication class the most. We were being prepared to give business presentations. The teacher was very good - she covered all the aspects of oral prasentations: starting wth the body movements, gestures and eye contacts and finishing with how to actually organize the presentation material itself. She made us give several presentations increasing in complexity. The first one was just a reading presentation, during witch we had to practice just the technical details of an effective presentation: body posture, eye contact, movements, voice, intonation etc. The second one was a little more complicated: we had to do our own reasearch and present a company. During this presentation we practiced not only the technical aspects but also the sequence of the presentation itself: effective introduction, body, conclusons, timing etc. She gave us an evaluation sheet to evaluate our groupmates and ourselves.
Besides presentations she gave us some other tasks: e.g. to call the airport and check information about the flights. Or to call her answering mashine and leave the messages on specified topics. I found all these oral communication tasks extremely useful and relevant for the people who do business in an English-speaking envoronment.

[KateSmith]

This bothers me with adult students, because I wind up spending time reviewing material for absent students who just can't be bothered coming to class. I tried all the grades, all the pleas, all the threats and got nothing.

I decided that I would give progress reports more frequently AND divide the class by grades, at each progress reporting period. I told that class that as the A and B students needed less review time they would be put in one group during discussion sessions and the C and lower students in another group. After this, for some reason, I never had any 'C or lower' students and fewer students missed classes, or arrived late. It worked for me.

[aaprime]

I have been teaching business English in Shanghai for a few months. My Chinese students have been eager to learn business idioms and Western management practices. Almost none of them have traveled to the USA. All of them are required to write reports or emails in English to US, German and Taiwan counterparts. My experience has shown that students in Shanghai need practice hearing and understanding spoken English, particularly, meeting and presentation vocabulary. I offer them target language that contains useful phrases and word patterns. They use the target language within task-based exercises that can be directly applied to the work environment immediately. I am not having serious attendance problems, although, some students just don't see the value of English in their particular job function. These students are mostly engineers who value numbers and need the training in language skills the most. This is unfortunate. Hope that helps you.

[zoesley]

Of course no one wants to make a mistake, especially in front of the class, as news travels.
So, explain the word edit. write a sentence that needs editing.
Explain to learn one makes mistakes. You could reverse role play.
Have them teach you something that Asian kids make mistakes with, then make the mistake.

Can you have the class split into small groups so that no one person makes a single mistake in front of everyone? Depends on class size and noise levels I suppose.

All the best.

[Dorischang]

I suggest that you offer some authentic English reading materails for them, for example, newspaper clips. Of course, those pieces of news are about business . They can learn business English terms from those daily news. And you can explain to them the main points and key phrases within the reading materials. Therefore, your students may know how busniess Enhlish is related to real world and how useful it is. That's all my suggestions. I hope this helps.

[egzklusiv]

Jenviolin,


This term we did something new; I do hope you find it useful:

www.ftc.motime.copm


Best,

James