Anticipate the obstacles and practice your speaking strategies!
Course Outline: This course is a structured approach to having conversations in the workplace. The student works 1-1 with the instructor to explore a variety of topics that are likely to come up in the workplace in a variety of environments from the boardroom to the lunchroom. Topics may include sales conversations, manager to employee conversations, meeting conversations, negotiations, dealing with arguments, inappropriate behavior-stopping, or encouragement discussions. Strategies on how to deal with difficult topics and difficult people will be practiced, as well as how to say these things in American English effectively and clearly! Students have the opportunity to be on both sides of the conversation.
Roleplay environments may include:
- Formal Meetings
- Informal Meetings
- Business Discussions
- School Discussions
- Recreation
- Social Events
- Sales Conversations
- Talking to your Boss
Possible Topics may include:
- Negotiation
- Helping a Problem Employee
- Voicing a Difficult Problem
- Reporting an Issue
- Collaborating with Others
- Being Heard in a Meeting
- Getting Recognized
- Asking for something
- Refusing to do something
- Approaching someone
- Getting someone to Stop
- Getting someone to Help
The cultural components of each topic will be discussed as well as other elements that arise during the role plays. The student will have the opportunity to play both his/her role “in real life” as well as the role of the other person. After each role play, the instructor and the student will have a dialogue about what occurred, including relevant points of English (pronunciation or structure) and strategy to improve the conversation or devices take it in a different direction linguistically.
The goal of this course is to empower the participant to feel that s/he is in control of any conversation and can voice what s/he wants to say clearly and effectively in a culturally-acceptable way.