10 Things you should learn when starting Business English training

Just doing a little Sunday blog catch up when I came across Rachel Dew's report from week two of her CELTA training in Berlin. It was interesting for me because she is attending the same program I finished six years ago. I thought it was (and I see it still is) a well-run program. Of course looking back, some things are more useful and some less so, but it is not a training course for Business English trainers. It is a preparation course for the more educational side of the ELT industry.

With that in mind, here are 10 things you should learn when starting work in Business English.

1. How to complete a proper needs analysis

This is the starting point with every client. There are many examples of poor needs analysis from the ELT industry. They fit into two categories: 1) those that assess the big four language skills of the reading, writing, speaking and listening; and 2) those that focus solely on the big skills of meetings, telephoning, emails, presentations and negotiations without digging deeper.  Neither will give you much information about what content to bring to the training.

International Business English communication is either event driven (often problem-related) or time driven (routine). Each time the learner needs to communicate in English, there is a clear purpose and desired outcome. The method is secondary (written, in a presentation, etc.).  I recommend either using my analysis of the communicative events or using business processes as Even Frendo has shown. They approach the same problem (why someone is communicating) from two perspectives.

2. How to teach one-to-one

Teaching one-to-one is much different than training a group. The skills for teaching one-to-one are much more closely related to coaching. The training materials needed are different, the methods are different, etc. You will also likely find yourself in very small groups (2-3) which is closer to one-to-one teaching than some of the group methods taught in teacher-training courses. Onestop English has some useful starter tips about managing the one-to-one environment.

As a further step, you may want to learn some methods coaches use to help their clients meet their goals.

3. How to design a training plan assuming fluctuating attendance

Assuming you are working with 'in-service' learners (I hate that term :)) you will most likely face wildly fluctuating attendance. The best you can expect in an in-company course is 80%, but 50-60% is more realistic if there is no training certificate. Do not take attendance personally, it is not completely connected to enjoyment and usefulness. It is often simply a result of the participants' busy lives.

Because of that, you should learn how to be flexible in your course design. In general, each lesson should complete the learning objective for the session - stand-alone. Course plans need to have a more modular structure. It is generally not a good idea to assume the same people will attend next week and they will have prepared thoroughly for the training. This is one reason coursebooks are a bad idea. Books are only slightly modular by lesson (some more than others). I suspect this is to thwart photocopying.

4. How to effectively monitor and give feedback

You will quickly find that speaking is the most desired and most important language skill. Without question, people read and write a lot in their work. But they get by with dictionaries and clarification. It's not the most efficient method, but most learners are focused on speaking.

This means you need to learn how to take effective monitoring notes. Understand the difference between fluency and accuracy speaking activities. I write my notes/monitor on different levels.

1. Content - What are they saying? What are they talking about?
2. Errors - Are they making mistakes they shouldn't? Will they lead to misunderstandings or distract the purpose of communication?
3. Gaps - What are they avoiding? Are they explaining around missing vocabulary or grammar?
4. Emergence - Are they taking risks? What are they creating which we should share with everyone?

Giving feedback is also a skill to learn. It's a good idea for you to process your feedback before throwing it back at the learners. It's also nice to explain the effect of the performance (e.g. how it could cause a misunderstanding). And don't forget the praise - put yourself in their shoes.

5. How to be flexible in the training room

Current teacher training courses stress planning on the assumption of linear course plans. Business English courses (outside of educational institutions) are rarely linear. You will find yourself helping the learners to be highly proficient at one communicative event while largely ignoring others. You will also have to respond quickly to requests or 'just-in-time' learning needs.

As a first step, you should develop and perfect materials-free mini-lessons for common grammar points. Grammar is by far the easiest subset to train because there are a limited number of learning points and they generally have rules. Plus, mistakes are easier to identify than gaps. The greater flexibility you have in the training room to create off-the-cuff activities, the better you can respond to needs and feedback.

6. How to write simple materials quickly

Simple materials are things like vocabulary worksheets and role-plays. You don't need to write an entire coursebook, but you should be able to pound out a worksheet in under a half-hour. In fact, a real skill is to be able to make the worksheet in class with the participants.

Vocabulary is the main issue here. Few available materials can correctly identify the vocabulary your students need. Business communication is content high and quite specific. Publisher have to approach things from a much higher level. You will find yourself collecting dozens of words and terms (don't forget to bring the internet) and you need to do something with them.

You will get better at writing and organizing your simple materials so that they are re-usable and easy to locate at the spur of the moment.

7. How to be a 'model' for skills training

Coursebook audio files are often abysmal. Many are good for listening comprehension because they bring another voice in the training room, but the modelling is often so far from reality that they border on humor. In many cases it is up to the trainer to model certain communicative events.

You will often be the chair of meetings, the presenter, the negotiating partner. You should learn how to do these things well and in the context of the their needs. If you are teaching language for leading a workshop... lead a workshop. Monitor yourself and highlight key strategies and language. And finally, make the model authentic.

8. How to find 'target language' from authentic materials

Authenticity and relevance are key words in Business English and they support something called transfer design, which means to design training so that it is clear and easy to transfer the skill into the workplace. The short cut for transfer is using authentic materials. Be aware that there are two types of authentic materials, those which talk about work (e.g. articles) and those which perform work (e.g. slide decks and emails). In my jargon, I use 'authentic' only for the latter.

If you are working in the company, it's slightly easier to come by authentic materials than sitting in a language school. There are fewer concerns about confidentiality and it's just logistically simpler. When mining authentic materials, it is a good idea to focus more on vocabulary (especially high frequency lexis) than on grammar. You are starting to tap the discourse community, this is only the first step on a long road. :)

9. How to walk and talk like someone on the same level as the participants

You will likely hear at some point that "we bring the language and they bring the business". In other words, we don't need to know their field (or even that it is impossible). Don't fall into this trap. Naturally, it is not possible to be an expert in the field of the learners, but it is possible to become an 'informed interlocutor'. This is someone who can carry on a meaningful conversation about the field and understand the concepts (and even many details) about the work. This takes time and research.

