‘Why are we doing this?’ – an informal teacher-learner contract

Task-based learning in business English training is a highly effective method but it can be a big ask. The key to success from the outset is managing expectations and explaining the way of working. The idea of ‘learning by doing’ may be new to some students – there may be those who have been accustomed to more traditional methods; there may be others who have different expectations of teachers. There may also be students who come from cultures where the role of the learner has been traditionally more passive, less outspoken.

During the training students may find themselves outside their comfort zone, and face disorientating dilemmas – they are being encouraged to carry out tasks using input and experience from their true self, yet their output may reflect their limited self. Their language errors will be exposed, and revisited and analysed, during the subsequent feedback stage. It is important therefore that students are well prepared so that they have the confidence and support to complete the tasks, and are also comfortable with the feedback and correction. They should never have to ask: ‘Why are we doing this?’

So at the start of any training course it is a good idea to set up an informal contract for working together that can be agreed by the teacher and the learner. This is not something written, nor is it something set in stone, it is just some flexible guidelines that remain ongoing and can be revisited and reappraised by both parties. There are ‘no rules of engagement’ as such, but here are some points that could be discussed with students:

A needs analysis is usually conducted at the start of a course, and this is an opportunity for business students to talk about what they need their English for and what they need to focus on. However, needs analysis should be an ongoing process throughout the course, because priorities may change as students discover strengths and weaknesses in their English that they may not have been aware of. The dynamic nature of task-based learning cycles, and the idea of a spiral curriculum that they embody, means that changing perceptions of needs can be catered for – and this should be pointed out to students at the outset.

Students should be acquainted with the idea of group work in class. Some may be familiar with the idea of language training as being interactive, whereas others may not. Explain that some activities involve the whole class as one group, while others require that small groups are formed. The groups will also get changed around to optimize speaking opportunities. Group dynamics are an essential part of language training for students just as they are a key challenge to classroom management for teachers.

It is important to point out the teacher’s role in task-based learning. Among other things this will include – introducing topics, facilitating discussion frameworks, setting up tasks, monitoring tasks, taking language notes, and giving language feedback. Once students become familiar with the role of the teacher in the process, and in the TBL cycle, they will feel that they are in a professional and supportive classroom. They can approach their own part in the process with the confidence and the motivation to succeed.

When students have completed a task they will want to know how they performed, and what they need to know in order to improve their performance. The feedback stage is at the heart of task-based learning, and normally takes place immediately after the task (so that correction is fresh, while the errors are still ‘warm’) although some points may lend themselves to further work as a worksheet or language clinic. I have always found that students like feedback and correction, once some basic rules have been explained and agreed. Feedback should be timely, supportive, challenging, solution-focused, and illuminated with clear examples. There is no real need to distinguish between positive and negative feedback, anything that helps students improve their English has value.

Another point worth raising with students is the dynamic nature of the TBL classroom. Some students may have been used to the static seating arrangements of a schoolroom or lecture hall. For example, from my own experience in German universities the room layout is very formal and linear, and students sit behind regimented rows of tables – it is quite difficult (at first) to get them to move! However, in TBL the scenarios are constantly changing and the classroom has to play host to meetings, interviews, telephoning, presentations and other things besides, so it needs to be a classroom that can ‘shape-shift’ when required. Sometimes good classroom management comes down to the quick and efficient moving of tables and chairs.

In addition to carrying out tasks and being involved in simulations, students may be asked to take part in critical moments training which requires them to do things suddenly and spontaneously. Again, this may be new to students and especially challenging to those who (perhaps for cultural or personal reasons) may be unsure about how to act when they find themselves ‘in the spotlight’. These exercises are effective for practising quick, informal exchanges and developing fluency in a range of situations. However they should not be brought into the course too early; better to introduce them once there is a good level of trust within the group.

Finally, it is useful to discuss with students what it means to be an independent learner, what is expected of them and what they can expect from the teacher in terms of support. Depending on their background and experience, some students will already have acquired the skills necessary to achieve learner autonomy while others may not. It is important to suggest ways in which task-based learning can fit into a broader approach to language development, especially in the absence of more traditional materials such as textbooks and coursebooks.

