Review lesson and tax lesson using authentic materials

The two lessons I taught this morning... both received high praise.

Context

The client is an international tax consultancy.  The lessons are held on-site and the minimalistic luxurious conference room is equipped with a large flatscreen intended for videoconferencing, but accomodates my computer hook up as well.  There are two groups, 90 min once a week.  The first group is lower level (A2-B1) of mostly clerks who conduct more straightforward tax declartions for international clients and then a higher group (B1-B2) which consists mostly of advisors who guide their clients through international tax regulation.  The lesson today for the first group was to review what we had learned.  The follow lesson to the higher group was based on the Germany-US Double Taxation Agreement.

Lesson One - Review

I had just returned from vacation so we when through my selection of photos and discussed what makes a good beach.

Then we began the real lesson...

• I gave them an envelope filled with the vocabulary words we had seen over the past few lessons.  I keep a running excel list of vocab which I send to them post lesson.  The spreadsheet is open during the lesson and instead of a whiteboard I fill the columns.  To create the cards, I simply paste to word, change the size of the cells, print, and cut out.
• Then, I asked them to choose 4 colors from a selection of color cards I collected from the hardware store.

• Next, I asked them to group the words by color.  In order to do this, the learners had to understand the word and explain to their group why it should fit with the color.  In the process they were explaining the meanings of the unknown words.  I stepped in for troublesome words they were avoiding and asked for the pronunciation of other (like exaggerate).  But the rationale was their own.  For example, one group put 'to order' with the caramel color because he envisioned ordering dessert.  Because their office phones have a green button to make a call, both groups placed all the telephone words with green.  The next time we do telephoning, I will probably print the exercises on green paper.  Words from the email lesson tended to be in blue.... hmmm.
• They then changed groups and had to explain to others how they had grouped the words.  I filled in gaps and answered questions.  By the end, I was confident that we had reviewed and could use most of the words, especially the business specific lexis.
• We then moved onto a jeopardy game to assess our learning.  I used a free jeopardy game for this and two teams.  It was effective and students like it.  I recommend the site.  Note:  You will have to download the application and the game text file to make sure it works on your computer.  I did not use the online version because I am never 100% certain about connection and I don't like the ads.
  
  You can find the online game version of the game we played here.
• To conclude the lesson we reviewed our course plan and expectations and discussed what was working, what they had used in their jobs, and what could be improved.

Lesson Two - Double Taxation Agreements

The second lesson began as the first, with my vacation pictures... but they wanted to chat a bit more comparing Italy and Croatia.  No problem... let them play with the English a bit.

Then the lesson began...

• Warmer - what is a Double Taxation Agreement (DTA) and why do we need them?
  Here are the discussion questions... this allowed those with more experience to clarify what we are talking about (actually all the participants work with regulations like this).
  
  Why do taxation agreements exist?
  What flaws are in these agreements?  Give examples.
  Are there any loopholes which can be exploited?  Give examples.
  
• Next, I gave them a word cloud from the US-Germany DTA.  The document was available from the IRS website in the US.  I cut and pasted it into wordle and printed to pdf.  I handed out copies of the cloud.  The task was like Taboo.  They had to describe words and their partner had to say which word from the cloud they meant.  This was a risky deep-ending activity and I wasn't sure, but their command of lexis in this discourse community was quite good.  I only jumped in to challenge them a bit and make sure some of the key words were covered.  By the end of the activity their minds were ready for the text.


They did not receive the whole text, only the cases included in the treaty (starting page 7).
Germany US DTA

• Luckily for me the US-Germany DTA included specific examples for how to apply the treaty.  When I use contracts and formal legal documents in the future, I will search for these examples.  One example reads...

          Facts:

A third-country resident establishes a German company for the purpose of acquiring a large U.S. manufacturing company. The sole business activity of the German company (other than holding the stock of the U.S. company) is the operation of a small retailing outlet which sells products manufactured by the U.S. company. Is the German company entitled to treaty benefits under paragraph 1(c) with respect to dividends it receives from the U.S. manufacturer?

The task was to read the case and check understanding with a partner.

