7/29/2019 Business English - Approaching a First Class With a New Group

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/business-english-approaching-a-first-class-with-a-new-group 1/4

Subscribe now: Individual|Institution|Register for free|Sign in

Number one for English language teachers

 Approaching a first class with a new group

By Melissa Martin

Type: Article

Melissa Martin's article o ffers tips on how to approac h teaching a first lesson with a new group.

 Hello ev ery bo dy. Can you pe rhaps help me with some go od ideas on ho w to start a ne w gro up, w hat to

do in the first lesson to create a lively atmosphere and if you have any go od ideas for 'getting to knowyou ' exercises. This is actually a pre-intermediate group I’m talking about.

I’ve been teaching for a while now, but first lessons are still a little nerv e-wracking. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to rec eive needs analyses in advance. Occasionally they are acc urate. What type of people will Imeet? How well can they use English? Can they actually speak English? Will there be any difficultcharac ters in the group? What are the students ex pect ing from me? What can I reasonably ex pect from my students? The students will also hav e similar questions about y ou.

My first lesson with a new group always has the following aims:

Break the ice. Y ou will be working with these students for a length of time. This is yo ur chance toput them at ease and get to know them a bit. Remember, they may not know their classmates yet

either.Language analy sis. Student A may have achieved 100 % on his written needs analysis, but how much c an he actually use? Conv ersely , does Student B’s mark of 40% mean that he’s a weak student,or did he just panic at the test?Needs analysis. This is especially important for ESP lessons. I specialize in Business English, wherethe first questions are always: ‘What do the students ac tually need English for?’ and ‘What are they having to (try to) do already?’

Breakin g th e ice

The students are usually curious about their teacher, espec ially if you are a native speaker and a'foreigner'. My first activ ity is usually a guessing game about me. I write my name in the centre o f the

 bo ard and then surround this with about six or seven names, p lac es, numbers and words connected to me.By asking closed questions, the students have to guess how these words are connected to me, e.g. “Were y ou bo rn in Durham?” The students are motiv ated by try ing to find out more about the ir teacher and withthe challenge of guessing the relevance o f all the terms. I try to make some o f the terms slightly ambiguous, e.g. ’40’ is my German shoe size, not my age and ’Queen’ has nothing to do with Elizabeth I I butit is my fa vourite band.

Inform al langu age analy sis

Once they ’ve so lved my puzzle, I give the students a few minutes to write their own, then put them intosmall groups to do the same ex erc ise again. This is a good opportunity for the students to get to know eac hother, which pro motes a good working atmosphere. I monitor the groups at this stage, interv eningocc asionally, but mostly listening to the language being used. This activity tests nearly ev ery tensestructure. I initially focus o n finding out if the students can actually do the task and then on how acc urately they can do it. Whilst engrossed in the task, the students will be using English naturally and thisis a far more accurate measure of their ability than a staged ’speaking test’. I also look at the groupdy namics: are certain groups working particularly well together? Is one person over-dominant in a group?Is this because of level differences or personality?

7/29/2019 Business English - Approaching a First Class With a New Group

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/business-english-approaching-a-first-class-with-a-new-group 2/4

Once the students have completed the ex ercise, I get them to r eport back to the rest of the c lass, tellingtheir classmates one interesting fact about someone in their group. I will have c ollected a few languageerrors whilst monitoring the groups, which I write on the board and get the class to try and correcttogether. I try to pick common erro rs so that several people c an benefit from the co rrections. I am alsointerested as to whether the students realize they have made an error – often students have a passiv eknowledge of grammatical structures which isn’t fully activ ated y et. The errors are kept anonymo us andthe students generally apprec iate this feedback.

This activ ity allows the students to get to know y ou and each other, which creates a good workingatmosphere for the c ourse. It c an also be used at nearly ev ery level and gives the students lots of scope to

show how well they can really communicate.

Needs analy sis

The next stage o f the lesson is a needs analysis. I giv e the students a framework with various questionsthey need to c onsider about their English language needs. Questions I hav e found particularly useful are:

 What do I n eed to do in English now?

I hav e found this far more effectiv e than asking for specific language areas. If the student needs to givepresentations in English, I know to include fluency and persuasive language in the co urse. If the studentneeds to telepho ne colleagues in English, I know to include role-plays, listening activities and surviv al

strategies.

 What m igh t I need to do in English in th e futu re?

Some students already know how their jobs and duties are likely to change in the future. This is also auseful question for students co nsidering a particular career.

 What do I find difficult in English ?

This question tends to introduc e the language areas the students feel they struggle with and can rev eal which of the four main skills y ou will need to c oncentrate on during the course.

 What don’t I want to do in this cou rse and wh y ?

This is actually a re markably rev ealing question. Some students who have n’t had English lessons sincetheir schoo l days hav e bad memories of dictations, being called in front of the class and humiliated, orcompleting endless gap-fill exercises with no practical implications. It is useful for a teac her to know aboutthese ex periences and to be able to assure the students that y our lessons will be different. Italso indicates whether a student has a fear of grammar, which leads on to a useful discussion on theimportance of accuracy ver sus fluency (an essay in itself) and how much the teacher should correct.

 What do I find interesting abou t learning En glish ?

It is always useful to know what your students enjoy about learning English! Maybe y ou can incorporatesome o f the ideas in future c lasses.

 What can I do to teac h m yself outside the class?

This is a natural opportunity to talk about the importance of homework, share vocabulary learning tipsand introduce the students to the wealth of English language resources av ailable locally and via theInternet.

The students complete the framework alone, then share the answers in pairs or small groups. This helpsthem clarify v ocabulary and finalize ideas before we all share together. I also ensure that they are indifferent groupings to the previous activity to ex periment with the group dy namics a little.

Finally, the stude nts feedbac k the results of these frameworks to the whole group. I clarify any unc learareas and use the information to write up course aims on the flipchart. This giv es the rest o f the course astructure as well as allowing the students to see what their co lleagues want and where their own wishes fitin with the course requirements. If the students know what to expec t from their co urse, they will be morecomfortable in lessons. This also avo ids potential situations later in the course where y ou may hav e to

ex plain to a dissatisfied student that yo u can’t do more sales role-plays in class because the other stude ntsare all engineers and don’t need sales training.

 All that r emains is to giv e the students their first ho mework activ ity , a mini essay entit led ‘My job fordummies’, where they have to ex plain their day-to-day activities in simple terms. This is a really useful

7/29/2019 Business English - Approaching a First Class With a New Group

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/business-english-approaching-a-first-class-with-a-new-group 3/4

Share 2

7/29/2019 Business English - Approaching a First Class With a New Group

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/business-english-approaching-a-first-class-with-a-new-group 4/4

I write down five sentence s about me and the students have to guess which statement is a lie. If Iknow the approx imate lev el of the group in advance I c an change my sentences to accommodatethat - for a more advance group I use a range of tenses for ex ample. My Irish name also allows me toteach them something cultural too - my lie is usually "My father was born in Scotland". And my other sentenc e normally c reates some discussion, too: "My favourite football player is.... and I think England will win the World Cup" nex t time.I then ask the students to do the same thing.

Molly | Thu, 20 Sep 201 2 8:14 am

Thank y ou for y our ideas - I'm going to try the method out with some 15 - and 1 6-year old (4º eso)students - I think it will help them to forget abo ut being too self-conscious to appor t anything to thelesson!Diana

Ev e | Thu, 20 Sep 201 2 6:29 am

I am going to adapt bits of this. I do not no my group size or lev els and they will all know each other!

Powered by  Webstruc ture .NET