The value of becoming an informed interlocutor is that you can drive the learners into greater detail and create more realistic training. Everyday business communication is extremely content heavy and detail focused. Whenever starting work in a new field (e.g. finance or engineering), do some research about the company, processes and concepts in the industry. Seek to drive learners into greater and greater detail.

Finally, your whole presence and appearance should emulate their discourse community.

10. How to take from coursebooks without breaking copyright

Content will be one of your main concerns when starting out in Business English. Published materials are most people's starting point. Keep in mind that while coursebooks are pedagogically sound, they are not designed with your specific participants in mind. It is also unethical (and illegal) to break copyrights. But coursebooks are extremely helpful.

First, they provide great ideas for activities, especially role-plays. One trick is to read the role-play and think about how you can perform the intent of the activity without the content, or alter the situation to better fit your participants. Plus, nearly every activity type in coursebooks can be replaced with a materials light alternative using the whiteboard, note cards, flip chart paper, etc. Deconstruct coursebook activities to find the core process and insert your own content.

Second, they are a useful resource for determining learning objectives. The table of contents is perhaps the most useful section and I like to consult several books of the same level when laying out course plans. Caution however, most books cover much more grammar than is needed by your participants. For example, if you find yourself inserting the Past Perfect into an intermediate-level course plan, make sure that is really the best use of everyone's time for reaching their communication goals. Also, double-check the communicative events of your learners before embarking on that phrasal verb and idioms module. You can probably find something more valuable.

So, those are my top ten things to learn (and master) during your first view years in Business English.  Also, these are basically the starting points for every trend in BE including coaching, English as a Lingua Franca, materials and learner motivation. I wish you the best of luck and don't forget to have fun.

Pre-experienced and Experienced Learners - Thoughts from Graz

I have been giving presentations and writing blog posts about in-company training for the last several years.  Especially with the presentations, I often have problems trying to fit the content to the audience.  The problem is that I am facing two separate market segments... in-company trainers (often freelancers) who typically have much greater scope in determining needs, selecting/creating materials and delivering training.  But also in the audience are the Business English teachers and lecturers who have less control over the learning objectives, resources and methods.  Additionally, they face drastically different challenges concerning learner motivation, class size and assessment/reporting.  Not having experience operating in such a formal structure, I'd like to pass on some thoughts on what I see as those students enter the workforce and perhaps reflect on where I could see changes in institutional teaching.

Despite being in-company, I actually receive many pre-experienced learners.  My training is often aligned with the company's on-boarding program and the majority of new participants are in their first days or weeks at the company.  It is also normal for me to get participants who do not use English in their jobs yet, but it is coming.  In these cases, I feel I can relate somewhat to the challenges teachers face with pre-experienced learners.

I can draw several conclusions from what I see as these participants enter my training.

1.  Learners who had an English course which was aligned with their field of study had great advantages over those who only had a general Business English class.

2.  Motivation was much higher for learners who clearly understood that a) English would certainly be a integral part of their job and b) being able to conduct their job in English would be a competitive advantage for career progression.  Those who lacked this awareness were surprised by the reality of a bilingual working environment and suffered lower self-confidence.  They often had negative feelings toward improving their language.

3.  If an institution taught English as a practical skill, their graduates were much better prepared.  If the school treated English as a theoretical concept, the graduates were largely unable to adequately perform their tasks in L2.  This mindset was often reflected by the teaching methods and content.  Practical teaching focused heavily on production activities throughout the teaching, not just at assessment.  Unsurprisingly, those who emerged from a more theoretical approach were often overwhelmed by the apparent complexity of the language.

Let me give you examples of things going wrong.  You might be surprised at how often I am faced with entry-level accountants who cannot recognize the basic vocabulary from a balance sheet (almost zero new graduates).  Likewise, I routinely meet fresh-faced employees in the mechanical engineering field who cannot understand even the simplest terms like bearing, dimensions, or bolt.  I see this across fields with the exception of software.  I suspect that is because software terms have been developed in conjunction with the spread of English, they have an advantage because they often do not have L1 equivalent words.  However, you can see how wholly unprepared some of these learners are for performing their job in English.

Of course, I do not want to lump all educational institutions together.  There are many very good programs which are producing excellent international employees.  But the results appear to be hit or miss.  The one area in Germany which seems to be particularly poor is the apprenticeship path.  And this leads to a few observations about the content-need mismatch.

First, students and apprentices need English at a tactical level.  If course books reflect the nature of educational teaching, the content is far too managerial and strategic.  Even university graduates are entering the work force at a low level in the organization structure.  Most English communication at this level is problem oriented.  Companies have automatic processes/workflows and IT systems to handle routine tasks.  If everything runs as it should, very little communication is needed.  However, when the system breaks down, communication is needed to get back on track.  For example, missed deliveries, higher costs, missing files, incomplete reports, etc. are at the heart of communication.  New employees are not generally making business plans, discussing how to foster entrepreneurship in the company, devising a market campaign, or discussing who to promote and why.  Even among high-flyers, the company will not hand this much responsibility to a new employee from day one.  They typically have a separate development path in the company, but still deal with tactical matters at the beginning.

