But customization, as this article points out, takes time and considerable resources. In the article’s case,  over customization also led to a shut down of a business, when all of his clients started demanding high levels of personalization.

So where could/should English classes sit on customization?  On one side, the most common industry standard is that students are forced to adapt to the school’s course material and methodology. There is little to no customization of course content. This standard of operation usually runs without problem. The student starts a class at his/her level of English. A course book/material is introduced, and is used as the primary means of determining the start/finish of their course. (When you finish book A – and complete the final test for that book, you’re ready for level x.) It’s simple, and easy, and the industry is geared towards that style of work.

The problem: The material is often general. Perhaps focused on business English. Perhaps with case studies and audio that would engage students around general points of interest, but not coming close to meeting the real and often FELT need of say a company actuary manager, for example. Yes, the general course material will serve the actuary student on some levels, but will leave other vital needs unmet.  (Like how do I talk about the risks involved in insuring client x? How do I propose a contract alteration to a client/head office because of local data ? How do I defend my contract proposals to English speaking colleagues?)

Sharper focus is required here to really serve your student. But relying on cookie cutter course design/material won’t come close to cutting it.

The Risks of Customization in TEFL – my company strives to provide English courses that really matter to students. We work hard to customize to individual student needs. Actuary shaped material for Actuary students. HR shaped material for HR students etc. But, as Warrillow discovered, there are often difficult obstacles that present themselves.

• Customized Courses are not Budget friendly: we work with corporate clients with strict budget concerns. There are often tight blocks of hours to conduct our courses in, so bringing in customized material often demands for more course time, which in turn demands more expense. (Which doesn’t go over well with number sensitive clients.)

• Professional Custom Content is rare: Students and many teachers love to work with course books. They are great tools for providing direction, structure, and support. But when you want to serve a specific student need, there’s a great lack of relevant material on the market. Oxford University Press has been stepping into this area with their Express series, which has been wonderful. The material is suitable for intermediate to advanced level students, and seems to be geared toward short courses of 35/40 hours.  It’s definitely an important step in the right direction, but I think more specialized content is needed and at more levels for extended periods of time.

• Teacher Learning curve is often steep: Customization requires that you become fluent with your client’s work. Obviously you’ll not get a degree in their field of expertise, but you’ll need to start working on wading into their world in order to serve them in a relevant way. Vocabulary, abbreviations and acronyms, and plenty of article reading to get up to speed on your client’s day to day reality. All of this takes time and effort to do well, and often teachers just don’t have the time or energy to do this on a regular basis.

So how should/could Teachers and ESL schools serve their clients well and survive at the same time?

Keep it short. I’ve heard some clients say that their conference calls go on and on and on. Hours. That’s far too long to pay attention, and far far too long if English is not your first language. Conference call classes should be short. The one I just finished lasted 30 minutes. It was filled with energy, and my student had no trouble following our activities. Respect your audience’s attention span, and keep your classes short.

Keep it focused. Planning is key here. Make sure you have your activities well planned out in advance. (And be prepared to email content to participants as a backup plan – tech glitches always happen.) Know exactly what you want to do, and explain it to your participants BEFORE your session begins. (Show were you intend to go.) Avoid deviations.

Keep activities short, and varied. Again, to gain and maintain attention of your participants, I think it’s a good idea to keep your activity roster full and varied. Today I was working with an actuarial manager. We worked through a 4 paragraph section of a large article about teleunderwriting. Our main focus was on taking graphical information, and reporting it back as if he was doing a presentation. I modeled the style of language we were looking to work with: “According to the graph, the number of truthful answers gathered on the survey was x%.” (This part alone took us a while to get down correctly.)

After student was comfortable with the target language, I turned him loose on the real graph info from the article. I made sure my instructions were simple and specific: look at the graph, and tell me about the % of respondents who answered truthfully. (Article dealing with effectiveness of teleunderwriting vs. traditional Face to Face interviews.)  It took us a few attempts, but after a minute or two, my student was flowing smoothly through the different percentages on the graph. (It’s so interesting to see how in the practice part of the class, the student picked up the target language pretty easily. When faced with “the real thing” there seemed to be a bit of hesitation. Reality intimidates, so building as much realia into the class is added value for student!