Once the informal contract for working together has been set up, the training can proceed within a mutually agreed framework that allows for consultation, discussion and tweaking along the way. In essence, it creates a professional and supportive atmosphere along the lines of the familiar adage: ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’.

The hobgoblins are back! Or rather, they never went away

I have already mentioned hobgoblins in an earlier post – those unintended faux pas to which our students are prone at those critical moments when they would like their English to be at its best, its most professional, its most serious. I refer to them as ‘unintentionally hilarious’ but of course hobgoblins should never be regarded as a matter for levity; it behoves us in our role as professional language trainers to keep a straight face, a poker face, and deal with these errors just as we deal with every other. Our students expect nothing less.

We must be constantly alert, therefore, and as with any other category of error we should be looking into Hobgoblin Analysis™ and searching for clues and patterns so that we can help our students to avoid situations that might lead to an eyebrow being inappropriately raised in mirth. So I have been weeding some fresh hobgoblins out of my language notes, and casting an analytical eye. What, if anything, can be deduced?

This first group (they weren’t a group, but I have grouped them together) are interesting in the following respect – in each case, the sentence is (more or less) correct but the last word is wrong. The hobgoblin comes at the end. What effect is that?

“We have increased our production capacity and now we are searching a large place for our stockings.”

“We have checked the production line carefully and so far we find no deviants.”

“Ernst has a lot of technical skills, because of his different experience. He is able to work with metal (drilling, milling, grinding and bending), and has knowledge in vanishing.”

“When he stopped work, he was travelling in India and China. Now his home is full of strange antics.”

“When I have made a salad I serve it with a simple sauce, made from olive oil and vineyard.”

Is there a linguistic term for this, in the annals – terminal glitch, final erratum, snaggle-end? Another thing I notice is that the examples here are all nouns (or gerunds). That’s interesting, because when I make mistakes at the end of sentences in German they are invariably verbs. Anyway, speaking of verbs, one thing we know is that every sentence needs a verb and if the verb in a sentence is wrong, that’s big trouble. Here are some examples.

“Some of the sales team are acting in front of the customers, and the others are resting in their offices.”

(Practising appointments on the telephone): ‘Could you spoil that for me?’

“In my spare hours I have dabbled widely, mostly in literature, and in this way I am substantiated.”

No pattern seems to emerge here, but that could be that the sample is too small. What we do note, however, is that hobgoblins come in many forms and sow a strange variety of tares in otherwise tidy grammatical seedbeds. Those two incorrect verbs in the first example could well be false friends. The second example is simple mispronunciation, perhaps, or word confusion brought on by the stress of real time telephoning practice. The final one, exacerbated by its hobgoblinesque veering of register, suggests the injudicious use of an electronic translator.

Anyway, if there are clues and patterns to be teased out, and a taxonomy of hobgoblins to be established, where should we situate the following examples? And, perhaps on a more serious note, how should we give feedback to these learners without exposing them to the titters of their classmates?

“From my work in this company I was able to enlarge my knowledge of international organisations. During the six months I also experienced some personal enlargement.”

“A lot of people in the media have said that Vladimir Putin is looking younger because he is becoming sugary on his face.”

“We are trying to reduce the total number of blue-colour workers in our production plant.”

That last one may conjure up the image of a factory that employs Smurfs, but we must banish such frivolous thoughts while we are giving feedback and focusing on the clarity of vowels. In worse cases, a hobgoblin may be stalking even the very best-intentioned and sincerest of messages. Recently I was off work with the flu, and when I got back to my office I found an email waiting for me. It was from my students:

“We are glad you are feeling better, and sincerely hope that your influence has gone.”

Many of the hobgoblins in my ever-expanding collection have been harvested from language notes taken in class, and from written examples in essays and reports, and from student CVs that I have been asked to check. Occasionally one will pop up during a direct spoken exchange; these are easier to smite on the spot.

“I will not be able to come to class next week as I will be going to Hollywood with my family.”

