ELTABB Event: Kill two birds with one stone' Incorporating Intercultural Communication into Language Training by Evan Frendo

Evan tells us about the event:

Kill two birds with one stone

1. "Did I understand what was said?".
2. "Did I understand what was meant?".
3. "Did my business partner understand me?".

As I see it one of our main tasks as business English trainers is to help our learners minimize misunderstanding in intercultural communication so that they can work with other people successfully. Of course this means that we need to cover linguistic issues like lexis and phonology in our courses, but it also means that we need to work on improving our learners' intercultural competence, in other words, the knowledge, skills and attitudes which will allow them to understand and deal with the context they are working in. In many companies language and intercultural training are done separately, but to me it makes much more sense to target both at the same time.

This workshop will look at a number of activities which allow us to do just this. Specifically we will examine activities which are designed to train learners in key business communication skills such as relationship building, handling meetings and exchanging information, but always in an intercultural context. Language is always there, but it is only one component of successful communication, not the component. I will use material from a newly published book called Working in Asia (Cornelsen, 2010) to demonstrate the activities, and participants will receive a complimentary copy to take away.

About the speaker: Evan Frendo BSc (Mech Eng), LCCI Dip TEB, MSc TESP
Evan Frendo is a freelance trainer, teacher trainer and author, and has been involved in Business English training and consulting since 1993. Currently based in Berlin, his work for various corporations and clients takes him regularly to different parts of Europe and Asia. He has published various books and articles over the years, including How to teach Business English (Longman, 2005), and the Double Dealing series of coursebooks (Summertown, 2004-2006) with James Schofield. His most recent book is Working in Asia (Cornelsen, 2010) which he co-authored with Shuna Hsu. Evan is an ex-chair of ELTABB.
Visit his blog at English for the workplace.

Saturday, June 5, 2010
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Venue:

GLS Sprachenzentrum
Kastanienallee 82
10435 Berlin

U-Eberswalderstr.
M1-Schwedterstr.


This event is free for ELTABB members and is 15,-€ for all non-members joining us.
Please register for this event at events@eltabb.com