Need Suggestion For English Teaching

[noctiluca]

Hello,

It's quite a long shot but I'll give it a try.

I was asked by my supervisor to help out my colleagues to improve their English language. It's not a formal class or anything, but probably something once a week. By no means, I'm not a certified English teacher. English is not even my native language, but I digress.

Anyway, the nature of my field of work is business, finance, and computer. I would likely need to find something to teach related to that. I am sure I'll be talking about business writing, telephone conversations, a little bit of grammar (but not as detailed as in a language school), perhaps common errors or misused words in English, etc.

What I would like to know is what else I should add to my list. I need some ideas from your experiences. Do you have any particular good book or web site I may use as references?

I also consider games and some kind of work related activities, for example team work activity/game. But I have no clue what kind of game or activity I can use, or where to find them? Most of the English language books in Thailand, I am sure, are more about grammar or conversations. Would anyone kindly give me some ideas or suggestions?

Many thanks in advance.

[graesta]

To make your life a little bit easier, always have a topic to start with then evolve , extend and teach vocabs from these topics,, all your activities should be about the topics you teach..

More topics to teach? asking and giving directions

giving advices and suggestions

going shopping

[markg]

Grammar in Use - Raymond Murphy

You might be surprised at your own level of English. Lots of stuff in there that we dont use because we speak slang so much.

Just go to any decent bookshop and buy an English book. It will give you ideas. Then you flesh them out.

The problem with this type of casual teaching is that you wont bother to write yourself even a fag packet curriculum. And after 8 weeks, you will have run out of ideas as you will have jumped about from one subject to another.

The only way to do this properly is to have a good, step by step curriculum.

Thats my advice to you.

If you dont follow it, you and the student will have given up after 2 months.

In my experience anyway.

[graesta]

Grammar in Use - Raymond Murphy

You might be surprised at your own level of English. Lots of stuff in there that we dont use because we speak slang so much.

Just go to any decent bookshop and buy an English book. It will give you ideas. Then you flesh them out.

The problem with this type of casual teaching is that you wont bother to write yourself even a fag packet curriculum. And after 8 weeks, you will have run out of ideas as you will have jumped about from one subject to another.

true.. take his advice.

try Side By Side.. Book Ia is very basic but at least your students wont be intimidated and frustrated.

Edited January 30, 2007 by graesta

[mark lamai]

working for a Thai company?

you like to work for free?

that is seen as just plain stupid.

you will be used more and more as soon as you show you can be exploited,

and you will not get thanks or any compensation.

are you a professional person?

stay in your area of expertise.

why cant the cheap bbbb'''sss hire a proper teacher,

says something about the company i think..

[Simmo]

I do 1 hour weekly lessons for our Thai staff - 2 groups of 10 and we have a great time. I wouldn't bother with grammar & business writing skills, they get plenty of this at their failed outside classes and it bores them to tears.

The best thing you can do is to get them speaking and then step out of the way. I mostly do conversation drills using techniques I learnt on a TEFL course , mixed in with some communicative games & songs & activites pulled from entry level textbooks. Golden rule is to get the student to student speaking time occupying about 70% of the lesson.

I've had dramatic improvements with some of our staff over as little as 6 months.

[noctiluca]

working for a Thai company?

you like to work for free?

that is seen as just plain stupid.

you will be used more and more as soon as you show you can be exploited,

and you will not get thanks or any compensation.

are you a professional person?

stay in your area of expertise.

why cant the cheap bbbb'''sss hire a proper teacher,

says something about the company i think..

Actually, this is an international company. There were talks that they considered hiring a few English language professionals, but somehow it did not materialized. Probably have something to do with the scope of work, working hours, and salary. But I agree I will probably have to watch out for myself that I won't be overworked. As long as I feel comfortable and happy to do it (and not being taken advantage of), I should be ok. We'll see.

Anyway, thanks for those who gave me some advice. I now have some ideas what I would like to talk about, but organizing a curriculum and timing it is a different matter. Still, if you have any more suggestion, for example particular book or web site that could help me, please share. Come to think of it, I still need advice on games/activities.

Thanks again.

[PeaceBlondie]

To me, the word curriculum is a little scary. How about a general outline of what you want to cover in the first 8 weeks, so you don't miss anything important, or repeat too much? By the way, you need to repeat or review periodically (I think the Brit term is revise which means change to Americans).

