Business English discussion question

This question was posted on a message board I like for football fans so it is authentic in the sense that it was asked by an American to other Americans he felt some kind of bond with:

Let me preface this by saying this is not me. One of the younger folks today got fired due to their response to a Manager at the firm for which we provide their commercial advertising campaign work. Supposedly, one of the managers there made a remark to him that he did not care for and rather than report it back to me or another leader of our team, they directly answered the client back by stating that they will never be spoken to that way again and there was a curse word or two used. The client complained to our project leader about it and the employee was confronted. It is company policy to be professional at all times and if something is said or done that is not appreciated, to report it to management and it will be taken care of, which normally it is. Basically, the employee stated that thery didn't trust that we would do anything and thus, they took action on their own. They were terminated immediately for insubordination.

Keep this in mind, from what I found out, what the client said was not harassing or illegal in nature, but it certainly was not nice, unprofessioanl and uncalled for. That being said, this firm does pay us a lot of money for our services and they are demanding. In the economy today, you definitely don't want to lose clients and thus, I figured our company was simply covering their asses as other bidders have inquired about the client. This person was a hard worker and produced good work and effort. So, I was not pleased that they were fired. I figured a warning or whatever would have been enough. Do you think my company went overboard? I know in the end, it's about protecting the company's pocket, but I'm not sure I like how our firm handled this one. And no, we're doing okay and were lucky to not have layoffs.

When elicitation goes wrong

Don’t know if it’s midnight feeds, old age or early onset Alzheimer’s, but I seem to be pausing for thought a lot more than usual in class recently. Unfortunately, I’ve got my students so well trained to be elicited from that they’ve been completing my sentences for me even when that wasn’t the intention!

I had been reacting against elicitation as sometimes patronising and often automatically used for no real purpose, but doing a classroom language course for teachers where I took it on myself to be a model of the kinds of classroom questions that I was talking about seems to have put me back at post-CELTA level. Better than monologues and/ or student silence but can be, and is probably being, overdone.

Was more amused than troubled by this development, but for a more serious look at elicitation you could look at Advantages and disadvantages of eliciting in the EFL classroom. Alternatively, you could see this as a continuation of my Most Overrated Things in TEFL series.

O VALOR DE Mr. WONG NO ENSINO

O Mr Wong é um utilitario com grande importancia no ensino das linguas.

È um utilitario que permite pesquisar e criar espaços intlectivo e interactivos para a aprendizagem.

É importante que o professor saiba explorá-lo e aplicá-lo na actividade de docencia.

Os alunos devem ser capazes de buscar informções e transformá-las em riquezas.

My view on the role of material in promoting communicative Language use

Teaching language is a very complex process. Several methods can be used to attain the proposed teaching target. But the approach of Communicative Language teaching has been very useful to learners when applied efficiently.

Two weeks ago, I experienced amazing results in my students of Technologies of Information and Communication at IMIB-

I introduced in the language classroom, some computing devices and some multimedia devices like IPod, videogame and camera.

When I requested the students to present the use of one of those devices in their everyday life, it provoked a great discussion among them. Even those students who had never showed interest in participating in the classroom lessons before, they were argued to do.

It was exactly because the material aroused great interest of students and they become motivated with

My experience in English Language teaching shows that the use of materials in promoting communicative language will be profitable if the teacher is able to select and professionally apply them to the students’ specific purposes.

The role of materials in language teaching

What is the role of materials in language teaching?

One of the main ways in which the learners can attain the ability to speak effectively is the use of materials.

Materials include textbooks, pictures, video and audio tapes, computer software, television programs, and visual aids. They influence play a great role in understanding the content and applying the procedures of teaching and learning.

This should provide learners with a degree of communicative capacity so that they have something interesting to say and an opinion to share with the partner.

Materials make part to five important components of language instruction.

According to Allwright (1990), materials should teach students to learn, they should be resource books for ideas and activities for instruction/learning, and they should give teachers rationales for what they do. From Allwright's point of view, textbooks are too inflexible to be used directly as instructional material.[i]

We can profit from Allwrigth idea that, textbooks constitute resources for developing the language teaching and learning process.

When he says that they are inflexible to be used directly as instructional material, I think he means that teachers are obliged to follow the commodity of books they are using. That is, Students learn what is presented in the textbook, and the way the textbook present’s material is the way students learn it.

However, in CLT, the most important is to profit the content the book gives as to be adapted in real language communication.

Let’s take as example the content we find in the ‘Student’s book’ New Headway- English Course, John and Liz Soares. On the unit 2- The way we live, You can find pictures with very different information, depending on the real students context.

The application of the content found in the text should be adaptable in order for the students be able to speak or communicate in the real situation.

So, textbooks can be inflexible, but usable if we want to apply them in communicative approach as to attain the purpose.

It is the teacher's responsibility to check whether the materials to be used in the learning process are working well for learners and to adapt them if they are not.

I think that, materials provide an opportunity for learners to reflect on topics of interest to them, to express opinions and listen to the views of others.

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[i] . Allwright, R. L. (1990). What do we want teaching materials for? In R. Rossner and R. Bolitho, (Eds.), Currents in language teaching. Oxford University Press.