10 minutes later, we were ready for a switch. My student writes English emails on a regular basis, so that was our next direction. The online presentation system I work with has a built in chat section on the page. Again, I started with a simple explanation of what we would be doing: I explained out loud that we’re going to work on writing. I will send you a short info request via the chat section. (I wrote something like: Juan, please let me know about the percentage of truthful vs untruthful responses from the teleunderwriting survey.)

I set up the situation orally:  imagine you’re writing an email to your head office to report this information. And he was off. After a minute or two, I had my response. There were a few mistakes, but he got his message across pretty clearly.

Dealing with errors. The text I got back had two minor mistakes. I opened a fresh whiteboard page on my meeting site, and gave my student access and the ability to edit the document. I then pasted his first response into the page, and let him know there were two minor mistakes, emphasizing them as I repeated his answer back to him. As he spotted his mistakes, I invited him to do a real time rewrite of his work.

Class ended as soon as he finished.

30 minutes flew by quickly, but they were on target, focused, and 100% helpful for the student.

Always be Checking in: final, and perhaps vital thought: When leading a teleconference class, always let your students know what you’re about to do. “Ok, now I’m going to scroll down to page 3, paragraph 2.” or “We’re going to switch over to x page now.”  - And always check in before you begin: (you finish scrolling, page switching etc,) then say something like: So does everyone see X on your screen? Await confirmation from everyone before you proceed. Sometimes connection lag can slow things down for your participants. What you see on your screen, may not yet be the same for them. Always be checking in.

What do you do to make your teleconference classes effective?

Great teachers remove fear.

Fear is usually a big factor in groups. Most adults hate making mistakes, and hate making mistakes in front of others even more. But language skill development is all about trying, making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again. ( And if a student is not making mistakes, it’s likely because he/she is not trying to speak out enough.)  What to do?

• Let your students know that mistakes are ok, and a course requirement. (No mistake making means they’re likely not trying hard enough.) Remind them of this truth often.
• Be careful about how you correct their mistakes. Ask yourself: would you like to be corrected how you correct others? And ask your students: “How would you prefer I correct you?” Some prefer to be nicely stopped in the moment they make the mistake. Others prefer that you wait until after they are finished talking – but do check with your students and try to adjust to their preference as much as you can.
• Keep your group in line: never let the other members of the group make fun of a person’s mistake. Be firm on this point always. (Sorta blends into the next section.)

Build trusting and safe classroom environment. This takes time, but you can accomplish this day by day as you interact with your students.

• Encourage participation from everyone. In groups, you’ll usually find one or two silent types. Don’t let them hide. Nicely call on them every so often to invite them to participate.
• In close relation to point one: Call on, but never force or put on the spot, or shame. If the student is too shy, or simply too terrified to try, step back a little and give them space. They may just need some time.
• Always be patient, even if they have just made the same mistake for the 10th time in a row. When you demonstrate an open, accepting attitude, and one of “I’m really happy that you’re trying, even if you just blundered. Try again!” your students will start to open up.
• Always be Engaging: Do your best to know your students. What do they love about their work? What themes are really interesting to them? Hobbies? Bring that into  your class as content. Having your students work with material that they love is a great way to break down fear. If they’re passionate about what your working with, their willingness to step through fear will be greater, and almost instantaneous if you really connect with them on something.
• Be friendly. Teachers can make or break the learning environment. Think about your own schooling experiences. Who were your favorite teachers, and who were your most hated ones? What made them this way? In my case, the teachers I hated the most were the ones who were impatient, and unwilling to get closer to me along my learning journey. They broadcasted their stuff, threw tests my way, but never took the time to really connect with me to see if I was getting it. (Though my grades told them I wasn’t.)  So I make it my personal mission to really try and connect with the students I work with.  There are times when you need to be firm, and let them know you expect their best efforts – not always trying to be their buddy, but being friendly is one of the best ways that I know to help your students leave behind their fear.

What do you do to help your adult students break through fear?

