My dear friend and mentor Elena Gallo organized a series of workshops for college teachers called kommUNIkation a few years ago at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität Fach- und Fremdsprachenprogramm. I learned there that you need to be clear about your expectations of a course in order to really get something out of it, including thinking about your beliefs about the subject. Elena had us think quietly in a questionnaire at the beginning of every workshop. After the workshop, we’d answer a second questionnaire to see whether our thinking had changed. I really like this approach. We do quite enough pair- and group-work in a workshop, but often enough there is not enough time to think things through alone.
I’ve used Elena’s approach in the workshops I’m currently running for Cornelsen’s Up to Speed, a Business English coursebook for teaching one-to-one or small groups. My questionnaire contains these questions:
1. BEFORE THE WORKSHOP:
- Learning a language is/ means …
- A good teacher is someone who …
- Teaching one to one is different from teaching groups in that …
- A one-to-one lesson / course is going well if …
- A challenge I have experienced in one to one teaching is …
- A question I’d like answered at this workshop is …
2. AFTER THE WORKSHOP:
- Teaching one-to-one is/ means …
- My critical take-away today is …
- My challenge in teaching one to one will be …
- A question I’d like to find an answer to is …
- What I’d like to say to Anne is …
