Workplace English with SELI

We've also been busy this term teaching ESL Workplace English to a selected group of employees in an organization.

The members of the class have in common that for personal, family reasons their schooling was interrupted—perhaps multiple times—in their early lives. Although all these men are skilled at their jobs, the organization, SELI and the participants all see a benefit in improving their ability to communicate with others in the organization and in enhancing their employability.

Using a variety of resources and teaching methods, we are therefore working with a group of preliterate and semiliterate English-as-an-additional-language learners. They are faced with two tasks—learning literacy and learning English—but they are quick and eager. In our latest class, our preliterate members began reading their first book, Here We Go. They're especially enjoying interpreting Claudius John's illustrations.

Much as I like teaching this class, I can't help repeating that it is a pity that in schools in Sierra Leone literacy is tied to the English language. It only means that any students who do not have the opportunity to continue their education beyond the primary or early junior secondary level, lose their literacy after a few years simply because they no longer have a reason to use English. We need to teach all students to write and read their first languages in early primary school so they will own their literacy for life.

Discourse Politics

The world is full of discourse politics (otherwise referred to as business communications)—power stances people assume in meetings to acquire control. You can't disregard people's stances and keep reacting to the words they say—as if you're a representative in congress objecting to a telephone number a colleague read from a phonebook while he's filibustering.

Here are a few of the strategies that come to mind: 

• remaining behind your big desk when people enter your room, using the distance the size of the desk provides to gain power; 
• making people wait when they have arrived for a meeting you called, to make it appear as if they are the petitioners; 
• using Krio instead of English to convey that you hold casual regard for a topic someone else takes seriously; 
• asking people to repeat what they've already explained, or account for things unnecessarily; 
• or just asking questions (especially confrontational ones)—question posers are automatically in a position of power, but if you don't answer, or don't directly answer the question, you take some of their power away.

These strategies make it difficult to take minutes at meetings because what is accomplished by the strategies is often unrelated to the content that was discussed. Maybe they were just trying to acquire the upper hand. . . maybe they were trying to make the meeting come to naught so they could take decisions privately instead. . . .

Course in Workplace English, Feb.–May, 2014

SELI's next intensive Course in Workplace English will be offered at the Sentinel English Language Institute in Tengbeh Town from 10th February to 23rd May 2014.

This intensive English-for-Special-Purposes course meets the needs of beginning-proficiency English language learners who have pursued tertiary education in another language than English but need the communication skills expected in a professional English-speaking workplace. Students about to enter university who embrace this goal can also be accommodated.

CWE applicants are assumed to be non-English speakers. The course develops basic-user level competencies in speaking, listening, reading, writing and presenting in English. Classes meet mornings only, fifteen hours a week for fourteen-week terms. There are still 15 places available in the coming term. Sessions are participatory and interactive, requiring prompt and regular attendance.

SELI's Course in Workplace English helps to make SELI's charitable work possible. Please contact us for enrolment information.

Yay! Certificates!

SELI's first intensive ESOL Course in Workplace English came to a close today with a certificate ceremony.

This beginning proficiency class was very rewarding to teach. All the participants were university students or working professionals from francophone West Africa who feel that English will give them an advantage in the workplace in their own countries. The class met three hours a day, five days a week for fourteen weeks at the SELI facility in Tengbeh Town. Nearly all the participants were in Sierra Leone specifically to take the course, so attended promply, regularly and actively; as such, significant progress took place.

SELI developed the curriculum for the Course in Workplace English in real time throughout the fourteen weeks. The director used *. 

interactions with the class and formative assessments to pace activities and adjust the scope and sequence of lessons. Although this is an English for Special Purposes course, it could also be said to cover competencies described in CEF's Basic User level (A1 and A2). We would be pleased to hear in the future of some of the participants taking advanced degrees in English; opportunities to do this are rapidly increasing in continental European universities.

Registration is now taking place at SELI for the next session of the Course in Workplace English scheduled to begin 10 February 2013.

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* The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

My Prized Possession

SELI's 14-week Course in Workplace English for beginning English language learners is now about 80% complete. This week was presentation week, during which everyone prepared a 3-minute presentation on "My Prized Possession." It was an exciting day for all of us!

Here are the opening segments of Fanta's and Mohamed's presentations. We all thought they did beautifully—do you? Everyone learned a new expression today—butterflies in your stomach. They thought it was a very apt description of how they felt!

TGIF

Here's how we spend the end of our Friday classes now in our Course in Workplace English at SELI: playing Scrabble!

The members of the class are all avid bilingual dictionary users (we allow the use of dictionaries, since doing so makes it a learning activity in this beginning-proficiency class). At first I gave some support to the lower performing students but they, themselves, stopped me—everyone's too competitive to tolerate that!

The whole session is taken up with discussions about new words and what they mean. Since the words remain on the board throughout the game, participants repeatedly revisit them and recall their meanings.

This is a noun, isn't it, and not a verb? He's trying to add -ing to it!  That's an uncountable noun—you can't put an -s on it!

Why Teaching is Fun

"This is the email Carla sent," I told my beginning-proficiency Workplace English adult class.

Our lesson was about emailing, and attaching, and the various kinds of attachments there can be. The students were not only getting lost in the new vocabulary in Carla's list of documents—a bar chart of stocks in the warehouse, a graph of products for last month—they also had had little experience with computers. One fellow looked particularly bewildered.

I realized that Carla was naming five documents in her email. Impulsively, I took off my necklace and handed it to him. "This is the email Carla sent," I said. "She sent it to Tim just as I am handing this to you."

"The main necklace of handmade glass beads is the email, and you can see the five attachments. Name them for me."

Using the necklace forced the class together to isolate the five items in the text, and to see how they all moved together with the main email to the recipient when they were sent. Using concrete objects is common in ESL classes, but in addition I have learned that I'm not alone among adults in needing concrete objects to make the abstract clear, and this is just one more example. Barbara Tuchman said it very clearly:

History written in abstract terms communicates nothing to me. I cannot comprehend the abstract, and since a writer tends to create the reader in his own image, I assume my reader cannot comprehend it either. No doubt I underestimate him. Certainly many serious thinkers write in the abstract and many people read them with interest and profit and even, I suppose, pleasure. I respect this ability, but I am unable to emulate it.

Tuchman, B. (1982). Practicing History. New York: Ballantine/Random House, p. 37.

A Reading Activity in our CWE

We're learning English in all kinds of ways in SELI's intensive Course in Workplace English. The fourteen-week course is now 20% completed.

Here you see groups of students carrying out a reading activity, which emphasizes reading comprehension. Students in this course also gain reading skills in our usual lessons, in our daily dialogue journaling, in our writing workshops, and by reading books from the SELI library.

Already we're seeing progress in the English of these beginning- / semi-beginning-proficiency English learners. Keep it up!

Course in Workplace English

SELI's new 14-week intensive beginning-ESL Course in Workplace English got underway this week!

The enrollees are university level or working adults who gained their education in some other language, and would like to develop the skills they need to apply for bilingual jobs in their countries.

All the current enrollees are French-speaking, and most of them are from Guinea. This is a SELI ESL class that contributes toward funding SELI's charitable work in secondary schools in Sierra Leone.