Just read an interesting post via Seth Goddin: Upstream and Downstream. The summary: By spending more time and money on pre and post contact with our clients, work results could be improved.

We see Upstream or prework a lot these days in the health industry. Greater focus on prevention results in lower costs in the present and future. (The doc’s office (box – see the article.) work is made a lot easier if he/she is able to deal with healthier patients due to effective pre contact work. And patients will experience better results if maybe the doc is able to followup on how well their patients follow through with their prescriptions and medications.

What could this look like in ESL?

Pre-contact: Teachers and schools should spend more time preparing students BEFORE the actual course begins. Teachers could invest time in teaching potential students about habits successful English students should cultivate. (A habit could be increasing contact with English on student’s initiative: watching movies, listening to music, reading in English – purposeful interaction  on your own.)

Another pre-contact action could be to interview prospect students and discover what their previous English learning experiences were like, what was positive and negative about those experiences and why. Wouldn’t this info be helpful for informing the next classroom experience? (Paying attention to what worked for the student before, etc.)

Post Contact: Teachers/schools could come up with a ongoing contact scheme with graduates or ex students. Email newsletters with tips etc. on how to continue practice without the teacher. Ongoing encouragement to continue self directed contact with English, etc.

In ESL, both the Pre and Post contact areas are valuable, but the Post sure has a lot of importance for the student as ongoing and continuous practice with a second language is vital to keep it active and useable over the long term.

What do you think? What could Teachers or language schools do to improve the Pre/Post contact experience of their students?

Teacher benefits:

1) No commute. 2) No lost time in traffic. 3) Lower costs as you don’t need to pay for busses or gas. 4) More time to do other things, as when you’re done your class, you’re already home. 5) Potential to increase your student base. (You can get clients anywhere.) 6) Possible for greater Teacher/student attention and personal coaching. (Email, social media like twitter or facebook, mp3 recordings of your students practicing pronunciation and dialogues. Teacher would have great opportunities to interact with students in realistic settings. Maybe your student  already hangs out in Twitter or Facebook – what a better spot to begin practicing English using platforms they already love?  7) Potential for Green: you don’t need to rely on textbooks. If you are creative, you can bring in plenty of content from around the web for class work. No paper = Less pollution. And likely many more that I can’t think of at the moment, but there are for sure  lots of benefits.

Over the last year, I have actually been able to provide virtual classes to a few clients, and love the results. Aside from the ones mentioned above, I would also say having to telecommute has improved my teaching, as I’ve had to do more prep work, and think about alternative lesson plans if (and when) tech glitches slow things down.  Teaching from a Distance via Videoconferencing echoes this mindset of an improvement in teaching methods. You really do need to be a little more prepared in a virtual class vs. a face to face session.

Business Trend Should Equal a Teaching Trend

We’re here to meet our student’s needs, aren’t we? Companies everywhere have been forced to make budget cuts, and business travel is one of the hardest hit. One of our clients has seen a steady decrease in their business travel, and a massive increase in the amount of video conferencing they do each day. Mostly in English. Out of their 200+ employees, only about 15% can carry on an English conversation at native speaker level without difficulty. The rest must suffer through those conference calls that sometimes last hours.

Service Opportunity: Classes should mirror student need. Activities should have direct relevance to what your students do each day on the job, so that means that video conferencing should become a regular part of the corporate ESL classroom.

Benefits for your Students:

1) Realistic Practice: If your student does any kind of teleconferencing at work, he or she would likely LOVE to have the chance to practice. Remember: talking over the phone or internet with someone not physically in the same room with you is a whole other ballgame. When you can’t see the other person, you loose  a great deal of communicative help like facial expressions, gestures, and body languages. (Some say that 90% of communication is taken from visual cues from the other person.) The more you can help your student be in that difficult space with a friendly coach like yourself, the easier facing the real monster will be. (My students have told me that anyway.)

2) Employee success: Helping your students become English teleconference rockstars will help them professionally. Managers, bosses,  supervisors  and foreign coworkers are always watching. When they see someone who can communicate well, and whose first language is not English – you can bet they’ll notice. Great ESL teachers don’t just teach English. They become active participants in the success of their students.

