2. Pre-teach
Interesting ways of pre-teaching vocabulary they might need to understand in order to cope with the text include guessing the story from the pre-teach vocab and reading to check, or brainstorming a category of vocab that includes the pre-teach words and expressions. As well as vocabulary, you might need to pre-teach grammar, cultural information, or information about the kind of genre the piece of writing is.

3. Introduction
If you can write a brief introduction to the text, you can get students to read this first with one or two easy tasks as a kind of pre-teach whilst also warming up their reading skills. You can also combine this with a real vocab pre-teach stage by including all the words you want to pre-teach in the introduction, perhaps highlighting them so students notice that they are important. An introduction could include a summary of the whole story with the most interesting bits left out, the background to a news story, explanation of why the text is important and/ or interesting, or instructions on how they should read the following text and what they should look for.

4. Questions that give clues
A way of achieving the same thing as an introduction without adding an extra paragraph of text is to write the questions they read before the text so that they give clues to what they will be reading. This can be combined with the pre-teach stage by including the difficult vocabulary etc in the questions and answering queries about vocab before students start reading.

5. Glossary
Whilst having a glossary slows down reading speed and is not popular in present EFL textbooks, some language exams and self-study materials still include texts with a glossary at the bottom of the page. It is also fairly common in graded readers. An advantage of a glossary is that it is much quicker and easier for the teacher to write than actually changing the text.

6. Headings
Another thing you can easily add to a text which aids comprehension is paragraph headings, for example to make a newspaper article look more like a magazine article. This gives students clues as to what information is coming next and makes it easier to find information when answering detailed comprehension questions. If an authentic text already has paragraph headings, these are often written is a stylish or witty way and can be easily and usefully simplified.

7. Conversation
Talking about the topic that they will read about can help prime students to guess which of several meanings a word they get stuck on in the text has. Being able to predict what they are going to be reading next and just read to check also increases reading speed. Easy ways of starting a discussion that will help their comprehension include predicting the story from the headline or key words, or predicting the answers of true/ false questions before reading to check.

8. Pictures
Adding pictures to a text that doesn’t have them helps lighten the load of looking at a page of text and so make it less daunting, and can be used for vocabulary pre-teach and conversation before reading to set the scene. Students can also put the pictures into order or match them to words, sentences or paragraphs in the text much more easily than similar tasks written down.

9. Vocabulary
The easiest way of knowing what vocabulary to replace when rewriting a text to make it easier to understand is to look in a learners’ dictionary of the same level as your students. If a word in the text is not in the Elementary/ Intermediate/ Advanced Learners’ dictionary and is important for overall understanding and/ or to answer the comprehension questions you should replace it with an easier word. Words that are not so vital for understanding can stay to give students practice in ignoring them. If your main purpose is improving reading survival skills like this you can make up for difficult vocabulary with easy tasks, but 90-98% of the vocabulary should be at the right level if you want students to pick up language from the text.

10. Grammar
Although the grammar in the text can be set at the level of structures students can understand rather than the easier ones they can produce, and can also include more difficult structures if they aren’t important for the tasks, most authentic texts will include some grammatical forms that are worth simplifying so students can concentrate on something else.

11. Format
One of the easiest ways of rewriting a text and making a major change to its ease of understanding is to write it as a completely different genre of text. Easy forms for students to understand include notes, postcards and emails. For example, a magazine article about a holiday could be rewritten as a letter from someone taking that holiday.

12. Familiarity
Students can often be put off by unfamiliar place names, people’s names, names of foods etc. that are not important for the comprehension of the text. Although these things can provide useful practice is spotting words that can be ignored or in widening their international outlook, in texts that are challenging in other ways and in which you want them to concentrate on one thing you could try changing these things to something more familiar such as the name of a local city.

13. Reference
Another major difficulty that native speakers rarely spot is the problem of keeping track of what “it”, “that man”, “one of those” etc refer to. This is often a skill students have in their own language that they lose when overloaded by other things when reading English, but this can particularly be a problem with reference words that do not easily translate such as “one” in “give me one” or when the students speak a language that uses these kinds of expression less often. You can replace all these kinds of words with simple pronouns like “he” or the names, but be careful not to go too far and make it an unrealistic text in English.

