Archive for the ‘Telephoning’ Category

Backwards dialogues

Students write a dialogue and then read it out starting with the last line, then the second to last line and last line, then the last three lines etc- working their way towards the beginning of the dialogue until the other students in the class guess what the situation of the conversation is, e.g. who the telephone conversation is between or which kind of shop it is taking place in.

 ”Borrowed” from Clockwise Upper Intermediate Teacher’s Resource Pack, where it is explained much more clearly than this. Not much else to recommend that book (although the textbook is okay and the lower level teacher’s resource packs seem better), so keep reading here instead as I rip off every book in my new teacher’s room library and write up all the highlights here.

15 fun ways of using pre-school storybooks

15 ways of preparing for ELT management

15 variations on a grammar auction

15 common complaints about TEFL workshops (and how to respond to them)

15 things to find out about a TEFL certificate course

15 criteria of a good needs analysis

How’s that for a minimalist blog post! To make up for the lack of text, here are even more links:

157 articles and worksheets of mine on UsingEnglish.com

onestopenglish.com (the Macmillan website, where you usually have to pay to see most of my stuff but which has some kind of special offer on at the moment)

New stuff in August, for those who have recently joined us (welcome!)

And brand new worksheets etc actually on TEFLtastic:

Business English rotating revision board game

Complaints sentence expansion game

Dealing with complaints guess the situation

Dealing with complaints pairwork- Amusing and odd excuses

Email and internet abbreviations

Email language definitions game

Email rules business meeting

Formal and informal email errors

Telephone and email spot the difference pairwork

“Punishment“- Passive voice and tense review

Table manners Present Simple and Continuous mimes

Describing people workshop

English for Telephoning/ Negotiating double book review

Updated, expanded and with many more links here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/telephoning/

For those of you who haven’t been on the Worksheet pages yet (although surely no one would waste their time reading the blog when they could save planning time by using the worksheets??) and the many more of you who are going to end up here after the error messages because I’ve shortened lots of html names (because good names are good apparently), here is where the worksheets are now:

Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets

Business English and ESP Games and Worksheets

Telephoning Games and Worksheets

Technical English and Numbers Games and Worksheets

EFL Exam games and worksheets- IELTS, TOEIC etc.

Travel English, Tourism and Study Abroad worksheets

Writing Games and Worksheets

Vocabulary Games and Worksheets

Functional and Social English Games and Worksheets

Video worksheets

Song worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Grammar games and worksheets

The case for the prosecution starts with exhibit A, Intelligent Business, the newish series of textbooks from Longman.

First, a mea culpa. At first glance Intelligent Business seemed like such a good concept that I recommended it to my school-a business series where the bits about marketing that are useless for accountants are left to another book where the teaching of business concepts are implicit for once,leaving the separate series of skills books to deal with the nitty gritty of telephoning etc.

Good concepts don’t cost publishers money, however, and the rest of the process was obviously done on the cheap- cheap production values, obvious skimping on proof reading and classroom testing, filling of page space with waffle and instructions etc etc.

And cost (and corner) cutting is not the only example of economics at play here- we also have The Economist magazine tie in, The Economist magazine being owned by Pearson, who also own the ELT publisher…(I’m sure you can guess). And then there is the classic having it both ways of designing it clearly for a market niche and then hiding that fact in the hope that people it is less suitable for will buy it and so make it a bestseller.Either I’m turning into the grumpy old man of TEFL well before my time or there really was a halcyon time when the evil magic of the ELT publishers’ marketing departments was not so strong.

I’m not suggesting that the advent of real market forces in ELT publishing in the UK has entirely been a bad thing. The publishers have at least started producing materials suitable for the budgets and abilities of real schools, teachers and students. One good example of this is the Oxford Basics series, where we can perhaps forgive the proofreading and other basic errors pointed out in a recent MET review because the budgetary restraints that probably caused those problems seem to have resulted in a book that is much more accessible for the real world than the stuff the big boys produced until a few years ago.

