Our first business English video series is complete!

 Business English, Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Jun 132015
 

What are they?

  • They take place in boardrooms, offices, corridors, restaurants, dorm rooms, online, on trains, planes, busses… name a location and they’ve probably happened there.
  • They generally last somewhere between 3 minutes and several days.
  • Participants might stand up, sit down, wear suits, jeans, pajamas, baseball hats, piercings etc and they generally range in age from around 15 -100 or so.
  • Participants might have power and status rankings of 0-100 that don’t necessarily correlate with their age.

The answer is business meetings, of course. And something interesting that we know from speech data is that business meetings are generally littered with small talk at any stage of the discussion, which can be about…  well, anything.

So all in all, business meetings are rather hard to pin down. But communicating successfully in meetings is crucial for most of my students so I wanted to have a stab at making a short series of ELT videos about them. I reasoned that there would probably be three things that would resonate with many learners…

  • Time would be limited
  • The discussion would be purposeful
  • Making yourself understood and understanding would be paramount.

We were able to shoot some of the scenes in the YouTube studios in NYC with a splendid cast of volunteers. I’m very grateful to them and here is the first in the series which is about time management…

And here’s the second one which is about making decisions:

And here’s the third and final one which is about understanding

Many thanks to our cast of stars: Michelle Kaplan, Breahne Dolan, Joy Chu and Kathy Fagan.
Check out more of their work here:
Michelle – All Ears English http://www.allearsenglish.com – a terrific podcast for English learners – great for advanced conversational English and IELTS preparation.
Kathy – English teachers will love Kathy’s reflections on ELT at her Free-Range ELT blog. Check it out here: http://www.freerangekef.blogspot.com
Breahne is model as well as an actress and you can find out more about her work here: https://www.facebook.com/BreahJadeModel

 Posted by at 3:52 pm

Worth and trustworthy

 Business English, Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Jun 032015
 

These words often come up in Business English classes, and I think they’re worth learning!
Here’s a video about them:

It’s available with a clickable transcript here.
Some possible discussion questions:
1. You need to sell your car. You might be able to get more money for it if you sell it privately, but is it worth the bother?
2. Is it worth paying more for vegetables that are labelled “organic”?
3. Which is more worthwhile:
a. learning the piano
b. learning a language
c. spending time with your family?
4. Your top sales person always arrives late and they’re disruptive in meetings. Is it worth making an issue over?
5. You’re buying a new washing machine/cell phone/car. Is it worth buying a service contract?
6. Your house is on fire and you can only save one thing. What’s worth most to you: your photographs, jewelry, pet? What?
7. Which is worth more? Time or money?

 Posted by at 7:27 am

Say or tell?

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  2 Responses »
May 272015
 

These verbs are always tricky for students so we made a video about them. But this video comes with a BIG BONUS! Over at Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat’s wonderful ‘English With A Twist’ blog she has taken our video, provided a text summary AND added more examples – really good illustrative examples.

As always, this video is available with a clickable transcript at our website but you’re going to want to check out Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat’s ‘English With A Twist’ blog post too. My business English students love Shanthi‘s blog. Make sure yours subscribe!

 Posted by at 2:05 pm

Verb + gerund or infinitive

 Video and tech  2 Responses »
Apr 302015
 

There are a few verbs which can be followed by either a gerund or infinitive but the meaning changes. One is the verb ‘try’. The meaning change here is pretty subtle – advanced level stuff – and its the subject of our latest video.

Another one is the verb ‘stop’ and there the meaning change is more pronounced. We made a video about that too a while back which you can find here:

Both videos are also available with clickable transcripts at our Simple English Videos website.

 Posted by at 10:31 am

Making suggestions and the verb ‘suggest’ (and a bit of ELF)

 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Apr 152015
 

‘Suggest’ is a performative verbs, so one of those verbs like ‘declare’, ‘order’ and ‘quit’ where we perform an action by saying it.

It can be tricky for English learners in a couple of ways. One issue is structure. There are a number of forms that can follow ‘suggest’, but also some that can’t. So, for example, we can suggest something to someone but we can’t suggest someone something.

The other issue is appropriacy. ‘I suggest…’ is marked in native speaker (NS) speech. It’s generally used in contexts where there’s a need to be clear and explicit. NSs are more likely to use forms like ‘How about…?’ or ‘Why don’t we…?’ to make run of the mill suggestions. But I don’t think that’s the case for English learners. I hear ‘I suggest…’ used with higher frequency in class conversations and here’s my theory on that…

English is used increasingly as a lingua franca because it happens to be the language most people share. In contexts where English is a second or third language for many users, there is a greater need to be explicit and clear. (There’s a lot of ELF research to back that up.) Performative verbs have a special role to play in clarity because they are explicit. Add to this the fact that languages change as they come into contact and I think we can expect to see the frequency of verbs like ‘suggest’ (and other performatives) rising. It’s natural that English will be adapted to meet the needs of its new users so ‘suggest’ is going to be an interesting verb to track for language change.

But I digress. Let me get back to our video. It addresses the issue of sentence structure, and we’ve also tried to demonstrate how NSs might use ‘suggest’. Essentially we’re trying to teach the pragmatics of ‘suggest’ here – the hidden meanings that go along with the word.

We were very lucky to have an all star cast helping us make this video. You can check out some of their other work here:
Rachel’s English: https://www.youtube.com/user/rachelsenglish
Jennifer ESL: https://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL
Jason R Levine (aka Fluency MC): https://www.youtube.com/user/collolearn
Kathy Fagan’s blog: http://www.freerangekef.blogspot.com

Hope you like it!

 Posted by at 2:30 pm

‘Lucky’, ‘happy’ and their tricky uncountable noun forms

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Apr 082015
 

The adjectives ‘lucky’ and ‘happy’ are problematic for speakers of Germanic languages who just have one word that covers both concepts. Other students may struggle with the noun forms as they are both uncountable. We hope this video will help solve the problems and put a smile on your students’ faces.

It should also be handy if you’re teaching a lesson on the topic of superstitions. Click here to see it on YouTube or view it with a clickable transcript on our Simple English Videos website here.

 Posted by at 11:59 am
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