• Next, the learners were to describe their situation to their 'tax advisor' and find out if they could use the DTA and why.  The 'tax advisors' were given the answers from the DTA.  For example the answer to the case above reads...

          Analysis:

The dividends would not be entitled to benefits. Although there is, arguably, a business connection between the U.S. and the German businesses, the "substantiality" test described in the preceding examples is not met.

• They were having trouble with this task and understanding was not 100% so I gave them a follow-up task.   Explain the case using graphic representation.  Show the investors, subsidiaries, dividend flow, etc.  This produced the outcome I was looking for.  They were better able to explain the situation and why the DTA did or did not apply in this case.  One woman stated during the lesson, "These are exactly like the cases we deal with on a daily basis.  Where did you get these examples?"
• The surrounding discussion was amazing.  The learners were activating vocabulary.  I was able to make corrections on functional language.  We had reached flow.  In addition, they were linking all this to their previous knowledge and questioning if the US-Germany DTA was really so.  They were learning more than just English.

So... two great lessons this morning.  One a simple review lesson, the second shows the benefits of a good communicative event analysis ("I have to explain the impacts of double taxation") and tapping the discourse community.

Selected lesson ideas from my posts during Cert IBET

For the past 7 weeks, I have been participating in the Cert IBET course from The Consultants E moderated by Carl Dowse.  I cannot express how incredible the experience has been.  As I look back over the past weeks in our conferences and course discussions, I realized how much I had written.

So, I am posting a selection of lesson ideas I have contributed to the course.  I hope you find them useful.

Warmers

#1 Another way to do 10 Questions

Warmer idea based on the 10 Questions activity.  These questions come from Inside the Actor’s Studio a television show in the US.  Celebrity answers to these might add another element of fun to the lesson.  YouTube has an entire collection… simply search a celebrity.  For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDgkj0GI1I

·         What is your favorite word?

·         What is your least favorite word?

·         What turns you on?

·         What turns you off?

·         What sound or noise do you love?

·         What sound or noise do you hate?

·         What is your favorite curse word?

·         What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

·         What profession would you not like to do?

·         If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

The “Works every time” - Experts

I typically use an activity where the learners talk about something they know well. It brings up some great talents and experience and for my adult learner (not to mention they are colleagues) it helps get the course off on the right foot.

I pass out note cards and I tell them to write 5-6 things they can teach the class on the cards.

I put my 'card' on the board.

Here are some of the things I have used for me in the past:

• How to speak English. (okay, maybe this is a bit too much)
• How to make killer BBQ spare ribs with little effort.
• How to make awesome guacamole.
• How to diffuse a bomb. (yes, sometimes I use this)
• How to build set a table for a formal dinner.
• How to throw a curveball.
• The French Revolution.

Here are some recent ones I have seen in my classes.

• The names of all the Alps over 4000m (we tested her with Google images, she could really do it)
• How to dance flamenco.
• The best bike tour across northern Bavaria.
• How to break a board with your fist.
• How to raise children. (this was an interesting one)

As you can imagine, when partners change cards, the first question is "How do you know this?" It leads to all kinds of great conversations about personal history, hobbies, families, etc. The best part is, it causes lots of questions. Others I have used tend not to create as many.

As far as language goes, I am able to help them find some of the words they really want to have because they are so interested in these topics. I like this one.

Authentic Materials

Here is an example of how I build authentic resources into recent lessons. The two classes took the lesson in different directions so we used two different websites.

Aim: To familiarize learners with vocabulary for budgeting, including various types of revenues and expenses

Level: B1-B2

Context: Discussing the business of football (soccer) then equating this to the learner's business. It is budgeting time at the company and Bayern Munich also just reached the CL final.

1. General discussion about football.
Do you like it? If not, why not?
What is your favorite team? Why?
(cover some football vocabulary, e.g. tie, penalties, bandwagon, etc.)
Bayern Munich just reached the Champions League final... how much money will they get if they win?

2. Guide discussion into the business side of football.
Typically we start getting into more general business vocab (be in debt, licenses, etc.)

