Be unit 2

TEFLnow Course in Teaching Business English

Unit i 2

BE E0 002

Teaching Te n and Le Learn r ing n

Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Synopsis In this unit we will identify the many roles of the teacher and the learner.

We will look at some of the special considerations we need to keep in mind when teaching adults and identify some of the ways our groups may be organized for teaching.

We will address the question "What skills do our students want and need?"

A teaching methodology, suggested for lesson planning, will be considered from a historical viewpoint and its relation to other methods.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Teachers Whilst there is no 'average' business English teacher there is something that the majority have in common. That is the desire to travel.

Unfortunately travel can be a costly business and so one of the main attractions of teaching EFL is that you can work virtually anywhere in the world and be paid for it.

It is important to say at the start that the job of teaching is a serious profession and the chances of backpacking into town and doing a few lessons here or there are getting few and far between.

Whilst teaching is a serious business it doesn't mean the people doing it are staid. On the contrary you are likely to meet a very wide range of personalities in the profession, many of whom can only be described as 'real characters'.

As to what the teachers do, this is determined by a number of factors: Firstly it depends whom you are working for and what they expect from you.

Secondly it depends on the type of environment in which you are teaching. You will inevitably do things slightly differently with the Chief executive of Magasumi Motors than with a class of engineering graduates.

It also depends on the country you are in and what is expected of you in a cultural sense.

Finally, it depends upon you!

You will adopt a teaching style that typically reflects your general personality in some way. If you try to be someone or something you are not, for eight hours a day, it will soon become tedious and very hard work.

So all of these factors can come into play in answering the question "What do you do?"

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

The roles that the teacher adopts at various times could include: Q Q Q Q Q Q

Instructor: The 'knower' of a certain body of knowledge Facilitator: The provider of a learning environment Mentor: Role model Psychologist: Deal with students' personal problems Counsellor: Give help and advice Policeman: Crowd control

You will have a set of responsibilities that go with your contract of employment.

These will set out things such as your contact hours, the syllabus from which you are to work, the resources that are acceptable to the employer, what is expected of you, what you are aiming to achieve with your students, and so forth.

Some of your responsibilities can actually be negotiated with your students/clients and your employer, but on the whole your responsibilities will be laid down by your employer. Your level of responsibility will also depend upon the post you have undertaken. Obviously a Director of Studies who deals with the day to day management of course administration will have more to consider than a first time teacher.

To add to these 'external' factors there will also be a set of targets or goals that you will have 'internally' for your own performance. These targets may well be subject to modification as feedback is gained from your teaching.

There are also some factors that may come under the heading of 'unwritten rules'. These are simply things you are expected to achieve or do as part of your job.

Examples might include being prepared for your lessons, being on time, maintaining discipline or order in the classroom, keeping records of student progress, etc.

Be prepared for the fact that the students may well know more about the subject of "business" than you do. This can be turned into a positive factor for both the teacher and student, as explanations from the students to the teacher will become necessary, thus increasing student talking time. We would recommend that you take this idea one step further, and incorporate the concept into every lesson, even if you do understand!

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Learners As with teachers there is no 'average' learner that we can describe.

Your clients will usually fit into one of the following categories.

Q Q

Q

Q

Q Q Q

Individuals who are paying for private tuition, directly to you Individuals who are paying for private tuition, to a company you work for Individuals for whom their employer is paying for tuition, directly to you Individuals for whom their employer is paying for tuition, to a company you work for Groups within a company, taught at the company premises Groups within a company, taught at a language school Groups of individuals from a variety of places, taught at a language school

Groups of students may (if you are lucky) all be at the same level of English language knowledge.

This makes things easier for you, as you don't have to consider differentiation (grading the level of difficulty to cover all levels) in your teaching and activities.

Your groups may be organized by department in the workplace. This means you may have a whole range of management levels all with very different abilities in English.

You also cannot assume that all the clients attending your classes are doing so of their own free will. Whilst many are keen to be learning English, as they understand the importance of it, they may have to do this learning outside of their normal working day. This is an important consideration, and will be mentioned in the next section (Teaching adults).

