English trainers wanted: Cologne January 12 through February 6

[RimcMullen]

Hi Torsten

It’s been another busy week here in Cologne; after 9 hours a day and the preparartion I don;t have too much time or energy left over. ut I really enjoy it anyway and i am quite happy with WBS and the students. They are improving greatly however two students who are getting a little lazy as the rest of the class moves forward. When this happens I call on them more frequently and gently tell them that we must move forward (and I find a good strategy is to give them a challenge just before a break) and then, before you know it, they have the language I am after. This week we have covered Present Continuous for future plan, Prepositions of Place and Direction, Comparatives and superlatives, countable and Uncountable Nouns. Contrasting Present Simple with Past Simple and Present Continuous and lots of new vocabulary covering food and drink, clothes and shopping, city places with location and direction, music and entertainment, crime and the law and some medical English. We practiced the language of messages, hosting visitors, offers and request and expressing feelings.

Regarding the test, I made the tests up from the test I have covering the different units we have covered. The questions format was 40 % listen and choose and 60 % read and choose using multiple choice, gap fill, sentence arrangement and sentence completion and numbering choices in the correct order. I also made up and test of 20 prepositions we had covered in class and that was the most challenging test for them but nevertheless the average score was 85 – 90 % so the students were happy with that and encouraged. Next week I will be continuing with lots of daily quizzes and unit tests and using the final exam test from the workbook so it should be a little harder on them. I will prepare them for that though.

It is not set up like the class in Nordhausen at all. There is just one computer at my desk which I can use a beamer to project exercises on the wall. It does not function with DVDs or with streamed internet files but as I mentioned last time I found a way around that with Mediaconverter.com. I use my netbook to convert the files to windows media player and thenput in of a usb and that works very well. The students did have a challenge way above their level this week. ‘I was reluctant to do it but they were really keen so I converted a broadcast of the Obama inauguration speech and then we slowly went thru each paragraph of the text and then watched it in class. Afterwards I had the student paraphrase 3-4 specific points. It was hard and, as I said, way above their level, but once we finished they really felt like they accomplished something special and a few said they would not be so afraid to tackle articles in an English newspaper – not just the headlines.

[Sachinshivay]

Hi

I think I'm the last one to view this post for the opening somewhere in Germany. It's quite interesting using this forum and reading from more experienced teachers, authors or trainers. I am not so experienced one though I would be one day, as I have been doing everything to be the one .

I am really surprised reading from Torsten, He has that in him to express in terms of diction and grammar rules.

Hi Torsten

I hope you would be having enough time to just have a look at my lines. If you do so i would be thankful to you. I would be even more thankful if you just can drop two three lines for me.

I am new to this forum and want to make the best of this site in terms of new new friends and more knowledge.

Bye for now

Sachin sharma
India

[RimcMullen]

Torsten

All is going on schedule here in Cologne. This week we are finishing with the general English basic course and moving to a more business centered focus. We began the week reviewing Stative Verbs and practicing Prepositions of Direction using Talk Time 2 with plenty of geographical vocabulary.
We then moved on to contrast comparatives with superlative forms of adjectives while giving opinions about food and trends. We also did a lot or work with modal verbs this week giving advice with ‘should’, ‘ought to’, ‘had better’ and the variable importance of should, must and have to.
I didn’t introduce the perfect tenses as we had to spend a lot longer on the future with ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but I will do that first thing on Monday.
Tomorrow we will cover more modals and introduce ‘do you mind’ for the extra important or very polite requests and then review what we have covered the last two weeks.
World link has proved quite popular and two of the students requested copies of the book and video files.
They have their bi-weekly test tomorrow afternoon and this one has 190 questions covering material from the last two weeks. It will be the format as before but with more writing. When Bruce takes over his main area is to develop the writing skills so he told me to continue with what I have been doing and to ‘’keep them animated’.
I am still doing a lot of daily listening tests and as far as my speech goes, I no longer grade it as they are comfortable with my natural speed.

Hi Sachin - yes I agree, I think everyone who knows Torsten is surprised at the time he puts into this venture!

[RimcMullen]

Hi Torsten

Well this week we’ve delved into the Present Perfect finally and it seems to be going OK. As a Canadian we do use the Present Perfect more than Americans but in Ireland it is not used at all. Only the Germanic languages have it and only the English have arrangements like ‘have + ‘had’ so the students fo question it’s relevance. I tell them that in American English it is normally reserved for a completed past action which portrays a period of time but that in British it tends to be used for that and for actions closely connected to the present. In either case I explained that the two tenses are so close that many present perfect statements are usually followed by a past simple statement. We will be doing more today and next week and I am confident they will be able to use it properly very soon.

We finished with our first book International Express and have begun using Start Up – a pre-intermediate level business English book. Many of the themes and grammar have already been covered so I am skipping forward a little to use new these and introduce new areas of grammar such as reported speech and prepositions of movement.
I also saved a few business related World Link units to liven things up a bit and they focus on Present Perfect using ‘for’ and ‘since’ for interviews and ‘used to’ to describe computer technology and telecommunications.
I discussed all this with Bruce and he outlined the grammatical areas he wants covered before he takes over so everything is on track

One new woman joined the course this week as another dropped out to work which is always good news! She is not quite up to speed but In have given her extra Murphy’s assignments and she is a very quick learner so I am sure she will do fine.

Bis dann
Richard

[Torsten]

Hi Richard,

Thanks a lot for your great work and your detailed updates. Can you please give me some information about your current accommodation? I'm asking because we'll need a room from March 9 through May 29.

Talk to you soon,
Torsten

TOEIC listening, photographs: An auto junkyard

[RimcMullen]

Hi Torsten

This week has been fairly busy as usual. We moeved into a different room which has no access to internet and beamer but fortunately, I could still use this wonderful netbook. We did a lot of review of the previous tenses and specific areas of grammar we have covered. We also did interview practice activities: first I had them brainstorm all the usual questions in standard interviews and practice how to answer them with me and with mock interviews with their partner. I also had them tell me two specifics jobs they had had a reasonable chance of getting sometime during the next year. I then had them write a one to two-minute sell where they describe their skills and qualifications to a potential employer.
Tomorrow, I am going to introduce them to reported speech and on Friday I will introduce relative clauses and then we will review what we did over the past two weeks (esp. the perfect tenses) and then they will write their bi-weekly test.
I have updated Bruce as well and he came into the class to introduce himself and talk about what they will be doing over the next 6 weeks.