Expatriate Assignments

An interesting topic that I chose to use with all my students concerns Expatriate Assignments. The material used is part of our International Business and Cross-Cultural Management series that inspired interesting discussions about the pros and cons about being sent abroad to work. As I think many of us can imagine, the key thing to have in mind before accepting such an assignment is ones family situation... whether or not the family would respond positively to the new culture and to what extent ones experience in and knowledge of the home market can be trusted to bring results in the new, foreign setting. /JAW

Chinese Business Culture

Today we had my friend Michael from Canada on a Skype call for the class. C had his personal laptop with portable Internet with him for us to get connected and after some technical disturbances we were finally on-line and talking to Michael. He told us a little about his background, being Chinese originally but with most of his life lived in Canada. The focus of the class was his recent experience working in China for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The session resulted to be the best one so far according to my students. /JAW

Presentation Skills: Body Language

Last class I wanted to see the presentation skills of my new students in action, with special attention on their body language while presenting in front of a group. First, we read through a study about body language as a presentation skill, starting out questioning "While you're talking, what is your body saying?". As we all know, eye-contact, hand-movements, stance and the tone of voice are important details when conveying a message, these to be in accordance with the content of what we say. Interestingly, a point I hadn't put much thought to before is the fact that it's not enough to feel comfortable as a presenter, being relaxed and natural when speaking, but depending on the size of the audience you'd have to scale up the expressions, the power and body language behind everything you say in order for the audience to feel comfortable too.

In conclusion, my students made a 5-minute presentation each, and it was obvious that they have much experience in presenting their work.

/JAW

Reference: http://totalcommunicator.com/body_article.html

Lie To Me - Great TV

This month was initiated with a 10 minutes long section of a great new TV-series. First class with the material we worked with a 2-minute section only, focusing on understanding an interrogation with a suspect (the bad guy) his lawyer, a scientist and the FBI behind the spotlights. The idea was to understand the scene first by only listening to the interrogation. I (the teacher) knew this was a relatively advanced group, but I was much surprised that on the very first listening my students could identify correctly the main characters, and that the scene was an interrogation. To know that the interrogator was the scientist was not too easy though, but on a the second listening things started to become clearer. Additionally, the scientist was British, which added to the difficulty of understanding the otherwise already fast English.

A couple of listenings, a checking of complicated vocabulary in the transcript and a full-video watch later, the complete picture was revealed. An interesting topic with focus on body-language and "micro-expressions" was very much welcomed by the students as a part of their English comprehension progress. Let's see how much more of this we'll include in the forthcoming sessions.

/JAW

A Teacher Writes

I started classes for a new group today. Excellent group! Very pleasant and amusing people. Well, mostly they are here in Colombia. The great thing about this group is that it's relatively advanced and the members really enjoy talking, and don't have any problems with shyness or embarrassment and simply find the way to express themselves. The group consists of three gentlemen and one lady. I'll call them C, J, G and V for now.

First class I introduced myself as an education economist, presenting my masters thesis briefly and initiated a conversation/debate concerning private schools vs public schools for the poor. Since it's a quite controversial topic the discussion was interesting to follow. C told the story about his own education back in the days when teachers used to hit the students with rulers, contrasting this to todays situation with complete lack of discipline in many schools, although in no way implying that the old days were better. J mentioned that the different opinions in the school of his children, where some argue that small children in the age of 5-6 should be able to do whatever they want, whereas others argue that guidelines and rules need to be reinforced.

V had a funny example with her 4-year-old niece who invites her instead of her own mother to children's parties since the mother is too strict. On the other, hand with the freedom of her aunt she goes crazy and seems to act totally without control. The different philosophies of child education and up-bringing is highly interesting and the topic really deserves to be studied before practiced.

Welcome to Blog at ESLA Bloggers

This space is an initiative towards the creation of the ESLA magazine. The blog aims to collect and publish various written material from the English Solutions' students for educational purposes. The collection takes place in this blog, which can be revised, edited and commented during the collection period. The final material will then be published in the form of a handy magazine that besides making us all proud of our achievements will serve as a testimony of our mutual history and progress.

English Solutions Latin America invites all our students/clients with colleagues, as well as our teachers/consultants to join this initiative and start blogging about whatever topic you find interesting. We encourage you all to use this opportunity to seriously take up a writing habit, to improve your writing skills and maybe even to start developing a writing career. There is probably a book inside each and every one of us that waits to be written one day, and what better way to start discovering its content than writing about whatever comes to mind. From personal accounts of your working or private life to more in depth journalism style writing, welcome to write!

The objective is to publish the ESLA magazine once a month with the first issue as soon as possible in 2010, consisting of the contributions collected in this blog. All contributions are welcome, no matter if you're on a basic English level or already an advanced writer, if you're interested in writing only once or twice or really interested in becoming a regular columnist in the magazine. Our most important reader base will be you, the students of English Solutions, so all levels of English writing is important.

Become a blogger now and send us your contribution to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com.

Any questions can be emailed to the above address or posted as comments to this post.

Examples of writings:

• Article Writing
• Blogging
• Book Reviewing
• Business Plans
• Business Proposals
• Communications Writing
• Content Editing
• Content Writing
• Creative Writing
• Documentation Writing
• Entertainment Writing
• Financial Writing
• Journalism
• News & Journalism
• Research
• Reviews Writing
• Technical Writing
• Travel Writing