TBLT Lesson – Small Talk

I didn’t freak out the same way as I did last year when I was going to teach the High-Int Office English class how to welcome visitors and do small talk. This lesson was going to be for the Low-Int Office English course, which my institution runs this semester, and I had been asked again …

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Office English 9 and 10 – Finito!

Lesson idea credit: Paul Walsh @josipa74 at http://decentralisedteachingandlearning.com/office-space/ Although the course finished about a month ago, I only got time to add the write up now. I’ll try to keep my writing less verbose, because my student, who also happens to read my blog, pointed out that the articles tend to be a bit long. …

Office English 8 – Members of the EP, Ungulates, and Other Translation Hurdles

This module had two main aims -  firstly, to help students learn how to edit their own written texts, and secondly, to try a bit of Czech to English translation. Over the Office English course, I have collected quite a few written assignments submitted by the students and decided to run a lesson on editing. …

Office English 7 – Contracts

It’s been a long day today as I found myself running between the Czech examination room (an important day for my Czech students), the Office English course and marking, so I’ll try to keep this short. The idea for today’s module came from one of the students, who said he often needed to explain the …

Office English 6 – Business Reports

This lesson went really well even though I wasn’t trying very hard and probably because I allowed plenty of time for the writing itself. The aim was to familiarize the students with the structure of a standard business report and to write a business report in class. The nice aspect of the lesson was that …

Office English 5 – Meetings

I can’t believe we’re already halfway through the course. This was another great lesson. The plan was very simple – two videos, two roleplays. I kept the plan deliberately that minimalistic because I wanted to have time for the roleplays and speaking. Too bad there were only three people one of whom was very late. …

Office English 4 – Tone in Writing

Now this lesson didn’t go as smoothly as the previous one, but it was still a good lesson and at least I get the chance to do some reflection of the things that could have been better. Firstly, I ran out of time because I underestimated the time needed for the actual writing. I realised …

Office English Lesson 3 – Small Talk

This lesson was awesome! I’m so excited. It was full of energy and music and everyone talking and I feel great after it. So here’s what we did. I had taught many Small Talk lessons in the past, usually using textbooks or some other ELT materials. We would do the usual good/bad topics for conversation …

Office English Lesson 2

Acknowledgements: I'd like to thank Vedrana, Marc and Jonathan for their help with this lesson and for being friends. In the second week of this course we focused on writing, more specifically, on the basics of writing emails. My goal was to provide students with a lot of opportunities to write, with clear guidelines for …

Office English – Lesson 1

How it all Began: Last autumn I was addressed by the management of the department at the university where I work. They asked me if I could design a 10 x 90 min Office English course to begin in March. I said yes. Those of you who know me are already aware that I always …