During my frustrating first year of teaching post-secondary students preparing for a British examination in Business Communications using their "made simple" textbook, I wrote a 56-page Workbook in Communications to support my lessons. The workbook aimed specifically at the difficulties my students were having gaining communicative competence with a native variety of English. Using SELI materials, in February of 1990 I provided a workbook to each student. I gave pre-tests and began ESL instruction in office communications one period a week.
One period a week was not nearly enough. In my view, these students needed the skills I was teaching them "yesterday," long before they reached the tertiary level. In West Africa, the higher one reaches in school, the more multicultural/global are the academic expectations; in the wider context, many reports have been written about the misfit between communication skills taught in secondary school and those required for tertiary education.
There's no "made simple" way to acquiring communicative competence. You have to be carefully taught, and effective teaching takes time.
One period a week was not nearly enough. In my view, these students needed the skills I was teaching them "yesterday," long before they reached the tertiary level. In West Africa, the higher one reaches in school, the more multicultural/global are the academic expectations; in the wider context, many reports have been written about the misfit between communication skills taught in secondary school and those required for tertiary education.
There's no "made simple" way to acquiring communicative competence. You have to be carefully taught, and effective teaching takes time.
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