ITDi Breaking into Business English

Final assignmentTheodora Papapanagiotou

Student description

The student is a Greek teacher working at the American college, teaching Greek as a foreign language to students of other languages.

The student has to deal with:

• Parent communication in oral and written form (mostly e-mails, telephone calls and face to face)

• Communication with Teacher stuff and director (meetings, memos, e-mails)

• Presentations (of class projects and celebrations )

Sources

American college site (student evaluation and class projects):•

http://www.pinewood.gr/index.php/school-services/school-communication/written-communication

• http://www.pinewood.gr/index.php/school-services/school-communication/personal-communication

Sources

• Advice on parent-teacher relationships:http://www.readingrockets.org/article/19308

• Advice on teacher meetingshttp://www.ascd.org/publications/books/107088/chapters/Planning-and-Preparing-for-Faculty-Meetings.aspx

Sources

• Presentation skills:http://vimeo.com/44267609http://www.slideshare.net/kumar_vic/presentation-skills-18978161

Teaching approaches

• Project Based learning• Lexical approach• Corpora Approach• Genre Approach

Project based learning

• Discuss with student what she needs in order to make a presentation.

• Let the student make a draft of a presentation and have her perform

• Try to note vocabulary (synonyms) and terms she might change

• Work on voice, posture etc• Homework: Improved version of presentation

Lexical approach:

• Give student texts on teacher-parent and teacher-teacher communicationi.g. http://teaching.about.com/od/pd/a/Communication-Policy.htm

• Student has to answer questions on the texts ( Reading comprehension activities) or put paragraphs into correct order or write an e-mail to a parent about a possible problem

Corpora Techniques

• Student has to find meaning of words and try to use them in a sentence

i.g. coherent performance fluencyThere are numerous online dictionaries the student can use

Genre Approach

It is crucial that the student can understand what kind of language she should use in the different forms of communication like for example : e-mails to parents or how to talk face to faceHere are some samples:http://www.weac.org/professional_resources/new_teacher_resources/beg_handbook/letters.aspx

Genre approach

• Role play is also a great way to make your student feel nervous in various situations:

http://childparenting.about.com/od/schoollearning/a/parent_teacher_communication_dos_donts.htm

http://www.humanviewpoint.com/images/Exercise_-_Role_play_scripts_for_parent_meetings.pdf

More to consider

• A wonderful source of articles on teaching and dealing with possible problems is this:

http://www.pinewood.gr/index.php/school-services/media-a-technology-center

The student can read on her own or the teacher could find more material to bring in the lesson – create activities (gap fills or crosswords or questions for discussion)

Final notes

I didn’t get into detail on the specific vocabulary and exercises my student will use, but on a more general way, how I would approach my student and her needs. Using a foreign language for work is not that different from general English, just a little more emphasis on communication skills.