Second, far more English communication occurs internally or semi-internally than with customers.  Evan Frendo is right on the money with this observation and I cannot stress this point enough.  Most companies have strict communication filters between themselves and the customer.  In many cases, all external communication must go through a very small team in the corporate communications, marketing or sales departments.  There are a few exceptions to this, but they are all highly specialized.  For example, the customer service department speaks with customers, as will the accounting department in case of wrong invoices.  By and large however, entry-level employees are kept at arms length from the customer.  More English communication occurs semi-internally.  In this case, the employee needs to work with long-term suppliers or distributors.  While the communication is often between two companies, they work together so often and so deeply that they could almost be regarded as colleagues.  But by far, the most communication is internal - from department to department.  It is generally the consequence of off-shoring and outsourcing which are also the main reasons why English is needed so badly at lower echelons in the company.  A typical situation might be an email between the quality auditor in the home country and the factory in Romania.  Another example is the software developer in India and the tester in Germany.

Third, communication is highly transactional, but... it is far more complex that "Could you please...?"  I hear all the time from new participants that they want to improve "small talk".  When I scratch beneath the surface however, I find that what they really want is the ability to build relationships with their international contacts to ease the transactional nature of business.  They want to build trust with their global colleagues and suppliers.  The second aspect of communicating in companies is that students enter a high-context culture.  Office discourse is so difficult because of the body of shared knowledge, differing objectives and the hierarchical structure of decision-making and information flow.  While the email may be a simple request for clarification on the surface, the context can quickly land the employee in hot water.  I'm not sure this second aspect can be dealt with in education, but the teacher may want to keep it in mind.

So, what do I recommend?

1.  Create a balanced English program - one-third general English, one-third general Business English, one-third field specific "ESP Lite".  General English is important and under represented in the secondary schools (at least in Germany).  From the ages of 12-16, English is taught resembling CLIL.  Looking through the state school books, there is a chapter on Australia, the Big Apple, and reading about Obama's election.  I can distinctly remember helping a friend's child try to learn the words, abolition, underground railroad, whip, and quilt.  Can you imagine the topic?  I don't want to exaggerate, nor do I wish to insult school teachers at all.  I merely want to point out that some of the content prior to entering university is of marginal value in business socializing.  Also, by the time they enter the workforce years later, they often lack the simplest vocabulary to discuss their weekend.  I think ongoing general English learning would be very helpful.  I also think that general Business English is helpful as a foundation up to the intermediate level.  The problem with higher levels is the content of the course book.  Course books are generally organized by field:  one chapter on HR, one on projects, one on marketing, etc.  This works up to B1-B2 but then they become overly specific in the fields.  I think "ESP Lite" would be extremely helpful.  This will help the students prepare for the next steps.

2.  Take a step back from standardization.  I understand that a certain level of standardization is needed in an institutional environment.  However, I also observe that university level Business English teachers are an incredibly talented and professional group.  When I present at BESIG conferences, this is the group which makes me the most nervous because of their knowledge, expertise and experience.  I periodically lead standardized training with larger classes, but I always work under a very general set of can do statements.  Within the statement is enough room for me to maneuver.  I am able to conduct a modified needs analysis to refine the training.  The more detailed the can do statement, the more we rely on the institution's needs analysis.  In others words, the can do statement (and thus the assessment) had better be relevant or else we are wasting everyone's time.  I'm just thinking out load, but do these expert university teachers really need a step-by-step lesson plan with page numbers and activity types?

3.  Fortify the feedback loop from practice to content.  I currently have the suspicion from my pre-experience learners that many need analysis are conducted in Oxford, Cambridge or in the halls of Pearson Education.  Instead, I recommend shortening the feedback loop by drawing on a few resources.  Most institutions have a career placement program to help students transition to careers.  Where are graduates going?  What are they doing?  If a job is unfamiliar, read example job descriptions or visit the US Department of Labor Occupational Handbook for more.  Another idea is to build a relationship with HR groups and/or in-company Business English trainers in the area to get feedback.  For example, did you know that presentations are often much different in technical fields?  First, PowerPoint slides need more text because they must be clear without a verbal presentation.  The slide decks can travel far in the company without any meeting or spoken communication at all.  Second, verbal presentations are typically less than 5 minutes long and the most common visual aid is an Excel spreadsheet.  A presentation given in 'ELT format' is completely irrelevant.

In conclusion, I want to be very clear that my observations about the challenges in Business English teaching cannot possibly reflect every institution and every teacher.  However, I have questions based on the number of participants I see entering the workforce without the ability to conduct even the most routine tasks in their field.  Their brains are full of valuable knowledge and ideas, but they are locked behind the bars of language and skills.  I hope that my thoughts add something to the pre-experienced vs. experience learner discussion and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

My Journey in Training Methods

I received some constructive criticism about my post on Business English in 2014 and it sent me into reflection.  One of the points was that we do have a working methodology for Business English training.  The author was promoting a BE certification course which I cannot currently endorse.  This is not to say certification courses (including the one the author promoted) are bad, just that I cannot clearly judge the value from the marketing material.  I am always a bit skeptical of business models which leverage the value chain (i.e. profit from teachers/trainers).  You can read more about this in my post about the value chain.

I continue to believe that existing methodologies of BE training are unsuitable to the realities of our clients.  It is helpful here to reflect on the methods I have tried and the results I have found.

Welcome to ESL!

I was politely indoctrinated in the communicative approach.  My CELTA course was at the Berlin School of English.  I had excellent teacher trainers and a wonderful education.  They taught me how to effectively survive a course.  There is no doubt in my mind that it was extremely helpful.  But, I took the good with the bad.  I learned that ESL lessons have a specific structure (generally according to Jeremy Harmer).  I learned how to manage time, select activities and how to create space for expression.  I also learned how to worship publishers and how to professionally photocopy.  Occasionally, I still find the citation strips of paper stuck in my library of course books, and I clearly remember how I broke the paper cutter at my first employer from overuse.

It was a valuable experience and I am thankful to have had it.  But it also became clear that it didn't work exactly as advertised.

