English Trainers wanted: Mönchengladbach August 3 through October 22, 2009

[Stefan_V]

Hello Scott,

Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated. As you say this is a really good place to work, facilities and first class and the staff are friendly and helpful. The students are really nice people as well, which helps. Will post an update on the second half of last week and on this week on Friday.

Cheers

Stefan

[Roberto]

Hi Stefan,

I'm glad to read that you like Mönchengladbach and are feeling quite good there. I actually miss the class and the different atmosphere I could experience in NRW during the seven days I spent there. Are you still commuting from Düsseldorf? (was it Düsseldorf or Bonn?) every day or have you found a convenient place to stay in MGB?

Please give my compliments to the class and to the helpful and friendly staff!!

Regards

Roberto
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[Stefan_V]

Hello to all,

Things are still going fine here in MGB. The class has been showing some real signs of progress lately, and their confidence is clearly developing. There are still some concerns over their written English especially given the emphasis on this in the LCCI exam, but we are working on this and slowly making progress.

Roberto - thanks for you message, yes I am still commuting from Düsseldorf unfortunately! I have passed on your regards and everyone says hello back, you are missed here! Hope things are going well in Leipzig.

Please find below a review of what we haev covered since my last update. As always, comments or suggestions welcomed.
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Wednesday 26-08-09

Today we introduced the present perfect tense. This took some time, as students had some difficult in grasping the issue, specifically the differences between this tense and past simple. In the afternoon we did some speaking exercises around the topic of leisure and hobbies.

Thursday 27-08-09

Today we prepared for the test by looking at some mixed tenses verb exercises, as well as some exercises on the present perfect, reviewing what we had looked at the day before. In the afternoon we relaxed slightly, as I could see with the test coming up and the strain of dealing with the present perfect from yesterday the students were a little stressed. We looked at some songs in English and watched a couple of TV shows, including The Office for office-based vocabulary.

Friday 28-08-09

Students sat exam in the morning. The results were quite pleasing, with all students showing a decent grasp of the grammatical functions covered. The written portion was probably the most worrying, especially given the emphasis on this in the LCCI exam. In light of this, we will be placing more emphasis on the future on the importance of correct forms in writing, and on word order. We will be doing a lot more writing exercises from next week to practice this. In the afternoon focused on introduction of the new textbook, and did introductory exercises from there, including work on useful phrases when introducing peopel in the business world, and formal/informal situations.

Monday 31-08-09

In the morning, after a short crossword to build vocab, we continued with the new text book, along with a slideshow showing idfferernt countries and nationalities. We then had a short class discussion about national stereotypes, before a gap fill exercise on nation/nationality/language. In the afternoon we did a further exercise on quotes/predictions from people that went badly wrong, to reinforce will for predictions. We then did listening/speaking exercise on dream jobs, referring to the ‚dream job’ won by Ben Southall as a island caretaker in Australia. We had a new student today, a 35 year old man from the area who fitted in well straight away with the group. His spoken English is to a high standard, probably higher than the rest of the group, but he seems to have problems with grammar and written composition.

Tuesday 01-09-09

Start with more vocab building exercises based around the city. We developed the national stereotypes theme from yesterday, involving a light hearted humorous exercises about European stereotypes. We then further revised tenses in exercises from the Business Objectives textbook in the multimedia DVD ROM. In the afternoon we did some more mixed tenses exercises and then later made an introduction to writing business letters. We then practised one of the questions from the LCCI past paper to practice the types of letters we need to use in the exams

Wednesday 02-09-09

Today we started with some team vocabulary games to build on business vocab developed in yesterdays exercises. We then starting looking at conditional sentences, introducing the zero and first conditionals. We spent the rest of the morning on these, and doing various exercises to reinforce the structures. The afternoon session started with an exercise whereby students had to scan job application covering letter for grammatical and spelling errors. After this, we worked further in the Business Objectives text book, and did a reading exercise on ‚The Richest People in the Word’.

Thursday 03-09-09 Began with a short look at some business headlines from the BBC website on the morning's news. We then moved on to look at appraisals and performance reviews in the workplace. After brainstorming vocab and a listening exercise, including a discussion on the different stages of an appraisal, setting objectives etc. Finally the students a roleplay, involving one partner being the 'manager' giving the appraisal and one being the employee. In the afternoon we looked a grammar topic - the second conditional. We used hypothetical situations in the workplace "What if you were offered a job in China?" to make it more interesting and relevant, and also provide a platform for class discussion.

Friday 04-09-09

Started today with a wordsearch vocabulary exercise to warm the students up. We then revised the use of the three different condtionals using someonline exercises and games. After this we took a look at an article on the BBC website about the upturn in exports and subsequent upturn in the German economy. This was an excellent exercise in looking at vocabulary in relating to describing the general economic situation, and for describing trends graphically. In the afternoon we looked at an exercise from the course book involving Telefone vocabulary in the context of placing orders. We went on to look at the writing of faxes in a business context to place an order confirmation.

Monday 07-09-09

Today we started with a quick vocabulary test looking at items that we used last week. We followed this up with a look at an article about the rise and fall of Enron. This was a useful exercise in building vocabulary for corporate language, using the theme of 'scandal' as an intro. It was also useful in terms of describing trends, and after looking at the article we went on to look at a graph showing Enron's share price over the years on the BBC website, and used that to introduce vocabulary used when describing trends depicted on graphics (rise, fall, adverbs of degree etc). We finished the day by looking at the conventions in writing a memo, and did an exercise in memo writing.

Tuesday 08-09-09

We started off today looking at some exercises from the text book. They dealt largely with language used on the telephone in English, and specifically on what to do when someone is unavailable (offer to take a message, ask caller to ring back etc.) We also focused on ensuring that we used polite telephone language (modals could & would). We used a role play to activate these new vocabulary. In the afternoon we looked at language used around the topic of business trips, inlcuding a listening exercise on checking in at the airport.

Wednesday 09-09-09

After a vocabulary exercise, we spent the first part of the morning reviewing conventions in written English, as I had noticed some mistakes creeping in. We paid particular attention to punctuation and capital letters. This lead nicely into the next part of the day, an article about a woman that was fired for writing all of her emails in capitals. After some comprehension questions on the article, we went on to look more generally on the conventions regarding the use of emails & semi formal writing generally. This culminated in students writing and sending their own emails to the tourist boards of places of their choice asking for more information, which they duly sent.
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Thanks

Stefan

[Scott Graham]

Hi Stefan,

I hope all is well in MGB, and please give my best wishes to the management team there.

It's interesting to read your last update and I'm looking forward to the next. It's good to see you're really trying to put emphasis on the written English because as you said it's so important especially for the LCCi exam.
While I was there at the the beginning of this year, to really help the group, every week they did a past LCCi exam. After they completed it I went through it step by step to help them understand where and why they made mistakes. Also for me it was useful as I was able to see any areas they needed more help with as individuals.

Good luck with the rest of the course and I hope to talk with you again soon.

Best wishes
Scott
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