Job offer: Teaching English in Neubrandenburg, November 16 through Nov 27, 2009

[Torsten]

We are looking for English trainers for the following course.

Location: Neubrandenburg, Germany
Dates: November 16 through November 27, 2009
Times: 8:00 until 4 pm every day, 9 lessons per 45 minutes from Monday through Friday
Purpose: teaching basic business English to beginners/intermediate students
Pay rate: EUR 160 per day

The level of the group is between A1 and B1.

For more information, please contact me here on the forum.

Many thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[RimcMullen]

I'm in.

[RimcMullen]

Hi Torsten. I would be very happy to do this one too. If that suits you then just let me know and I will make arrangements. I take it that it would be the same location as the other courses?

Best regards
Richard

[Torsten]

Hi Richard,

Yes it's the same location and of course you can do this one as well. You'll get the details via email by the end of this week.
Many thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[RimcMullen]

Excellent. Thank you!

[Cassian]

Hi Torsten,

My name is Greg and I am new to this forum. I have recently moved to Berlin and I am looking for work as an English teacher. I am interested in projects in Berlin and surrounding areas.

I was wondering if I might be able to e-mail my CV to you.

Regards,
Greg

[Torsten]

Hi Greg,

Sure you can email me your CV. My email address td at english-team.com

Many thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[RimcMullen]

Monday, Nov. 16th

I began the new course in Neubrandenburg today with the usual introductions (me beginning in German and them telling me – where possible – in English). I followed this with questions about their English learning history and travels – esp. to English speaking countries or other countries where they needed English. This is a beginner’s course so the level is A1 - only three of them have ever been to an English speaking country (2 to the US and one to the UK) and a few others have been to other countries where they needed some English. There are 14 students (7 men, 7 women) altogether and 11 of them started the course 2 weeks ago with a few others joining in the meantime.

Aside from three students, none have had any real English training before this course. Of the three, one spent a year in America as an au pair so she is quite good but still not far above A2. Another man did courses for a long time during the GDR times and another woman spent one week in the UK several years ago on an English course. As can be expected (when they have a native speaker for the first time), some ss expressed a desire to use more German in the class. There are, in fact, two of them that really can’t understand much English at all. I will use maybe 20 – 30 % German for today and tomorrow and then as they get used to my voice and I see the light in the eyes I will go to all English except where I need a specific word translated. The student that was specially trained in the GDR in English 25 years ago is very good but quite rusty of course. I will use him as our main Ubersetzer when I don’t know the word.

After our introductions I asked them to work in pairs and tell me what they knew about the countries I come from, Canada and Ireland, (in Pairs) and then to ask me questions about each country. This is an interesting and fun way to get to know the ss. We then did a reading exercise about Ireland called A New Life from Instant Lessons 1 Elementary (Penguin English Books – Peter Watcyn-Jones). In it there were four letters written at different times between brothers in Ireland and New York. I read thru each letter and translated all the new vocabulary with the class. The students then had to put the letters in the right order and then I had them read them again for pronunciation practice. The students then sought out specific bits of information.

We then did an exercise on prepositions of time and place, which is also from Instant Lessons 1 Elementary (ILE).

They have finished up to the end of Unit 4 in New Headway Elementary (NHE) and I will continue with Unit 5 tomorrow. I would like to complete 2 - 3 units this week and 3- 4 next week, along with a lot of extra material but we will see if this is too fast for them. The classes for the previous two weeks were done mostly in German so hopefully, with me they will advance faster and we can cover a lot more material.

Tuesday, Nov. 17

There is one computer at the front of the class which I can also use with a beamer on the whiteboard. I introduced them to a couple of useful websites today including the worlds greatest English-German translator Leo and of course English-test.net. We practiced additional prepositions of place along with there is/there are, some/ any and this/that; these/those. By the end of the day, we finished Unit 5 of NHE and this was the first time the group has done an entire unit in one day so for a few of them it was a little hard. We also discussed why English and German are so similar because English is a Germanic language and also the history of the Norman influence on the language to explain why there are so many French words and why many legal term (or more official) words use the French option i.e. non-smoking/refundable.

Wednesday, Nov. 18

We began the day reviewing the language work we covered on Tuesday. I then did a lesson from World Link Intro Unit 1 (A1-2) using contractions with be and possessive adjectives focusing on occupations and descriptions. The students then brainstormed workplaces and the different things which are in these places. Towards the later part of the afternoon we began Unit 6 of NHE using can/can’t, could/couldn’t, was/were for ability.

Thursday, Nov 19

We continued with NHE Unit 6 describing abilities of each other. This was continued with the past of can (could) talking about famous geniuses and describing what s/he could do. We then studied a number of common homonyms and I had the students create several sentences each using homonym (i.e. write this down right away). The end of this unit had a short drill on telephone language. I complemented the abilities theme with a short video lesson from WLI Unit 12: Jobs and Ambitions, Professions, interviews and personalities talking about abilities with can/can’t. we discussed dividing up the class and doing morning/afternoons as we had the last course but the overall consensus was negative on this and I have already partnered the three strongest ss with the three weakest so we will go with that for now and see about dividing the class later if the slower ones are holding the others too far back.

Friday, Nov 20

In the morning we reviewed some prepositions of time using text and video from WLI Unit 7 and then I gave them a progress test and we marked it together the three weaker students failed but most were between 50 – 70 %. I told the ss to note their weak areas and review the sections of their student book to improve so they will pass the real test next week. I will give them a few more quizzes next week to help them prepare. I had originally planned to get a good way into Unit 7 today but Friday afternoons are for movies here in NB (They watched Madagascar 1 last week.) so after the progress test the ss watched Madagascar 2 (in English with Deutsch subtitles – a little more than half are still too low for Eng-Eng yet).

I think it has been a great week and we have had a lot of fun and done nearly twice as much material as in the previous weeks so while the ss admit the pace is faster, they are also happy to have covered so much – well 90% of them do .