“You’re going to Hollywood?”

“Yes, in Majorca.”

Finally, for now at least, one that I experienced a long time ago that shows me how a hobgoblin can remain long after other memories of the teaching and learning have faded. Like a bug left on your hard disk. About twenty years ago I was teaching a group of bank managers from Perm (Russia) and at the end of the course the leader of the group extended me a kind invitation to his country:

“Tom, you must visit us, welcome to Perm.”

“That’s very kind, thank you.”

“Really, you will enjoy it. You can ski. And you can go in the forest and shoot Eccles.”

So it is then, that armed with a straight face we continue in our struggle against this impish interference. If you have a hobgoblin or two that you’d like to share, please add them in the ‘comments’ section below. Who knows, maybe together we can create the ultimate Hobgoblin Archive.

Discussion frameworks: sowing seeds and harvesting language

As demonstrated in our take on task-based learning in business English, the term framework is used to refer to a discussion in which key language is elicited for subsequent tasks. The aim of the framework is to initiate free and spontaneous speaking but, as the word suggests, there are certain structural elements applied to the exercise too.

Frameworks have the advantage of being able to generate a lot of language very quickly around a specific topic. To use a gardening analogy, the teacher sows the seeds, helps the ideas to germinate in fertile ground, and then harvests what comes back. This harvest consists of words and phrases called out by the students, written up on the board, and then discussed together.

No materials are needed for this, apart from a whiteboard and a pen. As with so many elements of task-based learning, it is the students themselves who will provide the resources and the teacher who will be working in the role of facilitator.

So, using a tried-and-tested example from our StartUp Enterprise simulation, let me go through the stages of the kick-off framework from the first session that we do with the students. The teacher initiates the discussion by writing a prompt in the centre of the board. In this case it is the three words ‘Starting a Company’.

 

 The students are then asked to consider what an entrepreneur might need in order to start up a new business. The teacher asks them to note down as many words as they can, they will be given a few minutes for this and can either work on their own or with others in their group (they will already have been put into small ‘company sized’ groups). When the time is up, the teacher asks students to call out words at random, and starts writing them up on the board to form a simple diagram.

 

I sometimes notice with activities like this that students enjoy trying to supply words from the floor faster than I can write them up. This can serve as a useful ice-breaker, especially if you are working with people from cultures where it is not usual to shout out information in class. You can introduce some useful spontaneous English such as ‘Hang on!’ and ‘Slow down!’ and ‘Could you repeat that?’ It is also worth noting that if you are communicating with your learners in this way, while writing on the board, they won’t mind that you have turned your back to them. Trying to face students while simultaneously jotting words hastily is a recipe for messy boardwork.

As the framework develops, and while students are discussing the various elements of the topic, the teacher can correct and reformulate and add further words and phrases as necessary. In situations where there are two teachers working in tandem, one can harvest the words from the room while the other is writing them up on the board. It is important to present language clearly and simply especially if working with a new and unfamiliar group of people. Avoid writing up too much, as this can lead to a very ‘busy’ board that may be difficult for students to interpret. After about ten minutes a typical board with emerging language might look like this (click on it to enlarge) :

 

As the first suggestions are likely to be nouns (‘things that an entrepreneur needs’), the teacher can then ask for suitable adjectives and verbs that might go with the nouns. As shown above, a different colour can be used for collocations and fixed expressions, or to highlight other aspects of grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. It is important to check that students are noting down new language in their personal language files, but ideally the language that has emerged during the discussion framework will also be left on the board for reference during the task phase that follows.

Task-based learning and the art of conversation

The term ‘conversation class’ is used rather a lot in ELT; I notice that many language schools offer such classes as an integral part of their courses and I sometimes wonder what they mean exactly. The problem with the word conversation when used as a language teaching term is that it is imprecise, and open to many interpretations. To some it may mean fluency practice (controlled or otherwise), to others it may mean practising set-piece small talk and socializing. It is also variously used to mean interviewing in pairs, carrying out role-plays, or working with role-cards. And the ubiquitous one-to-one conversation class.

