session05

Session 5

Saturday 16:20 – 17:50

Reka Polak-Weldon and Edit Komlosi

Project work - from knowledge sharing to knowledge management

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

How can tacit knowledge be turned into explicit knowledge? Our workshop aims to share our experience with in-service university students at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Pannonia in Hungary. If you join our workshop you will watch students' presentations and with your active participation we will gain the know-how of students' and teachers' knowledge sharing and management. Project work is one way to maintain the creation and exchange of tacit knowledge and it is a kind of community of practice. According to Richard McDermott, community of practice is a 'group that shares knowledge, learns together, and creates common practice.' Do you agree? Come and share your experience or learn from ours.

Biodata

Reka Polak-Weldon is a teacher of Business English to Human Resources and Engineering Managers at the University of Pannonia, Veszprem, Hungary. She was educated there and at Central Queensland University, Australia. She has developed a special interest in Corpus Analysis and has started research in this field. She is also undertaking an MA in Human Resource Management to further develop her business knowledge.
Edit Komlosi is also a teacher of Business English at the University of Pannonia. After taking an MA in English and American Studies she taught English for Tourism and Catering where she developed materials as well as writing a book. She is just coming to the end of her three-year term as International Relations Officer for IATEFL-H. She is currently working on her MA Thesis focusing on knowledge sharing and knowledge management amongst Business English teachers in Hungary.

Pete Sharma

New technology and the future of Business English

Presentation 1 available for download here

Presentation 2 available for download here

Presentation type:	General Presentation, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

Keeping up to date with the fast-moving nature of new technology can seem daunting for many Business English teachers. Similarly, making informed choices can be difficult - whether to use published materials or create and customise digital materials for specific learners; deciding how to blend face-to-face teaching with on-line interventions; selecting appropriate hardware and software. This presentation will update teachers on some of the latest developments in technology; critically analyse these; and explore 'best practice'. It will draw on the presenter's experience in various areas, such as materials writer, EAP and ESP practitioner, teacher trainer and reviewer. It will describe some of the exciting, new and emerging pedagogies and identify key trends for the future of Business English. Participants will leave with a number of new, practical teaching ideas in the areas of grammar, vocabulary, language skills, business skills and phonology.

Biodata

Pete Sharma is currently working as a Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and is a freelance author and teacher trainer. Pete reviews ELT materials in the EL Gazette, and is the Newsletter Editor for the 'CALL Review', the journal of the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG. Pete has written books on technology in language teaching, including 'Blended Learning - using technology in and beyond the language classroom', with Barney Barrett (Macmillan 2007), shortlisted for the Ben Warren International House Trust Prize. He writes a regular Business English e-lesson for the 'In-Company' series, and the Learning Technologies page (with Barney) for 'BESIG Issues'.

Ian Badger

Business English training - preparation, content, feedback

Presentation available here

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

In this workshop, Ian Badger will describe a range of Business English training projects with which he is currently involved, principally in the international engineering and paper industries. He will discuss the negotiation of training content, the preparation and delivery of training and the provision of feedback and follow-up. Ian works closely with HR and other departments to provide the language training companies need in order to operate globally in English. This cooperation allows him wide access to factories and sales offices across Europe in order to observe and record meetings, interviews and industrial processes. Ian will identify specific areas of difficulties in global communication and will discuss how they can be overcome using appropriate training strategies and materials.

Biodata

Ian Badger is co-author of the new four-level series 'English for Business Life' (Langenscheidt/Marshall Cavendish ELT). He is a partner in Business and Medical English Services and a director of English4 Ltd. Ian is based in Bristol, UK but travels extensively running English language training for international companies and seminars for teachers of Business English. A special interest is in helping global teams to work effectively in English; current projects involve participants from Russia, Finland, Germany, France, Austria and China.

Rachel Appleby

Teaching Advanced Business English Learners

Presentation available here

Handout 1 available here * Handout 2 available here

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Inexperienced
	Oxford University Press

Summary

Teachers' comments about advanced level learners include:
'They're all at different levels in different skills! Where do I start?'
'They're pretty fluent, but actually they make the same mistakes over and over again.'
'Their vocabulary's not bad, and they're pretty accurate, but they lack fluency.'
'They're frustrated because they don't know how to move on, so generally they're not very motivated.'
'They can operate quite well at work, but their English could be so much better!'
Aiming to deal with some of these, this session will look at the main issues facing students and teachers of advanced English classes. We'll look at a variety of exercise types and activities and try to draw up a list of classroom strategies which will enable us to help our learners become better speakers of English, with a more sophisticated use of language and fewer mistakes!