3. Authentic content
in one class, the discussion focused on player salaries and transfer fees. It was a lower level group so we looked at sites showing the payroll of Bundesliga clubs, practiced saying the numbers, talked about contract terms, etc.
In another class, the discussion went on to Spanish club debts and we read an article on how the authorities are handling the high debt figures. Standard structure... prediction, reading, comprehension questions, mine for key language (in this case I wanted to ignore football specific words and focus on things like be obliged to pay, and could be forced to.

4. Make a football club income statement
the students work in groups to list all the income and expenses. They can typically describe them, but lack the specific terms. I add the term to the explanation. We compile our lists.

Here is a sample of the board work/slide work.

Revenues	Expenses
Ticket sales	Salaries and wages
Merchandise	Facilities
Transfer fees	Travel expenses
Media rights	Equipment
Sponsorship	Transfer fees

5. Change the football club income statement to the company's income statement

Now that we have talked about all the inflows and outflows, the pairs 'change' the income statement to reflect the revenues and expenses for their company. Some things are the same, but some are much different. We typically start talking about the various components of overhead. For transfer fees, we changed the words to divestitures and acquisitions. And so on...

6. Learners rank the largest expenses in their company. Now that we have a nice complete list, the pairs much rank the expenses (largest to smallest) and say why they think so. This is a very difficult task because they do not have the figures. The final group discussion results in much agreeing/disagreeing and defending opinions. By the end of the lesson, I counted that the participants had used the target budget vocabulary about 5-6 times in the discussions.

There are many ways to go with a football lesson and there are plenty of authentic materials. In this case, the material was not the primary aim of the lesson, just support.

A Technology Wow Moment in the Classroom (Wordle)

In-company training, on site…
Level: B1
Class size on paper 14
Class size in reality 6
Never know who is going to show up, no materials, no syllabus... but training objectives.
Approach: Dogme or Just In Time Coaching whichever applies at the time
Lesson Aim: Take conversation into a language/skill direction (lexis, grammar, function, emails, presentations, etc.)

We started with a conversation about how they are doing... Is work stressful? How is everyone feeling? The company has seen drops in revenue and morale has been low. I know that they are entering budgeting time and must create forecasts for the next fiscal year. They are busy.

I asked them about their budgeting forecasts. Are they finished? Are they still working on it? I am fishing for tenses (present pref. and cont., past, will future) we have seen in past lessons.

A woman says that she is having a really hard time creating forecasts because they have cancelled an agreement with a customer. All question why the company would stop selling to a customer. I thought of an example with a mobile provider in the US (Sprint) which fired over 1000 customers because they were unprofitable. I took the devil's advocate role and I said, "I don't know the whole situation, but I think it is okay to fire customers." (Note: I have fired BE customers because they demanded more than they were worth.) I asked them to brainstorm why a company would fire a customer while I found an article online about the mobile provider.

They came up with nothing.

Now came my moment of technical glory.

My computer was connected to the projector and they watched me copy the article into Wordle and create a word cloud. Ohhh! came from the crowd. I was thinking, "Yeah, that's right, this is cool." I changed the cloud so it appeared better on the screen. I set them the task of working in groups to define the words... starting largest first. I helped. The cloud was huge, but I was just trying to pre-teach vocab. I told them that we are going to read an article and the larger the word, the more often it appeared in the text.

Then we did a prediction exercise from the word cloud and I asked them to say what the company sells and why it fired customers. This was good.

Then we read the text... discussed and then talked about which of their customers monopolize resources (a collocation we identified). If I had had more time a great idea would be for them to write the email firing the customers... polite + bad news (I love this topic). Sadly the same group won't be back next week and we will have to find something else.

But for that wordle moment... It was amazing. They were in awe and I thought applause was coming.

Inter-cultural communication

I've only recently started dealing with culture in the classroom. Most of my learners have trouble with it in emails because fewer and fewer are travelling.

My approach is this... I teach the Germans German culture. It is unrealistic to try to teach all of them the dos and don'ts of all the countries they are dealing with. And I find the categories of high context and low context a bit unwieldy. We start getting into too many maybes and mights.