I was immediately placed in Business English because of my background, my personality and I looked good in a tie.  But when I tried the methods from my CELTA, something was missing.  First, course books work on a grammar syllabus.  I haven't found one which doesn't (despite their claims).  If you know one... please let me know.  They work on a grammar syllabus because the CEFR is grammar based.  I'm sure that the authors of the CEFR would disagree but the words "routine" and "everyday" appear quite often in the lower levels.  In practice, books still take a grammar-based approach (typically under the cover of functions).

You're in the Army Again...

I realized that ESL wasn't working.  I was happy because I always knew what to teach - ESL told me.  But I wasn't really making a difference.  So, I made the transition to performance-based training.  I was well aware of tenants of PBT from my time in the army (see my post Lessons Learned from the Military).  Basically, we looked at the expected performance, broke it into concrete steps and then we trained and tested it until the performance met the standard.

This required a change in needs analysis and assessment (I have posted about this transition often).  I made the switch and things were good.  I could clearly identify the skills gap and train to fill it using ESL-structured blocks.  Performance and confidence improved dramatically.  My students reported exceptional improvement.  I was training to task using ESL-structured lessons.  But then things began to change.

Bite the Dog

The problem with all of this was that it was taking too much time.  I wasn't profitable.  I could not sustain a fully needs-based course.  It took 45 minutes to think about and prepare an hour of training.  My blended approach of fully needs based (customized) training with ESL teaching techniques generated much higher progress and high customer satisfaction and progress, but was still unsustainable.  Then I discovered Dogme which essentially said that if I could spontaneously create pedagogical activities, I was good.

I embraced and switched my focus from planning to recording and reviewing what happened in the lessons.  My post I Only Have One Lesson Plan is the essence of that approach.  It works, no question for me.  I saw immense progress, validated by real world performance, and my clients were extremely happy.  I was now incorporating everything into my training... the communicative approach, performance-based training and Dogme.  But then it changed...

The Patient has Complications

With greater customer satisfaction, I began to get closer to the organization and the real needs of the learners.  Suddenly, I had jumped into a deeper pool than I had imagined.  The problems were glaring.  It wasn't the language which was holding things back, it was cultural and communication skills.  In other words, speaking better English was not equal to higher efficiency.  In some cases the bottleneck was the language, but often it was only a contributing factor.

I remember speaking with some BESIG members a few years ago that our clients often equated a communication problem with a language problem.  The simple fact is that in the mind of the client language = communication.  I feel my mandate is to solve communication problems with a focus on language.  But as I moved, the situation became more and more complex.

Everything is Nothing

So, here I was... faced with an universe of methods and ideas.  I needed to teach the English language through the communicative approach, clearly understand the performance gap, let the learners direct the training and understand the real barriers to communication.  The result was not good.

• The ESL approach is long, boring and often useless.  Following a prescribed set of activities may be useful for mastering certain concepts, but we often don't have the time to fully complete the activities or the learning objective does not match the need.  The ESL approach is overly sterile and reflects a notional reality.  
• The communicative approach is right in creating a communication gap, but what happens when communication is no longer a problem (higher levels)?  ESL doesn't really have an answer to the image needs of BE students other than restrictive language exercises.
• Performance-based training works great with the communicative approach as long as there is a performance gap.  In other words, it is nice as long as there is a clear need.  It doesn't work when the need is reached or when the learner is striving for an intangible ability.  Then we have to revert to something like the CEFR.
• The trainer cannot sustain Dogme for more than a 50 hours of training.  It works great in short-term courses.  Dogme relies on the immediate recognition of need and spontaneous input and task creation to fill the gap.  I have difficulty keeping such a variety of task contingencies in mind.  The result is repeat task types which nullify the entire approach.
• Dogme kills vocabulary development.  The most critical piece of feedback from my learners is that I do not help them produce new vocabulary.  I have tried my best through review and in-lesson note taking to improve this aspect, but vocabulary retention is still less than 10% per lesson.  ESL methods and course books are better at this.  It is also a vital part of their needs.
• Office communication is unbelievably complex.  I have had the chance to read countless authentic emails, documents, reports, etc. as well as observe meetings and telephone conferences.  There are pragmatic, semantic and cultural issues at every turn as well as linguistic.  I have no doubt that clients attempt to solve communication problems with language training.

Conclusions

First, I think the complexity of our mandate is higher than our clients realize.  I sincerely believe that we are hired to facilitate communication not just that someone masters the Past Perfect.

Second,  I do not think existing ESL methods (including existing ESL-derived BE teaching methods) fulfill this need.  ESL prescribes a certain learning plan which does not fit with the immediate or medium-term needs of the learners.

Third,  Dogme is too loose.  It fails to fulfill the steps of Bloom's Taxonomy (as I implemented it) because it relies too heavily on the learner's sense of dedication to complete self-study.

So, I have tried all of these and they are not the complete solution.  Parts of them are valuable and I recommend a teacher development package which presents new trainers with challenges, but the solution is not in the book or on the internet.  We need to take BE further.

I'll present my work in Graz at the BESIG Summer Symposium.  It will be the culmination of a year of training with an entirely new approach which better fits the realities of BE training.  So far, it solves these dilemmas and provides the balance my participants and I need.

Linguistics Theory and Real World Training

I am not a linguist.  Most of what I have learned about the field comes from the Wikipedia Linguistics section and observation both in class and in the real world.  I'm always impressed by trainers and academics who work in the various subfields like Pragmatics or Phonology.  Without question, I owe much to their research and effort.  The depth of their analysis is simply breathtaking.