Biodata

Rachel works full time at ELTE University in Budapest, and otherwise freelance, as a teacher and teacher trainer, specifically for Business English. She also runs Professional Skills training courses in C/E Europe, is a CELTA and LCCI trainer, and writes Business English teaching materials. She is co-author of 'Business one:one' Intermediate+, Pre-Intermediate and Advanced (OUP). She also co-wrote the Teacher's Book for 'Business Result Advanced' (forthcoming) and the new edition of 'International Express Upper Intermediate'. She has an Honours Degree in Music, a Post-graduate Diploma in Business Studies, and an MSc in TEFL.

Guy Brook-Hart

Developing students' spoken powers of persuasion

Presentation type:

Workshop, 80 minutes

Audience type:

Mixed

On behalf of:

Cambridge University Press

Summary

When teaching Business English, we put a lot of effort into developing students' fluency and accuracy. However, students working in business have needs which go beyond this. A large part of business communication, both spoken and written, is devoted to persuasion:
- persuading clients to buy products or services, accept prices, terms, etc.
- persuading colleagues or managers to adopt decisions, work in certain ways, etc.
Being successful in business is largely due to successful persuasion. This workshop will work on classroom activities which develop students' speaking abilities to make them more persuasive including interpersonal skills, small talk, giving presentations and participating in and managing meetings. Examples will be taken from 'Business Benchmark Upper Intermediate' and 'Business Benchmark Advanced' (CUP 2006 / 2007)

Biodata

Guy Brook-Hart has taught English for over 30 years. He started teaching in Egypt and has since worked in Kuwait, France, Britain and Spain where he works for the British Council. He was a co-author of 'World Class', a joint British Council/Open University Business English course, the British Council Online English Course and the British Council IELTS CD-ROM. With Cambridge University Press he has published 'Instant IELTS' (CUP 2004), 'Business Benchmark Upper-Intermediate' (CUP 2006), 'Business Benchmark Advanced' (CUP 2007) and 'Complete First Certificate' (CUP 2008).

Cynthia Tilden-Machleidt

The workload challenge - What happens before and after class? What should happen?

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

At our 2007 annual conference in Berlin we looked at Thiagi’s Content Trap with tips on how to replace content overload with practice-based activities for higher education and corporate training. As a follow-up of that session, I’d like to focus on the workload (contact hours and self-study) challenges in the new Bachelor programmes in German higher education. I’ll present a few more Thiagi ideas which can be adapted for success in business and technical English teaching and training. The workshop will address issues such as learner independence, self-motivation and learning effectively in-between classes. I’ll try to incorporate a few old and new warmer activities which we can adapt/customise in an open space phase.

Biodata

Cynthia Tilden-Machleidt, M.A., coordinator of Business English at the Berlin School of Economics (FHW) and freelance teacher/coach/cross-cultural trainer. Special interests include materials design and new methods in teaching for higher education, including blending e-learning and classroom teaching for ESP and IC.

Rudolf Camerer

Intercultural Competence in English - Introducing a training and testing tool.

Presentation available for download here

Presentation type:

Workshop, 80 minutes

Audience type:

Experienced

On behalf of:

European Language Competence, Frankfurt am Main

Summary

This workshop is based on experience gained in the course of developing and piloting a curriculum and test of intercultural communicative competence in English developed for German chambers of commerce. Current IC-training concepts tend to focus exclusively on IC-theory and IC-sensitivity training, generally neglecting the training of active communicative skills. Language teaching material often leaves learners unaware of conflicting “cultural scripts”, the knowledge of which is essential when using the target language. Thus we may in fact be training learners for intercultural clashes, the reasons for which remain obscure to them. The criteria relevant for the development of curricula and assessment procedures will be discussed with reference to specifications provided by the international debate on ICC and the CEFR.
Video recordings will be used and examples of teaching material given.

Biodata

Rudolf Camerer has worked in adult education and language testing for many years. Today he directs a language consultancy based in Frankfurt am Main, serving international companies, ministries of education and chambers of commerce.

