View Content #1783
| Contentid | 1783 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Ideas for telephone techniques |
| Body | When an ESL teacher asked for activities on telephoning in an adult ESL context, these were the replies that he got: When I did telephoning with my students, we used their cell phones--they all had at least one. Half of them went to one room, while the other half stayed. I also had them call me for homework. They had to call within a certain time, and I would answer the phone 'Gateway Travel this is Cynthia, how can I help you?" They were supposed to plan a trip with the details I would ask for and questions they needed answered before they called. After this, I called them right back and they had a "role card." I was calling to make an appointment with their boss. You have 6 students, so this should not be too bad--I had 50! Also, since you are in Canada, why not apply what Dave Kees just said about email to the phone. Have them actually call local places--a restaurant, a hotel, a store--and ask for directions or other information. Have them call a grocery store or any kind of store and ask about the price of something or if they have it in stock. Have them call the movie theater and see if they can work their way through all the buttons they might have to push to get to hear the options they want to hear. As far as textbooks go, I am not sure if you were wanting to get away from "business English" altogether and are looking for a non-business English book or if you are looking for a book that doesn't deal with "serious business" situations. For the second option, I recommend looking at _Communicating in Business: A Short Course for Business English Students_ by Cambridge University Press which has a module on telephone use. There are 4 modules in all. The telephone module is 3 chapters which cover topics such as: preparing for the phone call, receiving calls, taking and leaving messages, setting up appointments, changing appointments, ending a call, and cross- cultural communication on the phone among others. Parmley, A. (2 Jul. 2004). Re: Any telephone class ideas? Teachers of English to speakers of other languages electronic list. TESL- L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (8 Jul. 2004). The best way to teach telephoning is by telephoning. One big scare for folks telephoning in a foreign language is that they get no visual feed- back. Another is that the telephone distorts the language. So, put half your class in one room and the rest in another and have them communicate with one another in the target language by 'phone. The Defense Language Institute had one cute thing where there was a sand box in each room, one set up to show a town, roads, canals, defensive gun emplacements, etc., and the other was bare (with the toy houses and such on the side). Team one was supposed to give directions to team two to allow the latter to replicate the sand table set-up. At the end of the exercise each was allowed to check out the sand table in the other room to see where communication broke down. Bland, M. (2 Jul. 2004). Re: Any telephone class ideas? Teachers of English to speakers of other languages electronic list. TESL-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (8 Jul. 2004). |
| Source | TESL-L listserv |
| Inputdate | 2004-07-08 16:10:00 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2004-07-08 16:10:00 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | Not set |
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| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