Nor am I an expert in Second Language Acquisition.  My initial education in SLA was simply by critically reading course books and asking, "Why did they write it this way?"  Now, I rely on Scott Thornbury for this, as I suspect many front-line teachers do.  My initial goal was to simply understand what he was talking about.  The real gold mine of knowledge is not his A-Z blog, but rather his list of written works.

All too often, it takes considerable trailblazing to link these theories to the reality of my learners.  The enhanced analysis produced by academia is often so detailed we can miss the forest for the trees.  We are now mapping collocations across two centuries (BYU/Google Books) and assessing the pragmatic meaning of utterances with conceptual nouns at such a minute level it leaves the trainer lost for clear guidance.  We are even left trying to define methodologies across a spectrum of distant names like Krashen and Lozanov.  Lives are spent specializing in these fields.

But as Business English trainers we cannot turn our backs on this range of knowledge.  The other extreme is just as fruitless.  There is a pull on our community to become experts in the "skills" such as negotiations, intercultural communication, and presentations.  This is a louder and more public group of experts.  There is a shine to these practitioners and perhaps more money.  But this is not my role either.  I believe our purpose is to link these two fields.

Furthermore, our knowledge base needs to be broad enough in both areas to identify the correct communication tool.  Sometimes it is skills, sometimes it is linguistic.  One thing is for sure, we cannot expect linguistic experts (e.g. published course books) to give us everything we need to know about skills and we should not trust skills experts to provide linguistic expertise.

Here are two examples of how this works...

Skills Problem

A participant in one of my courses recently asked me to help him with a problem with an American colleague.  He wanted a sentence he could say to show that he was offering help.  The colleague in the US always reacted unexpectedly.  Defensive would be too strong of a word, but he always seemed uncomfortable with the offer and rejected it immediately.  The learner here in Germany thought he had said something wrong and he had somehow offended his colleague.  The American would never accept his assistance and he wanted me to give him a sentence to make it better.

But this was not a linguistic problem.  The problem was instead with the team dynamic and the difference in organizational culture between the German and US departments (notice here it was not national culture). I sent the following email and we had a meeting to discuss the issue.  By the end of the meeting we had worked down to sentence level.

Unfortunately, there is no ‘silver bullet’ for this type of reaction.  Instead, it appears that the relationship is not the best.  His response to offering help is only a symptom of the real problem.  The question is then... what is the real problem?

To start, I would need more information to help define the issue.  Then we can formulate a strategy for dealing with this person and identify language which would resonate with him.

So here are some questions and feedback:

Trust is built on character and competence.  Do you believe he is competent?  If not, why?  What do you think about his character?  What does he think about his own competence?  Is he new in his position or field?  Is he stressed from the expectations of the job?  What does he think of your competence and character?  How can you tell that he feels that way?  Do you trust him?  Does he know you trust him?

Team building is not easy and goes through phases.  How long have you worked together?  Do the team members really know each other?  Does the team have a common purpose and result?  Does everyone know it?  Are the members committed to the team or are there other priorities?  What are they?  What is the definition for success for your team?  Does your team have a track record of successes?  Is there a reward for success?  Does your team accept and use conflict as creative/critical thinking?  How do you and your colleague fit into this team?  Do you have roles?  Did the boss give you those roles or did they evolve?

Everyone has goals and motivation.  What are his goals?  (e.g. Is he trying to prove himself to the team?  Does he want a promotion?)  What does he think your goals are?  Why?

Everyone has assumptions.  What does he think about the department in Germany?  What does he think about working with Germans?  Why?  Based on those assumptions, is he positive, negative, or neutral about working with your team?  What are his assumptions about you?  Why?  What are your assumptions about him?  Does he feel them?

Everyone has pride.  Clearly, you are proud of your children.  You talked about them on the first day we met.  You are also proud of your intelligence (and you should be).  You seem to enjoy the mentor role.  Do you want to mentor him?  What is he proud of?  Why?

You don’t have to answer these questions in an email, we can discuss it.  But I would like you to think about these questions.  When we have an answer to these questions then we can work down to sentence level.

So, I hope we can work together on this and develop a solution.

By the end of the meeting we had identified several team and trust issues and dealt with ways to handle them.  We also discussed the word "just" with the continuous form to show intent.  To give this type of training we need to know about trust, team building, working in virtual teams, and the effect of personal goals on communication.

Linguistic Problem

Most of my learners are using English in virtual meetings with native speakers, India, and China.  Their biggest concern is comprehension.  In this case the problem has less to do with the set phrases in the meeting or even running effective meetings.  The answer here is in pronunciation and phonology.  To help ease the communication problem I laid out a plan to tackle accents and connected speech.  The group is B1 and they are within a comfortable discourse community and lexical set.

Step one was to introduce sentence stress and reduction in connected speech among native speakers.  Then I could approach syllable-timed and stress-timed languages.  Additionally, I could dive into Learner English to identify certain phonemes which might be causing problems.  Mixed with a healthy dose of authentic listening, we might just be able to crack this nut.

The plan got off to a rocky start.  I started with reviewing the pronunciation of weak auxiliaries and short forms.  This was okay, but when I took it a step further and showed them "h" dropping, they were resistant.  In fact, there was nearly outright revolt in the class as suddenly they believed that I was teaching them some laughable dialect of American English.  One woman went so far to say, "No, no... this is not right.  My British supplier speaks a very good English.  He does not do this."  But I know this exists!  Mark Hancock and Sylvie Donna said so!  And I have heard it often first hand.