Another important aspect to consider is client expectations, such as being able to speak confidently in front of a group. These expectations will vary according to culture and to a lesser degree on whether the client is paying for the lessons themselves.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Teaching adults The teaching of Business English by definition means that your students/clients will be adults. Teaching adults has some advantages and some disadvantages over younger learners.

Advantages include factors such as: Q

Their level of maturity is higher, which means that behavioural problems are minimal (though not always completely absent)

Q

General levels of motivation are greater than adolescents

Q

Attention spans are greater than those of children

Q

You can form bonds with your clients

Q

They bring a lot of experience to the classroom

Q

Most (though by no means all) will be there by choice

Q

Adults see that certain kinds of practice can be a means to an end, without the need for lengthy explanations as to why it is useful (common amongst adolescents)

Taken together, the advantages mean that some of the problems associated with teaching children and adolescents are minimized, which often makes the teaching environment far more relaxed and pleasant.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

Teaching adults does bring with it some potential problems, which can include: Q

Q

Q

Q

Q

Greater internal pressures for them in trying to conduct their lives: their problems may sometimes spill over to the classroom, especially in one to ones (teaching individual students, where more personal information transfer normally takes place).

Adults can be more self conscious about certain kinds of activity in the classroom. This is especially true when they are in a class of different management levels.

Some of your older students may have been out of the educational system for quite some time when they come to you, and may have difficulty in adjusting to being a student again.

Students may well be learning in what is effectively their own time, for example if they start work at 8.30am they may have your lesson between 7am and 8am.

They may have your lesson 'after work', when they are probably in the mind set of being ready to go home.

Q

A potential problem if teaching 'In house' is that your students are still in the workplace so if there are any problems (with the business) or if a department meeting is scheduled you may find half your class will suddenly disappear.

Most of these potential difficulties can be overcome by careful planning, getting to know your students and keeping them motivated and focused. You also need to keep in mind that English language lessons may not be their first priority, which can lead to erratic attendance. This in itself can lead to teacher frustration, having planned a series of lessons that build upon each other.

If they are coming to lessons outside of their normal working hours, you will have to take account of this in your planning. It is unreasonable, under these circumstances, to expect them to cover the same amount of ground in the same time as a group being taught during work hours.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Teaching groups and individuals

In this section we will look at some of the differences in teaching groups and 'one to one' clients, by considering the advantages and disadvantages of teaching individual students.

There are no hard and fast rules as to how your groups will be arranged. The most sensible and logical way is to have them all at the same level of English language competency.

Unfortunately, this is not always the most efficient arrangement for the company, and as a result you will often find yourself teaching groups of varying level of ability.

There are some fairly straightforward strategies for dealing with this situation, which we consider a little later in this section.

'One to one' clients (or teaching individuals) What are the advantages and disadvantages for the teacher and student of this type of teaching? These might include:

Advantages for teachers:

A single level for teaching Material selection easier if we know our student Pacing the lesson to mirror student understanding is quite easy to judge

Disadvantages for teachers:

No groupwork/pairwork No real dedicated resources for teaching one to ones You have a personality difference with your student

Advantages for students:

They get 100% attention They can work at their pace They get more feedback

Disadvantages for students:

Can become boring interacting with the same person continually They will have to do all the work Your student has a personality difference with you

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

So what can we do about these disadvantages?

Let's take them one at a time: No pair work: Whilst it is true that they don't have another student to do pairwork with, they do have you. It may take a little longer to prepare activities that ensure the student provides the majority of the input, but it is easily manageable.

No dedicated resources for 'one to ones': Again it is true that most published resources are for group work and most book series assume at least pairwork in their longer communicative activities.

Once again you have to adapt what is available. In adapting this material for one to one usage you often find the finished product is far more fun and efficient as a language activity than the original.

You have a personality difference with your student: This can be a real problem. All you can do if you find yourself in this situation is to be professional at all times, and try to explore as many themes as possible to find a common interest.