Carl Dowse

Setting up and using wikis with business students and corporate clients

Presentation available here

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

This practical, hands on workshop will show trainers how to effectively exploit the potential of wikis to enhance and add value to their Business English training. This popular Web 2.0 technology requires very little technical expertise and can be used in a variety of ways to add value to training with corporate clients either in one-to-one or group teaching, or with business students in a higher education setting. By the end of the workshop participants will have set up their own wikis, and will have seen examples of how to use wikis to provide a private space for students to work online, deliver materials to students, interact and provide effective feedback, and to act as a staging post for students to access other online resources. Finally, some web-based tools to combine with wikis to provide trainees with a truly Web 2.0 experience will also be introduced.

Biodata

Carl Dowse is author of the Cornelsen Corporate Solutions 'Business English' B2 Teacher's Guide, ICT teacher trainer with the award-winning The Consultants-E team, and lecturer of English for business at the University of Applied Sciences, Essen, Germany. He has worked in English language training in Italy, Germany and the UK since 1995 and is currently writing a teacher's guide on how to use ICT to teach business English.

Halina Wisniewska and Elzbieta Jendrych

One Case Study - Many Opportunities for Teachers

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed

Summary

The aim of the first part of the workshop is to look briefly at the methodology of case studies, demonstrate how to use mini-cases to practise 'reading between lines' and how to elicit the relevant information about the company in question / the current market situation. This part will focus on practising reading and speaking skills at B2 level. Case studies in 'Market Leader' will be used during this part of the workshop. The second part of the workshop is more practical and will at some point require active participation of the delegates. It will show how the same case study can be used for teaching different topics or / and skills.

Adrian Pilbeam and Philip O'Connor

Training for the many cultural identities of learner - learning styles and training activities

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Experienced

Summary

We all learn in different ways. These differences are individual, but there are also tendencies for different cultures, both professional and national, to have preferred learning styles. In this workshop we will look at different learning style models and their implications when working with people from different professional and national cultures. Participants will participate in a variety of training activities, and analyse their effectiveness from the point of view of the cultural identities of learner. The workshop will be very 'hands-on' and participants will be able to share activities which they use in their own training situations and learn about others to use for the future.

Biodata

Adrian Pilbeam is the director of LTS Training and Consulting in Bath, UK. He has been an intercultural trainer and trainer trainer for more than 20 years. He regularly runs training workshops in all parts of Europe, as well as Asia and the US.
Philip O'Connor is a senior training consultant at LTS, and has been an intercultural trainer and trainer trainer for many years. He was also a founding member of SIETAR Europa and the first president of SIETAR UK. He has a particular interest in learning styles and how they differ across cultures.

Robert McLarty and Cathy Rogers

Delivering Results in Business English Teaching

Presentation available here

Presentation type:

Workshop, 80 minutes

Audience type:

Mixed

On behalf of:

Oxford University Press

Summary

Companies are looking for results from their English Language Training suppliers. No matter how short the course, they want to see an improvement in the performance of their staff once the course is over. They are also looking for a modular course that offers flexibility and that suits the needs of the participants. They expect serious materials which reflect the modern working world. In the talk we will introduce examples of activities from the new OUP five level series 'Business Result' which allow teachers to answer these expectations while providing interesting and useful language learning.

Biodata

Robert McLarty is Publishing Manager for Business English at OUP. He was Principal of OISE Oxford from 1998-2004 and held a number of roles in English teaching prior to that. He is co-author of 'Business Basics', 'Business Focus' and 'Quick Work' (OUP).
Cathy Rogers is an editor in the Business & ESP department at OUP. Before joining OUP she taught Business English and general English in Germany and Portugal, and English for Academic Purposes in the Higher Education sector in the UK. She also has a Masters qualification in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (Nottingham Trent University).

James Schofield

90 minutes +

Presentation available for download here

Handouts available here

Presentation type:	Workshop, 80 minutes
Audience type:	Mixed
	Langenscheidt

Summary

You have your students for maybe 90 minutes a week. What can you do to get them to invest more time in their English outside the classroom? According to David Graddol 'English Next' (British Council, 2006) the future of English learning will lie less in the traditional classroom and more in getting students to adopt value-adding language activities outside the class. This workshop looks at ways you can encourage your Business English students to do more reading. The activities will be based on the Summertown Business English readers 'Ekaterina', 'Peril in Venice' and 'Room Service' but the concepts can be applied generally. Participants will receive a free copy of one of the readers.

Biodata

I have worked in various countries and for various organisations including the British Council and now Siemens in Munich. I write compulsively and have happily found enough people willing to read what I write to encourage me to continue. Why not add to their number and come to my workshop?