Career Writing I

Today was certificate day at SELI for the four students who made it to the end of our pilot  Career Writing I course for post-secondary students, which was held twice a week for a minimal fee at SELI's Tengbeh Town facility.

The participants had a good nine weeks from mid-March to mid-May, mostly learning to write persuasively in multiple drafts, discussing each draft and moving on to revise it. They were challenged to use genres and styles of

writing that students rarely meet until they join the working world. They submitted most pieces handwritten but one by email and one orally. One common thread in their evaluations was that SELI teaches writing differently than secondary schools do. They also found our insistence on driving wordiness out the window very difficult to get used to.

Going forward, our certificate holders are looking forward to signing up for the sequel, Career Writing II, in October. We'll have to plan our timetable more carefully, because this course had to forge headlong through college exams, school holidays, national holidays, and major religious events which resulted in altogether too much absenteeism. It took real dedication from these four to make it all the way through.

Congrats to all four, Kewulay, Kaprie, Foday and Yeabu!

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.

Business English with SELI

We've been busy this term teaching an 18-session ESL course in Business English, and loving it!

It's being conducted during the working day on the organization's premises, to a group divided in two so that during our class time there is always someone in each department's office to take care of business.

Half of our course is devoted to business writing, and half to oral skills. It's a blended course, in that although we meet face-to-face twice a week, there is also an online requirement. Each member of the class is required to submit a number of assignments online at the SRWP Workshop. They post their assignments there (in a section of the page invisible to those not enrolled in the class) and also must respond online to two other pieces of writing posted by their colleagues, commenting on how well they have met the assignment's criteria.

The group is a pleasure to work with and I hope they're finding it as much of a learning experience as I am!

Peace Corps–Sierra Leone Staff Development

During May, SELI has been conducting an eight-session staff development training in Business Writing for the Peace Corps–Sierra Leone staff.

We've all enjoyed the sessions, mixing writing skills (style, cohesion and paragraphs) with genre writing and ongoing job writing requirements.

This is a great group of people to work with and they perform such an important function in Peace Corps–Sierra Leone. Hope we've been able to enhance that a bit.

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!

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!

Learn English at SELI!

This year SELI had a beginning, low intermediate, and upper intermediate ESL class. Here the beginners are concentrating on a listening activity. The class members are from Côte d'Ivoire, Niger and Mali.

SELI's director is a U.S.-qualified ESL teacher, and instruction in English for speakers of other languages is an important part of its service.

During the coming term (September to December, 2013) SELI is also offering a beginning intensive course in workplace English for adults who have attained university degrees in another language, if there is sufficient enrollment. 

Ballanta's Course in Performing Arts and Media

SELI is again involved in developing and delivering the language arts syllabus for the Ballanta Academy of Music's course in Performing Arts and Media, which will be resuscitated in October following a year's break if the Academy can muster enough enrollment. You can see last year's students here in a playwriting session. This is a vocational course for post-BECE (junior secondary) students that offers music, drama and acting for screen, dance, studio engineering, and film/digital media. Sierra Leone very much needs more vocational options for post-BECE students, but the new programme needs enrollment to make it happen. In its new form, subjects are available in modules, to take in any order, to pick or not choose, or to take either intensively or spaced out over time, along with the required language arts and business math. The language arts syllabus is standards-based, and assessed primarily through real-life, contextual tasks. Ballanta is holding an orientation for potential students on May 22nd. We'll be there!

Linked Activity: English for the Office

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.