Benchmark Unit 11 Learner: Young Hee

Benchmark Unit 11 Learner: Young Hee

The linguistic areas of this lesson include: gerund + -ing verb or direct object and adverbs of frequency.

Communicative skills include: making, accepting and giving invitations, talking about hobbies, information and likes and dislikes. These skills are useful for the learner as all of the grammar points are routinely challenging for my Korean learners as there are few comparable linguistic forms in Korean and is perhaps the case with Young Hee, business socializing and sharing information in the business environment is also a necessary core of aims and outcomes of Young Hee’s studies.

• For example in the first exercise preferences are selected and expressed with regard to necessary attributes of a business hotel. Few pre-experienced Koreans would have knowledge of these variations especially with limited travel experiences.
  
• Business vocabulary is explored and applied in a cloze categorical context exercise using The Lotus Hotel in Cairo (probably quite barren or burnt out at the moment).
  
• A pre-reading task highlights new meetings context vocabulary. This would be interesting for those with few meetings experiences.
  
• Four short texts are matched to a list of seven summarizing sentences regarding hotel facilities.
  
• Adjective and noun collocations are matched.
• A writing simulation (fax or email) is completed to make enquiries into hotel facilities.
  
• Tag questions and statements are matched with their suitable responses.
• Context based listening tests knowledge of setting and appropriateness of certain dialogues for situations.

Cultural information includes: reinforcement listening to polite requests to determine the difference between polite versus rude requests. This is useful for a Korean learner because they are often taught that as Korean language has more definable levels of polite speech and deference to authority polite speech that English is somewhat devoid of such distinctions and therefore of a perhaps inferior quality where any/all Koreans may use impolite speech with impunity in English. In addition Korean students often only ever interact with very few foreigners usually their English teachers where imperative command statements make up a majority of classroom requests and or instructions.

• A role play practices the art of negotiating room rates where polite speech can often go much farther in getting a reasonable rate than orders and demands.
• The task tips regarding information included in the capsule hotel reading defining the differences between incorrect information or unclear details seems accurate and challenges the Korean student to clarify written information which is often disregarded in Korean society due to the high concentration of public posted signage and where marketing messages and even warnings are often completely disregarded highlighting possible advertising over-saturation in “The Hermit Kingdom."

Of the exemplified resources I am reminded of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Business English Pod could be useful for Young Hee as it appears plentiful and geared to pre- to intermediate students but without transcripts. ESL Galaxy Survival English for Travelers would be easy review but perhaps too easy? The Hotel and Restaurant material just does not appear similarly robust and would not make for much material for practice.