So maybe, in our profession at least, it has become a multi-purpose word synonymous with ‘speaking’. One reason that the idea of conversation classes is popular and enduring could be that students say (for example at the needs analysis interview) that one of their aims is to be able to hold a conversation in English. This is understandable, what they usually mean is that they want to improve their fluency and confidence in speaking and understanding in any given situation. They may also imply that they don’t want too much of that dull grammar work that put them off English back in their school days. ‘We never got a chance to speak’ they often complain.

So, lots of speaking activities then. And lots of opportunities for correction, feedback, vocabulary building and language extension, pronunciation work, and then more speaking activities. All this is at the heart of any task-based language course, but there must be more than just conversation going on if learning is to be achieved. The speaking activities that I work with, in the TBL context, have to be set up beforehand with preparation and input so that the students have a clear idea of the aim. The thing about conversation is that it can often be aimless.

Conversation is something we all do in our L1, it is after all the most basic form of speech exchange, and it is something very fluid and rambling and unstructured, as well as unplanned. We refer to falling into conversation, slipping into conversation, getting into conversation, being drawn into conversation, or even feeling that we have to make conversation – but we don’t usually plan conversations and we certainly don’t set them up in advance for others to engage in.

Let us consider a typical conversation that might arise (spring up, come about, emerge, take place) without any priming or preparation or forethought. In this informal exchange, at a language school, two teachers are in the common room standing by the coffee machine:

Anna:         Hi Bill, waiting for the coffee again I see.

Bill:            Yes. This thing, honestly. It’s on its last legs.

Anna:         We’re supposed to be getting a new one, aren’t we?

Bill:            So they say.

Anna:         Who knows, we might get one of those fancy capsule thingies.

Bill:            You mean a Nespresso? I don’t want little blobby cupfuls all day thank you!

Anna:         They do big frothy ones too. Haven’t you seen them on telly?

Bill:            Are we talking George Clooney and the office girl?

Anna:         Ooh yes, gorgeous George. As if he gets his own coffee though!

Bill:            And that girl is young enough to be his daughter.

Anna:         Oh come on, we all go for that alpha male charm.

Bill:            Sugar daddy charm more like.

Anna:        Anyway, the whole point is that she’s more interested in coffee.

Bill:            Oh yes! ‘Nespresso – what else?’ To think they pay people to write that stuff.

Anna:        Copywriters? Are they on good money, d’you reckon?

Bill:            I expect so… compared to what we’re working for. Ah, look, coffee’s done.

Anna:        At last. Get the cups then!

This kind of conversation doesn’t necessarily go anywhere but it serves to pass the time between the colleagues while they wait for the coffee to run through the filter. It fills a space, it touches base, there is an element of casual banter. It is easy and familiar but the teachers would be unlikely to speak like that to their students in class, and they would probably be very surprised if the students produced anything like it during a lesson. Indeed, such an everyday conversation would be very difficult to reproduce under classroom conditions, and even if it could there would be little point in teaching in language such as on its last legs and sugar daddy charm.

I originally had ‘conversation’ in the title but then changed it to ‘the art of conversation’ because I was amused by the thought of the same scenario in the common room with the dysfunctional coffee machine but with these two characters waiting:

          

I imagined something very different from the everyday chattering, nattering, chin-wagging, time-filling, shooting-the-breeze that we usually refer to as conversation. Alas, these days the art of conversation is…  well, according to various corpora that I consulted the most common words associated with the term are lost, dying and dead. But then maybe we have come to see this ‘art’ idea somewhat facetiously anyway:

< Scene 1 – In a language school, not a stone’s throw from the Brighton seafront, two figures are found together in an ill-lit recess of the teachers’ common-room >

Oscar:  Noël, my dear fellow, is it you at this ungodly hour… in need of strong coffee, I’ll wager!

Noël:  Ah, perspicacious boy. Mind you, I’m not a heavy drinker; I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

Oscar:  Sweet Dionysius! The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. I can resist everything but temptation. Job getting you down?

