Teach English in Beaufort West - TEFL Courses

business english (75) The following information is based upon significant personal experience in teaching business english as well as supplemental theoretical information provided in Unit 19 of our course book (pgs 9-16). My personal experience in teaching business english has been in an incredibly unique educational setting, with a specific set of educational goals, needs, interests, and motivations. The narrative of personal experience will be followed by information learned from this course that should be used to supplement and enhance previous experience and efforts in business english. As the Founder and Director of a healing arts school in kathmandu our mission and goal as an organization was to recruit, train, and employ the most economically needy members of nepali society. One aspect of these efforts was the quick realization that the majority of the students – and future staff – within our organization had limited education and training in any language, let alone english! As a result, the expectations, teaching methods, and approaches for instructing both theoretical and practical skills was shifted dramatically as an adjustment to the needs and capabilities of our students. With extremely limited literacy among our students I shifted our instructional methods and expectations, according the following structure and efforts: Confidence building, light-heartedness, encouragement, and fun. Emphasis upon the final goal of the training: Gainful employment and opportunity to improve their lives for the better. Slow introduction of expected english skills, with a focus upon speaking and listening (the end goal of training is employment within small spa boutiques, with managers in place to handle telephone inquiries, payment process, and guest interactions). Development of written scripts to memorize and follow for role-playing, partnered with circle exercises to identify specific vocabulary items that relate directly to the training and work environment. By providing the above, while at the same time adjusting the expectations of our organization, we were able to succeed in providing business english training for our students and staff. What was incredible in regards to the above was the high levels of personal motivation among our students to learn, particularly when considering that many of them had never really been to school at any level. Their ability to learn and comprehend the basic english vocabulary that applies to the spa setting, along with basic phrases expected within the work environment, continues to amaze me. Partnered with their high levels of motivation we also had a lot of fun, and I did my best to minimize anxiety and to encourage our students to succeed, often by role-modeling and joking when appropriate. With the above eight years of experience in mind, the theoretical information provided by our course book was a wonderful addition to my personal knowledge, and has given much food for thought. In retrospect, it would have been wonderful to apply the techniques and insights provided in our course book eight years ago when developing the instructional curriculum and efforts for our students in nepal. Based upon the information provided in our course book I would have added the following items to our training in business english at our school in nepal: Explaining clearly to each student at the start of the training what the expectations were in terms of learning business english; learning what their individual learning backgrounds and experiences were; learning what hopes, aspirations, and uncertainties they have in terms of the training; sharing this information with the group; and adjusting each training session according to that information, while sticking the same curriculum and expectations. Establishing a standardized assessment format in which assessments were provided at the start of the training course, at the midpoint of the course, and at the end of the course. This information could have been used to inform further development of the curriculum, and to also provide a clear expectation and standard for all students to meet and be compared to; it could also have been used to develop confidence and pride within each student as they are able to clearly understand how much they have learned, and also understand that they have met the same standards as their peers. Conducting an end of course review would have been an incredibly useful tool in the sense that the valuable feedback from each student could have been used to inform improvement of the curriculum as well as improvement within instructional style and structure (self-improvement for the teacher). With my previous intuitive experience in teaching business english I am eager to apply the theoretical knowledge gained from our course book in future classrooms and settings, ideally with a mentor teacher to work with and learn from. business english has a unique set of parameters, goals, expectations, and motivations, and is an area of instruction I would very much be interested in pursuing.