Can become boring for the student: Again this is something you have to prepare for, so you need to vary the stimulus for your student as often as possible. Try different types of activity, plan your lessons in different ways, and whenever you can try to participate.

They have to do all the work: If you get involved as mentioned above the student won't feel as though they are the only one working.

Your student has a personality difference with you: This is a problem that you have to determine the root of. Is the cause due to your teaching style or content? In this case you'll need to address the issue.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Teaching groups

Let us consider now the situation where we have students in a single group who have different levels of ability.

How can we deal with this?

If you did not arrange the groups, find out on what basis the classes were organised. It may be that the groups you end up with are mainly sets of friends, rather than a coherent individual level. The first move, therefore, would be to check with your employer to see if it is possible to re-organise the groups.

Another important consideration is the fact that you should only ever teach at a level that all your students can understand, when teaching the whole group. But if we can't teach above the lowest level how will the better ones learn? This is a reasonable question;Íž the answer being that the lower level students must be involved in some form of activity when higher level teaching takes place.

The easiest way to manage this is through differentiation in your activities.

There are two simple ways to achieve differentiation in your activities.

The first is to use graded activities. These are worksheets that have a lot of questions. The first five or so questions are the easiest, the next five a bit harder and so on. You will need to make sure that your groups are arranged so that pairs have people of roughly the same level. You would expect the lower levels to complete five or six questions in the time it takes the higher ones to do fifteen or even more.

Another useful strategy is to give different levels of structure in your activities to the different levels of students. The lower levels would get all the information needed to complete the activity where as the higher the level the less structure they get.

A further possibility, though it wouldn't be recommended to use it all the time, is to form groups of three or four students, where all the students in any one group are at different levels. The lower levels learn from the higher ones and the higher ones learn from teaching the lower ones.

It is also possible to give 'catch-up' work to the lower level students to do outside of the classroom to help them in their weaker areas.

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rn r ing n Skills: Listening, reading, speaking & writing

The teaching of a business English course requires us to cover the same skill areas as any general English course: Q Q

The two receptive skills of listening and reading The two productive skills of speaking and writing

The main difference in a Business English course is the level of contextualization. This means that any activities you give to your students should have some form of link to what they will actually use the language for.

So let us run through each of the skills in turn and think of some examples of what types of activity might be suitable for our clients.

Listening

Two examples where listening skills are likely to be used are: Q Q

Meetings Telephoning

In meetings information about the company will be given, usually in a verbal form with accompanying notes. Visuals such as OHP or Powerpoint ÂŽ presentations are also frequently used.

Receiving verbal instructions will come from a variety of sources, such as when talking with colleagues or superiors on the telephone, conversations and even transcribing information from a Dictaphone.

When creating activities we should try to mimic these scenarios for our non-authentic material (made purely for the purpose of teaching) or even better use authentic material (created for some purpose other than teaching).

We will cover these two types of material in a later unit in more detail.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Reading

Some examples of where reading is likely to be used are: Q

Mail, both written and electronic, faxes etc

Q

Company memos, reports and technical documentation

Q

Business publications such as the Financial Times

There are many opportunities and applications for activities based on reading mail. The more important creative aspect will be the type and level of comprehension we want from the activities.

For example, we need to consider whether we are practising skimming (to get an overall idea of the text), scanning (looking for specific information), context reading (to understand the meaning of words and phrases from their relationship within a passage), etc.

Most companies of any reasonable size will produce an annual report, which can be a very useful resource.

Internal memos are also very useful, but you do need to take care that any material of this type has been passed as suitable for 'general consumption'.

Speaking

This skill will be used in a number of significant areas.

Q

Telephoning

Q

Meetings

Q

Presentations

Whenever creating activities based around speaking it is most important that you do not expect your students to create dialogues directly in L2 (second language).

In any role play situation, even most native speakers would have difficulty in improvising a five minute dialogue. Time must be given in this type of activity for the students to think about their dialogue in L1 (native language) and translate this to L2 ready for presentation.