Noël: <sighing like furnace>  People are wrong when they say teaching is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That’s what’s wrong with it.

Oscar:  I always say – Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Noël:  Yes you do always say that, Oscar. You are so very clever.

Oscar:  Why, I’m so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

Noël:  Quite. Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade. Anyway I can’t wait any longer for this confounded machine! <flounces out>

Oscar:  Goodbye dear! <whispered aside>  Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

As far as I know neither of those great conversationalists ever really tried their hand at English teaching. Imagine the Teacher Talking Time issues, for one thing. But if they had, I dare say they would not have got far with their Art of Conversation classes. The idea of getting students to produce a seamless succession of drawing-room quips, ripostes and asides would be entirely unrealistic. And not very useful – it would surely come under the banner of ENSP (English for No Specific Purpose).

I imagine it must be almost as difficult to create any ‘authentic’ conversation, with its switches of register, turn-taking conventions, automatic patterns, pauses, overlaps, stylistic elements and flights of anecdote. Getting conversation to happen in a classroom is rather akin to getting a shower of rain to happen in a laboratory. Even if it does happen, how do teachers set up and monitor that conversation and how do they give language feedback? Or is the aim, in what can be a fairly aimless activity, simply to build fluency?

What is uncontroversial, and incontrovertible, is that in order to learn to speak a language our students need a lot of practice. If at the end of a course they still complain ‘We didn’t speak enough’ then clearly there is something amiss. And if the classroom is not the ideal place for truly authentic speaking events then surely it’s up to us as teachers to make the speaking activities we do set up as valuable and meaningful as possible. We have to prepare our students for speaking, giving them clear instructions and plenty of support, then monitor and record during the task phase, and provide lots of feedback and correction afterwards.

These speaking activities could be short, such as those described in the one-minute critical moments scenarios, or longer discussions around a framework on a specific topic, or simulations where there is a specific outcome to be achieved. As a rule of thumb, I would suggest a maximum time of fifteen to twenty minutes for any speaking task. I know that from my teacher’s perspective I can’t maintain the monitoring and note-taking phase for longer than that, and likewise a short speaking activity with a clear aim will produce plenty of language feedback. I prefer the ‘little and often’ approach, where students get ample opportunity to try things out, get the feedback and then have another go, armed with more language and more confidence, and do it better. Which is learning, after all.

Accuracy and fluency: keeping a balance

Here is a case of extremes: On the one hand, you have students who are obsessed with accuracy and terrified of making mistakes and losing face. So they try to say as little as possible, and what they do say tends to sound stilted and over-rehearsed. On the other hand, you have students who are so eager to communicate their ideas that they rattle on without pausing to check whether they are being understood and, seemingly oblivious to any interventions, make the same errors over and over again.

Well, hopefully we don’t get too many ‘extreme’ students, but such characterizations can serve to highlight the need to maintain a balance between accuracy and fluency in the language learning process. So how is this balance best achieved? This is a question that we could usefully put to our students. I believe that it is important to involve students in all aspects of the learning process, so that they are clear about what they are being asked to do and why. This is particularly important in task-based learning, where successful outcomes rely on student participation and enthusiasm.

Here then is a quick, practical way to discuss the issue. The first step is to draw a simple shape on the whiteboard and ask the students to call out what they think it is.

They will probably all know words like triangle or pyramid, as these are fairly universal. (If they don’t, make a note to include language work on shapes in a future lesson!) Now add a further detail to the shape and again ask them to say what they think it is.

At this point, especially if you teach engineers or architects, you may get a few tech-savvy students calling out lever, fulcrum or pivot point. More likely, though, students will recognize something from their childhoods for this is another universally recognised device, as ubiquitous a playground favourite as hopscotch and skipping ropes. They may not know the English word – a German student might say ‘Yes, it’s a Wippe!’ and a French student might say ‘That’s a tape-cul!’ – so you can give them the English word seesaw. Or even teeter-totter. More importantly, you can then ask them how a seesaw works, and what is required to keep it going efficiently.