14. Markers
Another thing that real English texts do not have a lot of is expressions such as “on the other hand”, as a skilled writer will write the text so the organisation of ideas will make the logical connections between sentences obvious. Adding these to the text can not only help the students understand how the text is organised and so predict what information is coming next, but can also teach them the kinds of expressions they will need to include in their IELTS Writing etc until they reach the same level of writing skill.

15. Ideas
Another difficulty that can throw students who can cope with it in L1 is dealing with mentally challenging concepts in texts at the same time as mentally challenging English language. Although you don’t want to explain what they will read so much that they learn nothing when they read it, you can give some help with a kind of “ideas preteach” or true/ false questions based on the ideas before they read.

1. Staff
If possible have a stranger supervising the mock exam, especially if it is a speaking exam like BULATS Speaking. You may also want to have more than one person supervising, especially if there are two examiners in the real exam, such as in FCE and CAE Speaking. Make sure the staff behave exactly like a real examiner- greet students like you don’t know them, no chit-chat before or after, watch students all the way through the exam, don’t bring in any marking etc to do during the exam, hold a pencil and paper all the time, and/ or patrol the classroom.

2. Sound quality/ sound equipment
Many schools are in the lucky position of having much better sound equipment than the exam boards supply. Students might have to get used to big rooms with echoes, tapes instead of CD players etc. In other test centres students get individual headsets. As it is usually impossible to find out in advance which equipment your students will have, it is probably worth trying it with any ones you have heard rumours about being used.

3. Importance
Usually the biggest factor in making students more relaxed and successful in a mock exam is the fact that the score doesn’t really matter. You can add some more realistic stress by telling them that you will make everyone’s scores public, make people who fail the mock retake, or mention their scores in their reports- even if you eventually don’t do any of these.

4. Arrival
Make students wait outside the room until a couple of minutes before class time and have the exam papers on each desk ready when they come in. Don’t allow chatting in the classroom, and put a big notice on the classroom door asking people outside to be quiet.

5. The room
Take all posters off the wall, especially language learning ones. Write the instructions and rules on the board in big letters. Hold the mock test in a different room to the normal classroom, if possible in a much bigger room.

6. Seating
Move the desks in some way to make the fact that this is not a normal lesson obvious. If possible, increase this effect by making them change their usual seating positions, for example by assigning them exam numbers and telling them to sit where their number is displayed. If there is enough room, set desks apart from each other.

7. Timing
Have a big prominent clock in the classroom and have the exam times written on the board when they come in. Make them wait a minute or so in silence at the beginning until it is the official starting time. Shout at “5 minutes left” etc during the exam. Be very strict about no writing after the time limit. Although this might not be the case in the exam, make students who finish early wait until the end of the exam so that they are more or less forced to look at their answers again and know how much time they will really have.

8. Paper
Make sure the front page looks like a real exam paper and ask them to write their names etc on it. Follow the format of the exam in terms of sizes of paper, single or double sided sheets, whether they are given blank paper to make notes, answer sheets for them to copy their answers onto (attached to question sheet or not) etc.

9. Script
If you are doing a speaking exam, it should be fairly easy to find a script of everything the examiner says from when the student first comes into the room. Using this and your own ideas write out a full script and stick to it as closely as possible- including questions that you know don’t make any sense for your students such as “What is your job?” You should also write out a script with the instructions and rules for a written exam, and read that out before they start.

10. Anticipation
Build up to a mock exam in the same way as you would a real exam, for example by telling students how many days more they have to revise for it and giving tips on how to be ready on the day by eating a big breakfast etc.

11. Strictness
If you don’t have the option in your school of excluding someone for being late, make latecomers do the exam in a seat outside the classroom or stuck next to the door far away from the other students. Give official warnings for students who seem to be chatting or looking at other people’s papers and move them to such seats if they need a second warning.

12. Marking
Do not give students the benefit of the doubt, including in things like bad handwriting and filling in two squares instead of one. As a real examiner will do, mark quickly in one hour stretches with 5 to 15 minute breaks.

13. Stuff
Make sure students only have the things on the desk that they are allowed in the real test, keeping to the exam rules on pencil cases, drinks etc. Make sure all books are in their bags and that their bags are closed.