When giving presentations we should encourage our students to use as many visual props as possible and to make their presentation interactive;Íž all skills that we ourselves use to reduce the stress on us during such activity.

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rrning n Writing

This skill can incorporate all the previous ones, so that we can use examples from: Q Q Q Q Q

Mail, faxes etc Meetings Presentations Reports Notes and messages

With mail and faxes etc you are more concerned with the format of the document, rather than its content.

Information to be presented in meetings has to be precise and not verbose.

Ideas have to be transmitted effectively and efficiently. One very effective method for this type of presentation writing is to use frameworking, which involves generating a type of flowchart, to order our language through a process. We will look at this method in detail in Unit 5 (Teaching themes).

The writing of reports tends to follow a set framework and you should try to familiarize yourself with both company documentation and reports from a wider variety of sources, such as magazines like The Economist.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

Teaching methods overview "Give me the child till he's seven and I will show you the man" "That something as perfect as the human eye could have come about due to a series of random mistakes, though incomprehensible to the human mind is not beyond the bounds of scientific reason" Two very different quotes which represent the two ends of the spectrum in educational theory.

The first, from a Victorian Public school headmaster, represents the Nurture end of the scale. This implies that our students are like putty, ready to be moulded and shaped by our teachings so that the outcome is a foregone conclusion as a result of this 'created environment'.

The second, paraphrased from Darwin's 'The Origin of Species', represents the Nature end of the scale. We end up as we were meant to be, and the genetic mould cannot be adjusted except by time and mutation.

Theories of learning have been developed throughout history which fall somewhere between the two ends of this spectrum.

These theories were given greater cognisance with the development of Psychology as a pseudo science.

We have all heard of 'Behaviourist theories' put forward by Pavlov and his contemporaries, but how have theories of learning and hence syllabus design been adapted by these scientific principles?

The following outline is roughly chronological and though not exhaustive does represent the development of the main learning theories to date. It is useful to offer this guide to give a clearer perspective of the methodology we will use throughout the rest of this course.

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rrning n Grammar translation

Also known as the 'Classical method' as it is the methodology used in learning the classic languages of Latin and Greek. Both of these are dead languages yet this method is still being used by many state schools throughout the world today. (To teach French, German, English etc) Most of you reading this will have had direct experience of grammar translation.

The idea is that you take sentences in the native language and try to find equivalents in the second language, and vice-versa.

As a theory this is fairly reasonable if you are learning a language that has some direct equivalents. However, many languages do not rely on the tense system and use tones and/or 'markers' rather than structure to convey a sense of 'time'.

The main causes for concern about this method include: Q Q

Audio Lingualism

That it is unlikely to help students 'create' language.

It teaches us about the language, rather than how to use it.

This methodology came about due to the theories of behavioural psychology, in particular conditioning. At the end of the Second World War the American military had its personnel scattered all over the globe. They very quickly realised that it was important to have speakers of the native language stationed in those areas.

As the method was developed for their personnel it also goes by the name of the 'Army method'.

It concentrates on verbal drilling and the use of mimicry in language heard, hence the name. It uses aural/oral stimulation, i.e. listen and repeat, as its main focus.

Its detractors say that whilst it does produce very rapid results (though to be fair this may be based more on the very intense nature of such courses that the military put their personnel through), it is unlikely to create spontaneous language, and that long term memory and understanding of the language learnt is unlikely without consistent use.

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rrning n The Silent Way There is a great shift in emphasis here from the previous two methodologies, in which the teacher has basically been the focus of the learning experience.

In the 'Silent way', a methodology generally attributed to Caleb Gattegno, the student is the focus and the teachers role becomes much more that of a facilitator to the learning process.

The methodology tries to draw on the theories of native (L1) language acquisition, whereby students are encouraged to 'try out' language, realize errors depending on positive or negative feedback, and develop theories of structure for themselves based upon this.

This method also suggests a difference between 'teaching' and 'learning' which still forms the basis of many arguments and debates today.