‘At the very least you need two people, one on each end and ideally of the same size or weight, who must cooperate in order to keep the up and down motion going’. Ask students what happens when a large person is on one side and a small person is on the other side, and most of them will have some childhood recollection of being helplessly suspended at the wrong end! This situation can also be shown on the whiteboard.

Now you can introduce the idea of one ‘seesaw-er’ being accuracy and the other being fluency, and ask them to come up with suggestions as to what their English would be like if (say) the heavy side was accuracy and the light side was fluency. They might say things like ‘I want to be precise, so I find it difficult to speak’ or ‘I spend a lot of time thinking about the correct grammar’. If you ask them to think about the reverse situation, where fluency was dominant, they might say ‘I feel confident in speaking, but I think I am translating too freely’.  Thus without indulging in too much talk about language acquisition theory or methodology you can impress upon students the importance of keeping a balance between accuracy and fluency – or better still, as the seesaw-ers, they will work it out for themselves. The final seesaw on the board might therefore look like this, with a few added points on either side of the balancing act.

In task-based learning, the students will have opportunities during the task phase to practise fluency in a range of business situations such as meetings and presentations as well as fluency in writing tasks such as reports and business letters. The role of the teacher is to set up the task in such a way that the students are clear about what they have to do to complete the task and are comfortable using their English in order to do so. When each task is completed, there is a feedback phase in which the language focus turns to accuracy – the teacher has noted down points to work on and can fill in gaps and give correction accordingly. Specific aspects of grammar and pronunciation can be dealt with in a structured way, using the board and checking that students have understood and noted corrections. This diagram shows the task-based learning cycle with the teacher’s input at each stage as well as what students contribute and learn from the process.

Harking back to an earlier post about whether teachers should switch brains in mid-lesson it is tempting to revisit the metaphor and suggest that in maintaining this balance between accuracy and fluency students also need to be working with both sides of their brains, albeit not at the same time. If we consider again the bicameral brain we can see some interesting parallels with the accuracy-fluency dichotomy.

The left-brain group of functions seem to suggest attention to structural detail and accuracy (indeed Broca’s Area, the part of the brain associated with language, is located in the left-brain hemisphere) whereas the right-brain functions suggest interactive skills and a spontaneous approach to communication based on intuition and feelings. If we were to split the language student’s brain and put it on to our seesaw we might have something like this:

No wonder language learning is sometimes described as headache-inducing! But while the metaphor may not entirely hold (inasmuch as there are too many overlaps and too many unsolved puzzles in such a fluid area of study as second language acquisition) it is important to be on top of these two aspects of language learning and to ensure that our students are equipped to play them off against each other to maximum effect.

Using telephoning micro-simulations to conquer fear

In his poem Do not Pick up the Telephone (1980), Ted Hughes refers to the telephone as a detonator, likely to explode if you touch it: ‘A flame from the last day will come lashing out from the telephone.’ Well, whatever it was that he had against the humble device, the ‘demon phone’ idea is an interesting one, and one that fits rather well with critical moments training.

Why? Because for learners of business English one of the most difficult tasks they have to master is conducting a conversation on the telephone in the target language. Their professional credibility could be literally ‘on the line’ if they were to take a call and find themselves suddenly having to use English. Picking up the telephone can be a critical moment indeed. In an increasingly international business environment, where the default language is likely to be English, it is important that confidence and competence on the phone should be acquired as a matter of priority.

Although the technology of the telephone has changed dramatically since its invention – most notably in the last decade, when the phone moved from the office desk and the hall table into the pocket or handbag – the language conventions, procedures and rituals involved in using it effectively have gone largely unchanged.

 

On the phone we rely on real-time language skills of speaking and listening, and highly developed communication skills such as getting through, active listening, interrupting, asking for repetition, clarifying, and closing. These complex codes and signals become second nature in L1 (children are attracted to telephones from a very early age) but can present considerable challenges for L2 learners. They can find themselves suddenly very exposed, bereft of visual contact and all the non-verbal behaviours that they employ to fill in for missing words. The fear can be real, and the disorienting dilemmas deeply felt; they will need lots of support from the outset.