Clearly more research on my part was necessary.  In the end I found the answer by digging deep into the linguistic research world.  It turns out that the answer is in German, not English.  In Modern German Pronunciation, Christoper Hall points out that reduction and assimilation is common in everyday German (which I knew from my own problems in my second language) but that it is also rarely used in formal contexts.  He states,

"English weak forms are dictated entirely by the stress and rhythm of the sentence and are completely unconnected with differences in style, in other words, weak forms in English are used even in very formal speech. ... The use of German weak forms, on the other hand, depends decisively on the pronunciation style... The general rule is that in formal pronunciation weak forms are less frequent..." (p 154)

So, here was the key to unlocking the comprehension issues in the virtual meetings.  First, I had to show them that weak forms do not affect image as in German.  Then we could deal with sentence stress.  Then the plan could continue.

These two examples show how our profession is not a one-or-the-other field.  Instead it is a balance between the two.  To fulfill our role and expectations, we must be able to balance these two influences.  If we feel ourselves uncomfortable within the skills area or relying too heavily on course book 'expertise' we need to improve our business communication competence and relevance.  On the other hand, if we find ourselves drifting too far into the flashy world of TED talks and intercultural negotiations, we need to pull back and rediscover our linguistic roots.  Striking the right balance is not easy for me, but my learners benefit greatly when I get it right.   

Four Groups... One Long Lesson

A few weeks ago I held a live session on needs analysis for the EVO Designed for Business course.  The course is designed and moderated by some of the most talented trainers I've ever met and it was an honor to be involved.

During the live session, I talked about a common technique I use when the needs of the learner aren't necessarily aligned with what the organization would like to see in the training.  To facilitate both I simply change the context of the task, but not the task itself.  This is nothing new; course books do it all the time.  For example, instead of making arrangements for a business meeting... we make arrangements for a barbeque.  The learners get the 'break from work' so many are looking for, and they are still learning the language and skills needed in their jobs.

However, because I almost never use course books, I instead look for simple things in the learners' lives to exploit for skills practice in the classroom.  During the live session I gave the example of the May Tree, a tradition here in Bavaria.  You can find the live session recording here.

To follow up, I'd like to give an example of how this is scalable to various classes.  In this example, I have taken a different point of view on task based learning.  Instead of one class completing the task over several lessons, various classes work on the task in sequence to complete the overall project.

Lesson Plan:  The Glühwein Stand (Mulled Wine Stand)

Class 1 - Intermediate, 6 Students, 60 min
Objective - Proposing ideas, giving justification, describing purpose, agree / disagree

I explained the task that today we would plan a glühwein stand for the city christmas market (this class was in early December).  The profits would go to charity.  Each class throughout the day would use the work from the class before to take the next step.  For this group, the task was to identify all of the resources needed to start the stand.




Source:  eltpics, @jeeves_ http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/8197827162

The learners were all given stacks of note cards and told to brainstorm all the things they need.  Write each resource on a different card.  Then they created an affinity diagram in the middle of the table and assigned the resources a catergory name like "Equipment", "Staff", "Materials", "Documentation", etc.

Throughout the lesson, I offered feedback, injected useful phrases, highlighted vocabulary, etc.

Class 2 - Upper Intermediate, 3 Students, 60 min
Objectives - Clarifying, vocabulary for regulations, collocations, syntax, and brevity

At the start of the lesson I gave the group the stack of note cards from the previous group and asked them to 'recreate' the affinity diagram.  The group asked me questions to clarify what the cards meant and the categories.  I recorded and added clarifying phrases on the board.

I then told them to focus on the legal aspects of the stand.  What authorizations would be need?  They researched the information (in German) on the web and had to explain it in English (a common task in their work).  On two websites, I asked them to translate particularly complex sentences, identify collocations, and condense sentences.

Their final task was to create a list of steps to be completed in order to get city approval for the stand.

Class 3 - Pre-Intermediate, 6 Students, 60 min
Objectives - Asking for opinions, stating opinions, saying numbers, talking about budgets

The lesson fit perfectly with the previous lessons in that we has just practiced numbers and talking about costs.  This group was given the note cards from Class 1 and given the task to create a budget for all the resources.  How much do the cups cost?  How much does it cost to rent / buy a stand?  Etc.  Feedback... naturally.

By the end of the lesson they had a catergorized budget on A4 paper.  I ran to the copy machine for the next lesson.

Class 4 - Intermediate, 7 Students, 60 min
Objectives - reach an agreement, discussion options, formal emails for assistance

Finally, each student in the last class was given a copy of the proposed budget from the lesson before.  Their job was to create a profit projection and determine how they could make the most money.  The charity wanted to know how much in donations they should expect before approving the project.  I turned over the white board to one of the learners and got out of the way.  During the discussion they decided that the best way to save money was to ask for volunteers and donations of equipment.  They made a profit calculation and make a list of people / organizations to contact for support.

A natural follow up task was for them to actually write the emails for support.  Each student was given a different contact person and they had to request a donation for the stand (equipment, volunteer support, etc.) or authorization from the charity and government (from Class 2).

By the end of the day I was able to write an email to all of the students and tell them how much money we would donate as a result of their work.  The feedback was great and several suggested that we acutally make it a reality.  I guess that would have to be another lesson.

They used the functional language needed in their work, but the context was something taken from their personal lives.  Combined with doses of feedback... the lessons were very student led and had minimal teacher talking time.

The High-Low Dilemma: Recommendation for Presenting Culture

Assumed knowledge:

• The difference between high and low context cultures
• How this difference can impact communication

Issue:

The difference between high and low context is a theoretical concept that is difficult to translate into activities for training.  The trainer can either present the theory and use examples to illustrate the difference, or they can show 'model' communication to mitigate the risk of misunderstanding.  Furthermore, because high and low context is not exclusive to national culture, the learners must be able to identify different communication styles in various situations.  This effectively eliminates the value of trainer generated models because they may not be appropriate to the situation.  Therefore, it would be best to give the learners a more solid understanding of how cultural context affects communication and let them apply the lesson to their needs.

