O, and improving fluency

Needs analyses often seem to end with an addendum: O, and I want to improve my fluency.

Whatever the main objectives might be - report writing, doing negotiations, meetings - there always seems to be a demand for speaking better generally.

It's not so much the icing on the cake as the wish for a completely different dessert in the first place.

As the client is always right, how is it possible to satisfy their desires in this area?

If the accident will (ii)

What follows is a small example of what happened when 'the accident' did.

It began with two Tweets.

The first was by Carl Dowse recommending The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

As so often with my PLN, the second Tweet had actually come first.

It was by Maria Popova and led me to her marvellous site describing books on the future of the internet.

This is typical of the recursive trajectory described by manoeuvring around a PLN.

It takes one Tweet to make an itch, but a second to make me want to scratch it.

If the accident will

'If the accident will'.

It sounds like a sentence designed to break CELTA trainees, but it is actually a stand-out line from a stand-out book, Slaughterhouse-5.

It's a line which, in the novel, captures the aleatory character of existence but which, for our purposes, also describes the happy juxtaposition of two or more sources from your PLN.

You happen to be reading, for example, about the experimental use of whale-song in meeting role-plays when you chance upon a blog post about white noise in learning environments.

The connection may only be tangential, but it is possible to sense a cognitive chime when this happens, a palpable re-adjusting of mental cogs.

It is a mini-Eureka!

But is it Eureka-lite?

Presentation Zen and the art of being two people

When is it right to tell a client he is wrong?

Is it:

a) when you know you are right?

b) when you think you are right and you have so little time that you can't afford to debate the niceties?

                                                        c) simply, never?

This is a relatively easy question if you are only teaching English, but if you are also training them to do something in English it becomes more complicated.

Networked intelligence

One of my favourite definitions of a service is that it is networked intelligence.

From my own experience, I know how valuable the network of blogs and Twitter feeds are that I regularly connect with.

They furnish me with ideas I wouldn't have thought of, promote a self-reflexivity that would otherwise exist only as a weak, stunted wretch, and inspire me to improve my practice in ways I had never imagined.

It is the very definition of a networked intelligence in action.

It is exciting, liberating, and stimulating, so why don't more people use it?

Appearance

If Business English is a service, what kind of service is it?

One of the more ubiquitous introductions to Service Design suggests that 'in Educational Services, [service] has the form of a promise to produce a new capacity for the customer to make new promises.'

When we sign a contract with someone, then, we are promising that we will enable them to make promises to others.

It almost sounds like a pyramid scheme.

And precisely because it does, it highlights the importance of something that receives commendably little attention: appearance.

Participle clauses: little objects of desire

Is there a connection between what a learner pays and what a learner does?

A group of learners pays considerably less than someone receiving individual tuition, but is the concomitant to that a lower level of effort and, consequently, achievement?

I was set wondering about this after reading Seth Godin's post 'Do it tomorrow'.

In it, he argues that people often confuse the value of advice with what they pay for it, even though there is often little correlation.

More intriguingly for BE, he proposes that, 'One of the most effective ways to get your ideas implemented is to charge a lot for them.'

This certainly sounds appealing on several different levels.

BESIG World Blog

This week's blog post has gone to a better place.

I speak, of course, of the mighty BESIG World Blog.

The post is on the new BESIG website which has been given a fabulous purple makeover by the BOT.

Congratulations to them and the BESIG committee for doing a great job.

Functional obsolescence

One of the great advantages of selling food is that it has built-in functional obsolescence.

Once the customer has bought their Extra-Large Tesco-Value Eight-Pack of Meringue Nests, they eat them, and then they need to buy some more.

It's a quite brilliant ruse.

Most technology companies do something similar, compelling tardy users to substitute their old kit for the next model.

This upgrade treadmill is a quite wonderful idea for businesses, but I wonder if the business of English language teaching doesn't operate in the reverse direction.

Is it possible, in other words, that BE has built-in functional permanence?

Summer break

'Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.'

At least according to Henry James.

And I am inclined to agree.

The sun is most definitely out here, and it's time to spend some time in the fresh air.

As a result, this blog will take a short summer break, returning at the beginning of September.

I look forward to seeing you all then, and wish you many happy summer afternoons in the mean time.

Cheers,
Tony