So, no real answer to my question so far I’m afraid, but at least that proves that the post title was a real question and not a lead in to a slagging off I guess… We can all see if things get a bit clearer in Part Two, in which I will list things that have got better and worse over the last few years.

A student has asked me for telephoning stuff tomorrow. Although none of you lot did, only time for one thing today so that means you get telephoning too… And here are the treats we have for you:

Answerphone messages worksheet with a nice game that involves recording their own voices (very very popular)

A worksheet I wrote in an attempt to practice emailing, telephoning and comparatives in a low level Elementary short course that needed to revise all those. Amazingly, it worked! Adapted from an idea in English File Elementary Teacher’s Book (highly recommended).

And at the other end, a telephoning and emailing pairwork worksheet I wrote for Upper Int and above students who use English everyday full of their most common mistakes and misunderstandings.

And more on the Telephoning Worksheets and Games page.

Hope that hasn’t made you too tired to answer the questions from readers below, because I must admit it’s had that effect on me and I won’t be able to help them until the weekend- so it’s up to you. Go on go on go on. Go on go on go on go on go on go on go on. Go on….

It’s all getting a bit “TEFLtastic with no irony intended” round here with all these fun and games I’m putting up. Maybe I’m too tired to even be sarcastic…

 Anyway, here is my latest attempt to make none of us fall asleep during Business English classes. I’ve slipped in lots of emailing vocab and have tackled some common Japanese mistakes such as confusing “memo” and “note”. It also includes the most important factor for any classroom speaking exercise, which is to give the other people a reason to listen- in this case to decide if they were successful in solving the problem. The board with rules is below. A link to a full version with rolecards is also given, but please note that this is for quite a high level class that have covered most of this language before so you might need to make a different version of the cards for your class.

Business Problems Mini Roleplays

Rules of the game
Shuffle the pack of cards and put them face down on the top left box. The first person takes the top card and chooses how they are going to communicate and who they are going to communicate with to solve the problem. The options are to:

·          Write an email

·          Send a text (= a text message= an SMS)

·          Phone someone

·          Pick a time when you know someone is not available and leave a phone message

·          Go and see the person and speak face to face

·          Leave someone a note (e.g. put a post it on their computer screen)

·          Write a memo for your whole team/ section/ department/ company to read

They should then tell their partners what they are going to say or write, or roleplay the conversation with someone. After that the other members of the group decide whether they managed to find a successful solution. If so, they can keep the card and score one point. If not, their card goes to the bottom of the pile. Play passes to the person on their right. The person with most cards when the teacher stops the game is the winner.

Useful language to play the game
“Who’s next?”= “Whose turn is it?” “It’s your turn”= “Take a card”

“Who are you going to contact (to solve the problem)?”

“How are you going to contact them?”

“What are you going to say/ write?”

“Who is going to play the other role?”

“I think that would work because…”

“I don’t think that would work/ I’m not sure that would work because…”

 “Let’s ask, shall we?”= “Shall we check with the teacher?”

“Who has the most cards?”/ “Congratulations, you are the winner”

How to make writing fun seems to be a “popular” problem, so here is a list of links I promised someone on the TEFL.net forums:

 All good TEFLtastic writing fun:

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-emailing-errors-team-game/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-megaform-interview-guessing-game-writing-and-speaking/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-chain-email-letter-writing-game-lower-level-version/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-chain-emails-letters-writing-game/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-email-or-telephone-guessing-game-lower-level-version/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-email-or-telephone-guessing-game/

www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/formal_letters_alex1.htm

www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=58082&docid=154413

www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=58025&docid=144605

And no so fun, but still useful:

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-add-the-punctuation-writing-cae/

www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-letter-punctuation-practice-pre-int/

Many apologies that most of it is not in easy to use formats, I suggest cutting and pasting into Word or Wordpad or equivalent, making sure the pages stop where the dotted lines are, and then printing

And one more mention for the last post on fun writing tasks:

www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/153