Discussion:

There are many points of view on the topic, but I will highlight just two.  Going back to 2010, Evan Frendo offered an outstanding menu of comparing and contrasting activities.  They were all based on input from the trainer on the theory.  The learners are then ask to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the differences.  The weakness in the approach is in the presentation phase.  I feel that presenting Edward Hall's theory as an academic topic is not a guarantee for comprehension.

Another approach is that from authors Bovèe and Thill from Business Communication Essentials (Pearson, 2012), a fairly standard university text book.  The book echoes a wide range of business communication material when it states, "The different expectations of low- and high-context cultures can create friction and misunderstanding when people try to communicate across cultural boundaries."  While certainly sound, this doesn't give the trainer or participant much to work with.  The authors then provide a model of effective intercultural communication with some basic tips.  Sadly, the model consists of a sterilized business letter.  While extremely clear it does little to support Bob Dignan's ideas of building relationships, influencing people, or building trust.  Effective for the immediate event, it does little for the long-term business relationship.

Recommendation:

So, to compliment Frendo's activities, a better method of presentation is needed.  From this, the learners can create their own trainer supported models to fit their communication needs.  One method is to link lesson plans we are already using to illustrate the difference between high and low cultures.  After all, the employees are already living in a high-context company culture.  Also, they all remember starting at the company and trying to understand 'the way things are done'.

1.  The Unwritten Rules of the Company

A good model for this lesson can be found in Vicki Hollet's series Lifestyle (Intermediate by Iwonna Dubicka and Margaret O’Keeffe).  This will help define the company culture.  In the lesson, the learners discuss and formulate the unwritten rules of the company. Language point - modals of obligation

2.  Your First Day

Learners tell stories about the challenges they faced during their first day/month at work.  Language point - past tenses and past obligation

Some guiding questions can help the lesson:

• What company/school did you come from?  How was it different?
• Did anyone help you understand the unwritten rules?
• Did you come in and give lots of recommendations or sit back and listen?  Why?
• Do you remember any mistakes you made?  How did your colleagues handle them?
• What were the most important lessons you learned?  How did you learn them?
• Did you understand what everyone was talking about (terms, projects, people, etc.)?
• What did you think about your new colleagues?  How did they treat you?
• Did you ever hear...
• That won't work here.
• We don't do it that way.
• Trust me, this is the best.
• We already tried that xx years ago.

3.  The New Hire's First Day

From here the lesson moves to giving advice for an employee's first day.  Using the previous lessons, the learners must 'sponsor' a new employee.  This could be done as a role-play, a written list supported by instruction, etc.  The new hires should prepare a list of questions for their sponsors to help make the transition faster.  Language point - giving advice, modal question forms

4.  Reveal the Learning Point

It is at this point that the trainer reveals that their company is a high-context culture.  It has its own traditions, conventions, symbols, etc., everything that makes a culture.  The trainer can also show the difference between the way they talk to each other in class (high-context) and the way they explain things to the trainer (low-context).  Because the difference is already illustrated using a personal situation, it is much clearer for them to understand.  One visual way to reveal this is to board the advice under the title "Company", then replace with "China". 

5.  Replace Company with Culture

Now that the learners comprehend the difference, it will be much more fruitful for them to do activities like Evan Frendo's or create models for their communicative situations.  Now they can better analyze their communication.  Furthermore, the tips they gave to the new hires and the questions they wrote for the sponsor are great resources.  They will mirror the advice given by Dignan, Bovèe, Thrill, and others.  The questions are very useful when working with their foreign contacts when they need help navigating the confusion.

Question for the reader:
This post uses a specific communication style.  Did it feel strange to read such a blog post?

Using the course book to plan part 2... the text

Okay, so first I looked at using the bookend activities to design a lesson.

Basically...

• What is the warmer?  How can make it more personal/elicit conversation from the students' perspective?
• What is the finishing production activity?
• What are some ways the lesson can go from point A to point B?

So, now let's look at the written texts in course books.

Often, the texts either float above the book syllabus and exist only for reading practice or we use them to identify a few lexical items. The class then discusses the text. But honestly, it takes a particulary outgoing or opinionated group to make this work because the article is probably not something they would have read if they had the choice. After a few units, the whole process gets a little repetitive.

In most cases the text will be an article.  This means nearly all texts are written with the purpose of informing the reader. 

Let's look at some purposes we often find in business communication which are rarely included in the course book reading texts...

• to explain
• to recommend
• to evaluate
• to persuade
• to analyze
• to synthesize
• to propose
• to call readers to action
• to change attitudes

But wait, now let's turn the page and we find a function or skill lesson which attempts to train these exact areas.  The trick then is to somehow combine these two... e.g. inform + propose, inform + call for action.

Placing this in a business context.  Why do students read trade and business magazines?  This is an interesting question to pose to students.  More than likely, they are benchmarking and checking the competition.

Here are a few activities that can help make these texts a bit more useful.

1.  Inform + recommend
Teacher hands out a glossary for a few key words for the text.  Students read the text for gist and answer some comprehension check questions.  Next the students are told that they are going to compare the company to their own in small groups.  They will use the article to present 'lessons learned' and recommend action.  They then read the article in detail to find way to compare to their company.  The students meet in groups to draw on various experience.  Finally, the groups prepare a short presentation to recommend steps for their company to take or to avoid based on the article.  Note:  Depending on the context and experience of the students, it may be necessary to set a few starting points, such as "Your company is thinking about..."

2.  Inform + synthesize
This is similar to a classic jigsaw reading, but instead of comparing and sharing, the goal is to synthesize the various articles.  One group reads the text in the book (again glossaries are good).  Other groups read similar articles on the same subject.  The groups then answer comprehension questions and discuss their opinions on the article to ensure understanding.  Then the students are told that they will work in different groups and must create a "recent trends in the industry" text/slide.  They then meet together and determine what the articles have in common.  What are the most important events?  What conclusions can they draw?  Why would the newspaper/magazine write about them?  The groups then share their synthesis and we discuss the differences between the groups.