14. Unfamiliarity
As it is almost impossible to prepare the students for exactly what will be in the exam, in the mock throw in some language you haven’t covered in class- even if it is fairly unlikely to come up. For example, by putting a less common topic like food into IELTS Speaking Part One or by rephrasing all the questions you can test their ability to cope with something they are not expecting- a vital exam skill! Another aspect of unfamiliarity is to make sure students can’t tell each other what they just spoke about in the mock speaking test.

15. Feedback
Give students exactly the same kind of results and feedback they will get from the real exam. After a couple of days to let that feedback sink in and to let them realise how much progress they still have to make, give them back their papers with the corrections and do a couple of lessons on particular difficulties they had and/or tips on dealing with real exam conditions.

2. Make it oral
After you have finished a task you can get students to test each other orally on, for example, what the missing words were. As well as being extra practice and revision, this also helps them access a different part of their brain in order to remember the language for the exam better, and adds a bit of noise and interaction to improve the classroom atmosphere. You can also make tasks more challenging and fun by reading out the question rather than letting them read it from the page, e.g. reading out one paragraph heading and getting them to tell you if it matches their text or is one of the extra distractors as quickly as possible. You can also do a pairwork version of that, where one partner has the questions and the other has the text and they have to complete the task without looking at each other’s worksheets.

3. Time limit/ race
This gets the adrenaline rushing and is good practice for the time constraints they will have during the exam.

4. Teams
Putting students in teams means you can get the good class atmosphere of cooperation without needing to spend too much time doing non-exam stuff to produce that feeling.

5. Points and competition
Although points aren’t always necessary to motivate people to work in teams, they can add a little bit of fun.

6. Movement
It can be difficult to justify getting up and moving around in an exam class when they know they will be sitting down in the exam, but it is often vital to improve concentration powers. At the most basic level you can easily justify asking the student who is pretending they are taking a speaking exam to stand up until their examiner partner asks them to come in and sit down. Tasks like adding headings can also be done standing up and putting the headings into envelopes below each text stuck on the walls around the room. Most exam tasks can also be done as running dictations.

7. Cut up stuff
Another way of getting a bit of physical movement is to give texts cut up and get students to sort them into the right order or pair them up. This obviously ties in with paragraph heading matching tasks and putting paragraphs in order, but you can also cut between each text and its questions (of any type) and get students to match the texts and the questions as a quick reading for general understanding task before they try to answer the questions.

8. Real communication/ personalisation
This is the one element of motivation and memory that most non-exam textbooks aim for and most exam classes miss out. Get students to ask each other speaking exam questions they really want to know the answer to or to ead someone’s exam writing and respond orally or in writing to it, e.g. as a reply to an email or a refutation of a viewpoint essay.

9. Memory games
For example, have a cloze text without gaps on the board and erase word by word until students can’t remember all the missing words. Then do the original cloze task.

10. Give them control
For example, let them decide when and how often to rewind the tape.

11. Warmers
Exam classes can be very reluctant to do anything not directly related to the exam, so warmers are usually best justified as being directly related to an exam skill like using body language in the speaking exam or reading quickly. It can also be worth doing them as and when students get tired rather than at the beginning of each class.

12. Video
Any listening comprehension tasks can be adapted for use with a video, for example Mr Bean for TOEIC Listening Part One. You can also use bits of dialogue for language tasks such as error correction, and then watch and listen and check.

13. Songs
Songs can also be used either for listening comprehension (difficult) or language tasks such as open cloze, sentence transformations and error correction.

14. Jokes
Labelling each joke with its name (”Knock knock”, “Doctor jokes”) is quite similar to a matching paragraphs to headings task in IELTS Reading etc. Adding punchlines can also be similar to a CAE add missing clauses Use of English task. Please make sure that students understand and will not be offended though.

15. Quotes
Famous quotes can be used for reading tasks such as matching up sentence halves or identifying what reference words refer to, and language tasks such as open cloze. Quotations might be already familiar to the students, might come up in conversation with native speakers and are generally more amusing and provocative than exam texts. One thing to watch out for is that they are often quite difficult to understand.

1. Use the same task again
The easiest way of making an exam task manageable is just to give exactly the same task as the day, week or month before so that students can answer it from the conscious and subconscious memory. This can also help students learn when and how much to trust their instinctive feelings about what language looks right in each gap and how much to overrule that with their book knowledge.