Ask your boss, and ask your employees informally, what subjects should be covered. Don't ask, "What don't you know?" but "What do you want to study?"

[markg]

To me, the word curriculum is a little scary. How about a general outline of what you want to cover in the first 8 weeks, so you don't miss anything important, or repeat too much? By the way, you need to repeat or review periodically (I think the Brit term is revise which means change to Americans).

Ask your boss, and ask your employees informally, what subjects should be covered. Don't ask, "What don't you know?" but "What do you want to study?"

Fair point PB. Curriculum is a bit over-bearing. I really mean a general outline. But you get the drift.

I've tried "winging" it with privates before - and for me it didnt work.

Do a student centred outline and you can both see what you're aiming for.

[Neeranam]

Whatever you do, don't ask someone to explain how Thais eat garden snails. Very embarrassing.

[toptuan]

I hope this one-month-later post isn't too belated for you, but a great website and teacher tool I and others use is: Dave's ESL Cafe. Wonderful activities and games to get your students actively involved in English.

Dave taught in Thailand for about 15 years, so much of his stuff is especially appropriate for use here in LOS.

Good luck!

www[dot]eslcafe[dot]com

[sarpesius]

What I would like to know is what else I should add to my list. I need some ideas from your experiences. Do you have any particular good book or web site I may use as references?

I also consider games and some kind of work related activities, for example team work activity/game. But I have no clue what kind of game or activity I can use, or where to find them? Most of the English language books in Thailand, I am sure, are more about grammar or conversations. Would anyone kindly give me some ideas or suggestions?

The bookstores in Thailand have many books on teaching english, inasmuch as it is a large field and many people are interested in it. Books vary in quality.

The important thing is to get your students talking. So when you teach, you should try to avoid doing most of the talking. (this is called teacher-talking time, oddly enough)

Set up simple exercises in which you show how an english construction works, like subject + present perfect + direct object. You give them the model sentence (this is called modeling), then you ask them to substitute various other terms you give them: he, she, it, different verbs, different direct objects, etc.

Remember also that the Thais love to joke around, so keep the atmosphere light, and don't get annoyed if they don't seem to take you seriously.

sarpesius

Edited March 10, 2007 by sarpesius

[otherstuff1957]

Simmo had it right when he said don't give them formal grammar & writting lessons. Keep it fun & play games and activities that reinforce whatever you try to teach them. I usually try to do 1/2 an hour of lesson and 1/2 an hour of game.

This site has lots of useful activities and games for a small business group:

www. onestopenglish. com

If you're feeling lazy or just don't have time:

www. breakingnewsenglish. com

[geuda]

As a teacher you can register at " Teacher Material - Cambridge University Press" or look at Handouts on line ...

[WapiJohn]

Try BBC British council or the BBC World service. Loads of quizzes ( great time fillers ) and free audio

dialogues I get a terrific amount of my material from there, and I just modify and improve it to suit my students. ALL the material is FREE and of course as you would expect from the BBC, Top quality!

[Scott]

This topic has been around for a little while, but I thought I would add my two cents.

When I have a limited amount of time and a somewhat free-form group with varied levels of English, I usually pick one thing and stick to it for quite a while.

I've had the best luck with getting them to use the past tense--correctly.

I went, instead of I go.

I ate, I played etc.

I teach them the different pronunciations of the 'ed' sound and then we have conversations about past events. You can incorporate vocabulary etc. into the lessons.

[brahmburgers]

the words 'would have' and 'should have' are often used in English conversation.

I write a sample sentence (with fill-in blanks) on the board, like:

I should have listened to my ____________ when he/she told me never to _______________

OR

If I had known there would be no _________________ at the party, I would have brought some _____________________.

Then I go around the room to every student, and have them fill in the blanks. After a couple rounds, we do the same, but without reading it from the blackboard.

I always ask them to 'give me the long answer.' For example, If I ask them, 'what would I get if I combine hydrogen and oxygen?'

They should reply, "if you combine hydrogen and oxygen, you would get water." (instead of simply responding; 'water') Plus, in that sentence they have to replace the pronoun "I" with the pronoun 'you' ....not an easy thing for Thais learning beginning English.