3.  Inform + analyze
This time we use the text as a starting point of a chain of events.  The key is to get the students to analyze what happened and think about what the effects will be.  First, we will introduce the company mentioned.  Then together we will brainstorm the major competitors, customers, or suppliers.  We talk about the reputation of the competitors and compile any simple market information we have on the industry.  Next, each pair or small group is assigned a stakeholder and they must read the text through the eyes of the stakeholder.  So, if the text is about VW's factory in Dresden, they would read as an employee of BMW or Fiat.  The groups then meet to discuss how the events in the article will affect their business.  How will the market react?  Do we need to take action against the competitor, etc.?  The task depends on the text.  But they should be analyzing the text to find consequences.  At the end, the class can come together and talk about how these possible consequences will affect us as consumers.

4.  Inform + persuade
Just as we used the text to read through someone else POV before, this time we use the text as the basis for a case study.  The normal reading procedures run as usual.  But when they read for detailed understanding they should be considering what events at the company led to the article.  In short, someone must have proposed what happened in the article (e.g. entering the Chinese market, signing Christiano Ronalo, whatever is in the article).  So, after we have a good understanding of the article we take the whole class back in time and have the meeting to discuss the proposal and others.  Students can be assigned roles based on who they think was in the meeting.  They can prepare other proposals that might have been discussed at the meeting.  One student can be the deciding authority or they can reach a decision by consensus.  We can use our imagination and that of our students to make the scenario.  Then we simulate the meeting and see if we came to the same decision as the company in the article.

5.  Inform + explain
Very simply, the students must 'translate' the text for someone outside the subject area.  This works well with high level students or specialists.  The reading procedure is the same and lexical analysis continues.  But this time when they discuss the text, they must change audiences.  For example, they need to explain the text to an angel investor who is not familiar with the details of the industry.  They must explain the article to a group of apprentices.  They must explain the article to an overseas colleague who speaks a low level of English.  Any audience will do.  But it will give the learners practice in changing their language to fit the audience.

These are just a few ideas for how to integrate the course book text into the syllabus.  Too often I feel the text in the book is only there merely for reading practice.  And when following the teacher's notes, I always got the feeling that we read the text, identified a few lexical terms, had a half-cooked conversation and turned the page.

These ideas might help bring the text more life.  I haven't mentioned mining the text for grammar and deeper lexical items.  These activities are not to be forgotten, but hopefully these lessons can increase interaction and link the informative purpose with other communication goals.

Using a course book to plan an open lesson... Part 1

While doing all this reading about teaching without course books, I thought it might be valuble to talk about a way to use the course book as a valuble resource when planning a lesson.

To start, I am not often a course book trainer.  When I teach classes for which books are provided I do not use them page by page, but I also make sure I don't waste the money spent (by the school, company, or student).

In short, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water simply because I don't like course books.  Sometimes whole units are useful, sometimes single lessons, but mostly it helps to pick and choose.

The pros and cons of course books have been extensively debated, so we'll leave it there.

For my lesson examples I am using a unit from Market Leader, Intermediate from Pearson.  Namely the free unit provided on their website about advertising.  http://www.market-leader.net/flash/pdfs/Int3rdEd_unit5.pdf

Technique One - Bookends

Look at the first and last activity of a unit.  Then think, "If I were forced to do these types of activities, what would I put in the middle?"  Thinking critically, the first and last activities are the warmer and the production stage and are designed to get the learners speaking.  Since this is usually our overall aim, it makes sense to use them as a backbone.

Example:
In the warmer, students discuss the ads shown in pairs.  Looking at the first vocabulary lesson, we see that students are first asked to brainstorm ad media.  The final activity is to agree or disagree with controversial statements about advertising.  With these two (three) pieces in mind, any number of lessons could develop.

In my case, I would first ask the students to remember as many ads as they can from the last 24 hours.  Where did they see them?  What was the product?  Why do you remember it?

When this is complete the students then compare in pairs or small groups.  Because the information gap is already created, the student begin naturally to describe the ads they saw.  Inevitably a television commercial comes up and suddenly students are telling stories.  At this point, I am moving around and helping to fill any unique lexis gaps.

Once they have compared, we can start grouping their ads as a class by medium.  Which are outdoor?  Which are from the radio?  Which are on the Internet and so on?  These groups develop and meanings are elicited from the students themselves.  By the end, we should have a fairly good list of key advertising terms.

Now we are starting to see that advertising is everywhere.  If it is everwhere, why do we remember some ads and not others?  The students are already prepared for this question because of their conversation at the beginning.  In the case of the book, I might board the adjectives from the lesson and have the learners assign them to their ads.  Then, I could write, "This ad is _______ because...".  A student can call out an adjective and those who chose it must stand up and complete the sentence.

Finally, with our list of media intact, we talk about how we are constantly exposed to promotions.  To discuss the point we can write the controversial sentences on individual paper (plus a few more) and have mind map conversations (this can also be done on the whiteboard).  I got this activity from Karl Dean.  The sentence is in the middle and the student must draw a line and write a response.  Then the paper moves.  The next student should respond to the original statement or any of the new statements.  Over time, the conversations develop in several ways simultanously and provide great ideas for a passionate discussion as a group or in teams.

So, we used the book as a guide by using the first and last activities to form the lesson.  In fact, I will typically leave the middle fuzzy and develop the middle as the lesson progresses.  In this example, I have kept the lexical focus.  However, nothing prevents this from become a lesson targeted at grammar constructions, functions or even skills.

Next time, I will look at another technique.  Text to Skill