Task based learning This is another 'student centered' methodology where by the task is the main focus around which language can be developed. The task forms the skeleton and the actual language is the flesh upon those bones.

This methodology became very popular for a while for a whole range of curricula studies from Mathematics to Geography.

Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP) PPP is another development along the road of communicative language teaching, involving three stages of a lesson. The presentation stage is about eliciting (getting the students to come up with) the language of the lesson. The practice phase is where the language is used in a very structured way, and in the Production phase, the language is used in a more realistic situation.

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

Engage Study Activate (ESA) This methodology, attributed to Jeremy Harmer, combines much of what is good about each of the previous theories. It encourages independent learning and language creation in a student centred environment but doesn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in terms of structure, which most students need.

If you have used the PPP (Presentation, Practice and Production) methodology, you may find the following description vaguely familiar. The lesson time is broken down into a series of discrete stages or sections: The first section, 'Engage', is purely to get the students talking and thinking in English. It doesn't matter if this phase links to the lesson content, though if it can do so without pre-empting the content, it would be preferable. It usually takes the form of some 'warmer' activity such as a language game like Hangman or Simon Says, for example. Straightforward question and answer about any topic is also suitable, providing it meets the primary aim of this phase.

In the second phase, 'Study', the actual teaching takes place. This usually involves looking at the structure of a grammar point or set of vocabulary words, using the board to highlight ideas. Then the students undertake a series of study activities to check understanding and practice the language that is being studied that day in a structured and safe environment.

Study activities are carried out in pairs or small groups to encourage maximum interaction and student talking time. Typical activities for this section would be gap fills, matching exercises and so on.

The final phase, 'Activate', aims to be the longest part of the lesson and is where the students can use all their language knowledge (not just that of the day) to create context based output. Typical activities for this section would be role plays and various student created dialogues where the use of a game element helps to motivate students in the creation of their language for this phase of the lesson.

Running through the stages in this way is known as a Straight Arrow lesson: Engage

Study

Activate

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rrning n

Other alternatives to the straight arrow are: Boomerang lessons, for example: Engage

Here, the idea being that it is more obvious what needs to be learnt if the first Activate stage shows students gaps in their knowledge. These gaps are addressed in the Study phase and finally the second Activate shows that learning has been achieved.

Activate 1

Study

Activate 2

Patchwork lessons, for example: Engage

Study 1

Activate 1

This allows for a greater range of material to be covered in one 'longer' lesson. Note that although stages are fairly flexible, whatever the ESA order, all lesson models start with an Engage activity and finish with an Activate.

In unit 4 we will look at creating lesson plans for our teaching.

The ESA methodology will be used as the structure for these lesson plans.

Study 2

Study 3

Activate 3

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Unit i 2 Te T eaching n and lea e rrning n

Task sheet Unit 2 Check your knowledge before attempting the unit test.

Note: not all the information needed for the answers can be found in the unit, so you may need to research from other sources.

1. On page 7 (Teaching groups and individuals) a number of advantages and disadvantages for the teacher and students were given for teaching 'one to one'. Give one further example for each category and for the disadvantages suggest possible solutions to overcome this, giving as much detail as possible.

Advantage to the teacher: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

Advantage to the student: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

Disadvantage to the teacher: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

Could be overcome by: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n Disadvantage to the student: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

Could be overcome by: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

2. Imagine you had a lesson teaching the present continuous tense to show developing situations (For example, It is getting dark) to a group with a range of levels. One of your study activities is a gap fill exercise which needs to be graded for differentiation.

Give examples of three questions, one at the start, one in the middle and one at the end of your worksheet (e.g. easy, mid, difficult), as they would be presented to a student: a. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………… b. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………… c. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………

3. Describe what is meant by the term 'communicative language teaching', with as much detail as possible: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

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Unit i 2 Teaching Te n and lea e rn r ing n

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

4. Who developed the 'Theory of Multiple Intelligences' and what bearing could it have on our teaching methodologies? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

5. Explain the difference between 'language acquisition' and 'language learning'. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………

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