2. Use the same text several ways
A similar way of using students’ memories to Use the Same Task Again is to use the same text first for a reading comprehension and then for a grammar or vocabulary exam task. This also works for reading texts as a prompt for writing tasks, and doing an exam listening task with an example of a speaking exam and then answering the questions yourself.

3. Restrict the range of language
By having a multiple choice close that just tests, for example, noun plus preposition, we can make the language more memorable whilst making the task more manageable. This could also help students notice what kind of language they should be looking for next time they try an exam task with a more typical mix of language in it. The easiest ways of writing such tasks as close to the exam format as possible are to type out an exam text with the gaps in different places or to take grammar practice sentences from an exam workbook or textbook and rewrite them as a whole text.

4. Emphasize the subskill
With reading and listening tests, you can concentrate students’ attention and make it easier by rewriting the texts and/ or tasks to make it particular practice of, for example, scanning for capital letters and numbers, listening to people spelling out words or getting a general gist from information from several parts.

5. Mixed up answers
Another very basic technique is just to give the answers mixed up at the bottom. This works particularly well with cloze tasks where the students have to add one word to each gap, but something similar can also be done with multiple choice (by telling them how many “A”s etc. there are in the correct answers) and with matching tasks (by telling them which extra options are not needed).

6. Specialize
Spend one week, one month or every Monday particularly concentrating on one thing until students can take the confidence from doing that well into the other parts of the exam. You can organize that specialization by part of the exam, language point (e.g. many different exam tasks rewritten to include lots of Present Perfect), or subskill (e.g. guessing vocabulary from context in many parts of the exam).

7. Cut down on the number of options
Start off with a real exam multiple choice question but with only one distractor, then work your way up over the following weeks until A, B, C and D are all there. You can make the very first try even easier by including just the distractor that is most obviously wrong.

8. Make every question multiple choice
Multiple choice questions allow for easier guessing than other task types but are also better practice of avoiding trick questions. Open cloze questions can easily be made into multiple choice questions by giving four of the answers from somewhere in the exercise as options for each gap, and the same thing can be done with multiple matching exercises such as adding the headings to paragraphs. In all cases, though, it is better to write the multiple choice questions more carefully so that each question tests a common confusion. To make the task and concentrating on one language point per question, you could try making two of the distractors obviously wrong and only one a real trick question. After the students have tried the exam task with the extra multiple choice task you wrote, they can try it again without later in the lesson, week or term as real exam practice.

9. Slow it down
With a listening exercise this is literally possible as you can use a speed function on a good classroom cassette recorder to slow the speech down just a little so it doesn’t sound weird but is easier to understand. You can achieve something similar by pausing the tape several times to let students’ brains catch up with the tape. With other exercises you can just start off with the time limit 50% longer than the exam and cut it down little by little over the weeks until you have them completing it even quicker than real exam times.

10. Give them the answers and they explain why
For example, circle the correct multiple choice option and get them to underline the parts of the text where that information is.

11. Tell them what is wrong and they explain why
As easy practice of avoiding distractors and other questions meant to trip them up, you can add all wrong answers to an error correction exercise and ask them to explain why each one is wrong. They can then see if they can get the right answers to each question.

12. Just one answer wrong
Give the students a completed exam task such as a listening sentence completion exercise and get them to listen for which of the answers you have written in is not correct. Each time you do this you can increase the number of wrong answers to listen out for.

13. Let them answer by certainty
Ask students to answer the questions or call out their answers not in order but starting with the ones they are sure are correct. As well as boosting their confidence, this can also help them learn to trust their instincts with language, focus their self-study efforts on language they are unsure about and focus on questions they can answer easily if they run out of time in the exam.

14. Exam task, non exam text
Use a listening, reading or speaking task from a lower level textbook and add an exam task to it.

15. Exam text, non exam task
Use an exam text for easier and more interesting tasks like being given the text cut up and putting it in order. When they have finished that task and have got to know the text well, they can then do the exam task with the same text.