What do you think? Should ESL classrooms have virtual options?

(And in a different, but related vein: Telecommuting saves companies $10K per employee yearly. )

“The whole point of extensive reading — and how it achieves improvements in language proficiency — is that students read as much as possible, as often as possible, and with as much enjoyment as possible.” (The Importance of extensive reading.)

That’s proficiency development in a nutshell, in my humble opinion. For the teacher: keep it simple. The simpler we keep teaching strategies, the simpler it will be to execute them on a day to day BUSY basis.

So, push for AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE – conversation, reading, listening, writing (engagement with English.)

Push for AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE: Remind students that frequency matters to get to fluency.

And most of all: PUSH FOR FUN. Adults to kids engage with learning far more willingly and naturally when they are enjoying the process.

I’m passionate about providing great service, and I think we all are if we’re serious about staying in business and doing well at it. But one thing I have found is that it is sure hard to consistently hold yourself to high standards of quality on a day to day basis when all life breaks loose on you. Guess just saying that it’s hard to hold your focus on the right things each day, and EVERY day, in order to uphold a high standard of excellence.

So one thing that has me thinking is in the whole area of goals. Watt mentions in his post that “You won’t get anywhere without clear, achievable goals.” Totally agree. Goal setting is vital. But I’ve been wondering what that looks like at a School/Teacher/Student level where the school and teacher have course goals that need to be covered in the class.

Our company mission is to adapt ourselves to what our students need in English each day. We strongly believe that we’re supposed to be there to meet our client’s needs, verses trying to follow our own strict program. I’ve had days where I had a full lesson plan mapped out for one of my students, only to have said plan tossed out the window 2 minutes into class as the student has an urgent email or presentation or conference call to prep for. In English. Needs my help. I wonder where goals go there?

On one level, I feel excited when these change ups happen. I’ve been in workplaces where strict service to school agenda was the rule. Nothing else mattered. The goal was the god of the classroom, and we had to bow down and serve without question or deviation.  And the results were excellent. For the school.  But what about the student? They often left their class knowing they had completed a school level goal or objective, but out there, outside our nice little classroom, the real world awaited. Usually quite different to what we had just been working on.

So how do you balance working towards goals and objectives, and really meeting the needs of your students? And my biggest pain in the brain: how to do that in tiny blocks of time that corporate budgets love to box you into. (Later post for that I guess.)

To language school goals: I would still say that I embrace the CEFR (Common European Framework of languages). The “Can Do” statements are broad and open in that they allow you to work towards them using any content area you desire. They give you a firm direction to go in, but how you get there is between you and your student. (Still allowing for personalization of the class to student need.)

A language school can work with their teachers to set up which goals teacher/students will work towards in that month, still encouraging the teacher to adapt to serving the client’s day to day needs.  (Situation: student brings in an email to work on. Teacher knows that an objective that needs to be worked on is student being able to write short coherent messages or notes. Emails should  be short and coherent, right? Adapts easily. Goal accomplished, and student helped.) Important to become very familiar with CEF objectives in order to be able to serve up a flexible class. Adapting on the fly.

What do you think? How should you as a teacher adapt to your student’s need, while at the same time meeting course objectives along the way? Thoughts? Strategies? All are welcome.

1) Sider explains how valuable language training is for retention purposes. (In Company setting, working with non English speaking workers.) In today’s economic environment, where companies are looking for ways to stimulate employees and keep them on board without spending too much cash, then providing ESL training is a great option.

I think it’s so fascinating how non monetary incentives seem to work better than throwing cash at people. I’ve read lots about this, have heard and seen lots about this – with Dan Pink’s work being the most recent.

So if you’re looking for great ways to increase employee retention rates, look into ESL training.  The other part to this that I thought was interesting, and a point which also helps in the recruitment/retention side of work: is that when outsiders see that you do provide training in English (or other languages that you require) they tend to want to work with you. They see that you take care of your employees, and they want to be a part of it.

