Right now I’m spending a lot of time with my new employee students working on making presentations in English. Presentations are always tough, even in your own language. The difficulty factor is ramped up quite a bit once you switch to a second language, but I’m really proud of my students. They stand up and challenge the activities that I give them day in and day out. I’m sure they are going to be sick of using English so much by the time they end the course.
Their next topic is going to be negotiation, which I admit is a bit ambitious a topic to teach first year employees. It was a request from the HR department, so I guess there are some big things in store for these guys. I have taught negotiation skills and strategies to experienced employees before, but this will be new ground for me. I’m starting to come up with roleplay situations for the students to work through, but getting the topics is tough! My plan is to take it slow and increase the difficulty as we go.
I’ll finish up this term at the end of March, and then we’ll have a little break before the next term starts. I’m taking a couple of days off between terms, and it will work out perfectly that we can host Roger and his friend who are flying in from Switzerland. It will be fun to show them around our area of Japan!