In fact, telephoning scenarios are ideal for a critical moments approach. In keeping with the tenets of task-based learning, the exercises can be set up using the students’ suggestions – most people will have ready examples to call upon, business phone calls tend to be fairly short and ritualized – and much of the language they will need to perform the tasks comes in the form of very teachable chunks. So the tasks are based on familiar situations, the exchanges on the phone can be very brief, and the feedback can be given using audio playback and correction from the teacher. Then the students are ready to have another go. Input – Task – Feedback – Follow-up. No materials are needed, because the scenarios are created by the students themselves; however, a phrase sheet with some everyday telephone gambits can be a useful support.

 

The key to effective ‘fast turnaround’ telephoning activities in the classroom is to use a good, simple telephone line simulator that is easy to set up and that won’t let you down. All technology in the classroom has the potential to cause distraction or produce gremlins! The phone kit that I use (see above) is over ten years old and consists of two phones and a cassette recorder that are connected via a Freelink line simulator. When one student picks up the phone, the other handset rings and a connection is made. While the task is running, the teacher can record the call.

It is important that the students are in different rooms during the calls, hence the lengths of cable in my kit bag (there are cordless kits available which record onto MP3, but they are expensive and I have found the quality of playback inferior, so for now I’m sticking to tried-and-tested cassette recordings*). After the call has been made, the ‘outside’ student returns to the room, and the ensuing feedback session using the freshly recorded language involves everyone. The students gain confidence from hearing each other performing, completing calls and overcoming genuine communication gaps.

As with all critical moments training, ‘little and often’ should be the rule. Given time and practice, and plenty of support, students will overcome their fear of the phone and start to gain confidence as they become familiar with handling the high surrender chunks that work best for them – ‘This is Alain speaking’/’Hold on, I’ll check my diary’/’Could you repeat that please’/Thanks for calling’. Because the focus is on initiating calls or responding to incoming calls in real time, and developing spontaneity (as with all critical moments), the content is less important so there is no need for long digressive conversations. Some typical business phone calls could be:

·       Making an appointment

·       Cancelling an appointment, re-scheduling

·       Ordering a taxi, giving simple directions

·       Confirming that an order is ready for collection

Although it is always best to get students’ suggestions to work with, avoid examples that are too complex or content-laden. It could be the case that a student, when asked to give an example of phone calls at work, launches into a long explanation of how they have to discuss anomalies in product safety specifications with their US counterparts in Baton Rouge. This might be a very interesting topic for discussion elsewhere, but it is not the stuff of critical moments! Simple exchanges on the phone, lasting a minute at most, will not only banish fear of the phone but also furnish students with an appetite for spontaneity, risk-taking and thinking on their feet in English. This can happen very quickly, and after a few calls the students will be seeing and hearing the results for themselves. And business English students like results.

*If anyone has come across a cheap, lightweight cordless telephone simulator kit with high-quality audio playback, please let me know. Or any techy inventor types – there’s a niche market just waiting to be filled!

Critical moments: disorienting dilemmas and confidence-building

Transformative learning (TL) has been around since 1975 when Jack Mezirow, now Emeritus Professor of Adult and Continuing Education at Columbia University, first expanded on ideas that teaching in adult education should be concerned with promoting change, and that educators should challenge learners to critically question the integrity of their deeply-held assumptions about how they relate to the world around them.

 

A lot has been written about transformative learning since then and I’m sure that the research will continue, as this is a still a theory in progress. Mezirow believes that TL usually results from a disorienting dilemma, which is triggered by a life crisis or major life transition, although it may also result from an accumulation of transformations in ‘meaning schemes’ over a period of time. Less dramatic predicaments, such as those created by a teacher, also promote transformation.

One of the disorienting dilemmas that has been applied to second language acquisition (as distinct from the naturally occurring process of first learning to speak) is the fact that because identity and the ability to communicate are embedded in language, learners often experience feelings of vulnerability and anxiety associated with the disparity between the true self and the limited self as revealed in the second language. ‘Losing face in front of others’ might be one example of this.