2)Sider mentions a point which is, in my opinion, of extreme importance: Companies make a mistake when they undervalue their non English speaker’s mother tongue.  We do business these days often in a global setting. Sooner or later, your employee’s mother tongue will come in really handy.

Likely a post that is off what I usually do, but I just watched the video and thought it was worth mentioning.

Value Added for TESOL:

When promoting courses are you using retention value as a USP? I know I’ll be.

Teachers, Language Training companies: Are you being a parasite for your client: (Just taking their cash, not purposefully adding value?) Or are you really stepping into the role Sider shares can be played: a valuable recruitment/retention building agent, A future value builder for employees to be able to function more productively in multi lingual environments?

Defining Your Success as and English teacher:

How do you measure success in your classroom?

If your students are passing their exams, even attaining high marks  - does that mean you’re doing well as a teacher? You know, I used to be guilty of thinking that. But how many times have you ever seen students do well on a test – only to freeze up or choke in a real life conversation? I’ve seen it happen many times.

Why?

Beware of Classroom Focus: Test passing or Genuine communication?

The darkside: We work in corporate settings. Our clients often require us to deliver services inside of strict blocks of time – 60 hours, 120 hrs etc.  In most cases, those times are just what you need to finish a course book.  The big question clients ask, thanks to budgets, is: how fast can you train my people? How fast will they learn English? It’s all about results at highspeed.

Sadly, learning a language is rarely high speed. So how do you balance the need to meet client “speed needs” with reality?

The tendency when you’re working inside tight time deadlines is to default to a test passing mode, don’t you think? You focus your classroom work around quickly moving through course book units, and ensuring your students pass the unit end test.  This could be seen as success. The student does well during the unit, and aces the test. You’ve done your job. Right?

I think the answer to that question depends on who you’re responding to. If you’re talking to the HR budgeting manager, then yes – the mission was completed. Student “was trained” successfully and inside the allotted time. But what about if you ask the student? What would the answer be?

I suspect that at the beginning, the student will feel very happy with their “progress.” We all love to have a sense of progress -and I would argue that genuine and rapid feedback is often lacking in ESL programs. But after all the units have been finished, and their exams passed, has the student been able to improve their ability to SPEAK in English? Has fluency and confidence gone up? Are your students better able to write those pesky English emails to clients? Are they able to present an update through a teleconference to their head office with fewer errors? Less fear?

Don’t get me wrong – the course book does hold value for helping students develop their English skills. But beware: high speed/book married environments are not conducive to helping students develop their communicative skills.  Communication – that’s the whole reason why you help students learn another language to begin with. It’s not to help them finish a course book in 65 hours.

Next time: how to combine the dreaded course book with genuine communicative exercises.  (But I wonder…can you serve two masters?)

Result? Nothing. Seems like my student has hit an all time low as far as progress goes, and when we do have class, it seems that little to no improvement has taken place.

Sure, fluency has improved since we first began. But we seem to have hit a slump.

What Shall I do?

I really like this post: The Learning Habit. Main idea: Part of the learning process rests with the student. And in ESL, I believe that to be VERY true. Especially since you’ll take forever to aquire fluency at 3 hrs (or less) per week.

I think I would do well to begin pushing more responsibility to practice English onto the my student’s shoulders.

But I wonder if this will help anyway? Would I just be wasting my breath and my already precious classroom time? Likely students are too time starved to do anything anyway. (That’s why I rarely assign homework: adult business professionals hardly have the time to do it. When they aren’t at work – or when work hasn’t followed them home, they’re trying to spend time with their family. When would you want to do homework?)

So I wonder if the solution to upping student engagement with English class (Attendance, more time on practice and fluency development) is somewhere in the “timeshift”

Would English class ever work as an “On demand” option? Where the student can access the teacher, ask questions, practice,  and get feedback whenever and wherever they want?

One thing that Teaching English is not: the transfer of knowledge. It’s far more than that, so having a knowledge bank of grammar and sound files for students to access at will would not solve the problem. Would help, yes – but not solve.  In my humble opininon, you still need basic human interaction in order to develop fluency. How do you get that “on demand?”