Here is my outline of German culture of German workers:

1.    Myths and Facts of German Culture

1.    Beer and Bratwurst (in reality, significant regional variety; stronger regional than national identity)

2.    Punctuality (true; skeptical of spontaneity)

3.    Order and Discipline (rules ensure equitable enjoyment of societies benefits; example jaywalking, subway tickets, autobahn; misconception about German humor, it is very sarcastic and satirical)

4.    A Nation of Engineers (what quality means in German; misconception about value of creative thinking, "You can't make a Porsche and not be creative!")

2.    Public vs. Private

1.    Highly organized public sphere (clubs, groups)

2.    Hobbies taken to a professional level

3.    Low internal migration

4.    The difference between friend and acquaintance in German

5.    Privacy as mutual respect

3.    Communication Styles

1.    Prefer to see the fact and draw their own conclusions (nations of experts; example 35 y.o. worker in Germany has 20 years job experience, often much less in US)

2.    Foreigner may experience information overload

3.    Direct vs. impolite (the power of the truth; examples, how customer service is evaluated; the value of complaints)

4.    Professional disagreement (separating the opinion from the person)

5.    Making a decision (plan first, decide, follow plan; when problems arise, try to change the situation, not the plan)

This outline is just a summary, but my participants love it! They comment afterwards that they can see why emails and presentations haven't worked in the past.

Negotiations

For example, most people see negotiations as two sides trying to hash out a multi-million dollar merger or similar situation. But people bargain all the time. So in the bargaining section, I just make the task relevant to their situation.

It could be:

• Buying knock-offs in the Czech Republic.
• Getting their teenager to clean their room.
• "Your goal is to take Friday off... get your colleagues to do enough of your work to accomplish this."
• Sell a product no one would want (I think this comes from The Business from MacMillan) e.g. a 1985 Chevy with 200,000 km, an apartment next to a chemical plant, a broken remote control, etc.

In this case, I also like to teach the skill of convincing. This is usually in three steps.

1.    When someone objects or states an opinion you don't like, ask questions until you find a weak point. (question forms)

2.    Convert opinions into negative question forms. (simple to teach, often feel unnatural of learners at the beginning)

3.    Use hand-off questions to bring allies into the dialog. (lexical chunks)

All three have language elements, and when they are put together make a nearly unstoppable force.

Useful Language and ‘Phrasebook’ Training

I'm not sure if I am the first to use the term. It basically applies to those situations in which the trainer is given a set of materials for specific skills to teach useful phrases.  My thinking is, "Why don't we just send them a business English phrasebook and come back and test them in 6 months?" Hence the term.

Okay, I like models because I feel like they give the learner an idea of what right looks like. But I try to make the PPP model more interesting and personal. Today I taught a group of pre-int learners opening a presentation.

I used the content from BBC's Talking Business. I played the two presentations without any vocab prep and asked them to note the main subject of the presentations and two to three topics the presenter would be covering. They checked in pairs.

Then I played again and their task was to listen for discourse markers. They noted as many as they could find and again checked each other.

Next I pulled up the transcript on the projector in a word document. I gave them time to read and check. I noted the discourse markers and the use of "I'd like to" in the transcript. We talked a bit about why we would use discourse markers and the "would like" form.

Next, I had the marketing manager to come up, sit at the computer, and highlight (using the highlighter tool) any language from the text they would find useful for opening a presentation. His job was to elicit ideas from the group. I left the room.

Finally, I asked them to prepare an opening for a presentation. It could be a real scenario or simply a presentation about what they did last week. It was up to them. At this point, I purposely did not give them print outs of the text because the language transfer would take more effort from screen to paper. After 10 minutes of prep, they gave their openings in pairs and received peer/trainer feedback on clarity and organization. Most had written quite a bit and were using extensive notes to give their opening. So I had them switch partners and do it again without their notes.

So, this was a fairly straight forward lesson, but I like to allow them to choose the useful language they want. In the end, the presentations were very good, but the learners were not locked into a certain set of phrases. There's nothing crazy here, but it is an effective lesson with zero prep, a nice challenge, and clear takeaway for the participants.

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.