I imagine there are many ways of working with this dilemma, and any number of outcomes for the learner, but the one that I’m interested in here is critical moments exercises. These are very short micro-simulations which participants create for themselves from their own experience (true self), so the content is entirely within their control. Nevertheless they are aware that they will have to be someone else for the duration of the task – their limited English-speaking self.

Success in this activity can take any number of forms, depending on any number of variables. It might be no more than producing a few chunks of effective communication. Sometimes task completion is enough. The simulations need to be kept short and the idea of ‘Just a Minute’ can be introduced because many speakers recognise that ‘losing face’ often happens right at the start.

To see how this works, let us consider a typical ‘critical moments’ session:

Our three Business English students (let’s call them Raymond, Nadine and Stefan) are managers working for a German Mittelstand (SME), and since the company is becoming increasingly international they are required to meet visitors from other countries and welcome them and show them around in English. This need is arising more and more in companies where ten years ago most of the contact would have been with other German speakers.

So, it’s a small group and that means that things can be kept snappy and everyone will have plenty of speaking time. The trainer starts off the session by asking the managers to come up with some ‘first contact’ scenarios that could be used to practise spontaneous English. Keeping things simple, the three of them agree that (although they work in different departments) they would all find themselves having to greet a foreign visitor, make the person feel welcome and at ease, and engage in small talk before getting down to business. This person might be a native speaker of English or, like them, be using English as the lingua franca of international business. Either way, the emphasis in these initial exchanges should be on short, simple chunks of language that are easy to practice and memorise – the KISS principle. The trainer might elicit some possible examples from the students, or give them a list in the form of a prepared handout of ‘high surrender chunks’ for greeting a visitor.

The next step is to set up the task, and this can be done easily since the training room is very like an office. The instructions are simple – for the first run-through, Nadine will be the visitor, so she’ll go out and then knock on the door. Once inside the room, she will be greeted by Raymond and then introduced to Stefan, his colleague. While all this is happening the trainer will step back a little, to observe and take language notes. Now they are ready to start; this is a situation that is very familiar to them in their everyday professional roles (true self) but now they have to do it in English (limited self).

The conversation (recorded by the fast-moving pen of the trainer) goes like this:

<knocks>

R: Come in please.

N: Hello, my name is Nadine Kessler.

R: How do you do. <shake hands>

N: Pleased to meet you.

R: Did you have a nice journey?

N: Yes, thank you. The flight was OK.

R: That’s fine. Let me introduce you my colleague.

N: Pleased to meet you. <shakes hands>

S: Nice to meet you. My name is Stefan Ritzmann. Please, sit down.

N: Thank you.

S: Is it your first time in Germany?

N: Yes.

S: Well, as you see, the sun is always shining! <laughs>

R: I have the plan for your visit. For seeing the factory.

N: Oh, that’s interesting.

Trainer: OK… stop there!

The trainer chooses that moment to stop because the unsettling early exchanges have led the talk on to more familiar ground. (Were the simulation allowed to continue, the language emphasis would switch to schedules, factory layout and production processes.) After that first minute, the critical moments have passed. Now that time has been called, the students relax and reflect on the activity, and discuss various points together. ‘Raymond, you didn’t give your name. I don’t know who you are!’ Raymond knows that: ‘It was too fast, I couldn’t find the right words!’ He laughs, he is in a supportive environment, any ‘losing face’ is a constructive part of the learning process. Better it happens here than in front of the client! The trainer picks out a few language points for feedback, and suggests some specific chunks that might make the exchanges a little more natural, and then the students are ready to repeat the task. ‘OK, this time you can be the visitor, Raymond. And don’t forget your name!’

Because the simulations are very short everyone can be involved, the task can be repeated as required, and the degree of challenge can be varied. Introducing and then extending information gaps can make the speaking situations more authentic. Step by step the learners’ confidence grows, as they get the feeling that their English-speaking self is able to know more of the things that their true self knows. And the language trainer is the catalyst in this process of transformation.