1. Darts points
After one student or team gets a question right they throw something such as a sticky ball (sucker ball) at a target marked with different numbers of points and score the number of points that they hit. Apart from a sticky ball on a target drawn on the board, students can also throw a soft ball, paper airplanes or screwed up pieces of paper. They can also try to throw any of these things into boxes or cups marked with different numbers of points. Throwing for extra points like this can help boost the scores of the sporty students who aren’t usually so good at English language games.

2. One dart try
A variation on Darts Points is that there is just one small target that they can have an attempt to hit every time they score a point. The first person or team to hit it wins the whole round or whole game.

3. Dice
A similar one to Darts Points that relies just on luck rather than physical skills is throwing a dice to see how many points you get each time. If you don’t have dice available, students can flip a coin until they get a tail and get a point for every head they got before. Adding an element of luck can give even the students who never win anything a chance to win occasionally.

4. Hangman
The scoring system of hangman where students have to complete something before a picture is complete can be used with all kinds of games. As a man being hung can be quite distasteful to anyone who hasn’t grown up with this game, you can draw anything else that clearly shows that time is up, such as a stopwatch.

5. Sharks
A variation on Hangman is making the shaded space on the board that represents each student or team smaller and smaller each time they take a turn or make a mistake, until the whole area has been erased. You can make the context clear by drawing the space as an island or a raft and showing the sharks circling it. A similar one is to have a picture of someone supported by balloons and pop them one by one or make them smaller each time an unsuccessful attempt is made.

6. The cabbage game
Students are given an object, e.g. an empty box or a piece of plastic fruit, each time they score a point but lose the point if they drop the object. This means that students who get lots of points will find it harder and harder not to drop things and so the scores should be evened up. You can bias it further in favour of students who don’t usually do so well by giving bigger objects to the students who have more points.

7. Points fetch
Students who score points have to go and fetch them from where the teacher has thrown them or has hidden them before the class, e.g. “Well done. One point. Take the flashcard that is under one of the chairs”. This can keep students who are getting all the points distracted as they run after a point in the corner of the room, while everyone else can concentrate fully on the next question.

8. One letter to guess
Every time they score a point they are given a letter of a word or sentence that they have to guess to win the whole game. Different teams can get the next letter for the common word or sentence or each team can have one each to guess. The letters can be given in order (much easier) or mixed up. This is good for tying a game about new language (for which they score the points) in with revision of old language (of which the word or sentence they have to guess is an example).

9. One letter to add
Each time they score a point students are given one random letter and at the end of the game they have to make as many words and sentences as they can from all the letters they have collected.

10. Double or quits
Every time they score a point they can take a gamble and try again for double the points. Strong teams and students tend to get overconfident with this game and teams with just a few points who are more cautious often get a chance to win.

11. Points betting
Students can bet part of their total points on how sure they are that they have the right answer, and then get double the points or lose them depending on whether they are correct or not. You can also have a points auction in a similar way, but with only the team who bid highest getting or losing points each time.

12. One knee, two knees, one hand, head, out
With games where people catch and throw a ball as they ask and answer questions etc, students who drop the ball or make a mistake with the language have to continue on one knee, then on both knees, with one hand behind their back, then both hands behind their back and only heading the ball until they make another mistake and are out or the round ends. This game also helps even things up as people tend to pick on the strong students and throw gently to people who struggle more with the language or with ball sports.

13. Move to the bottom
If students are sitting in a horseshoe shape the students who score points can move to the right hand chair (the top) or the students who make mistakes can move to the left hand chair (the bottom), with all the other students moving along to make room. Again, the student at the top tends to get picked on with difficult questions until they make a mistake and so it gives everyone a chance to be at the top at the end of the game. To make the game fair, you will to give a strict time limit to the game and stick with it.

14. One point one detail
Each time students get a point they can add one detail to their drawing on the board. The winning team is the one with the best picture at the end of the game, which will usually but not always be the one who has scored the most points during the game.

15. One point one ingredient
Each time students score a point they can ask for one possible element of the thing they are planning, such as something to take to help them survive in the desert or a cooking ingredient. Teams cannot copy each other. When the game finishes students explain what they are going to do with those things and the best plan wins.

www.eltgames.com

2. Business experience is essential to teach Business English
Many schools do ask for this from their teachers, but that is mainly so they can tell potential clients “We have teachers who have worked in (GE)”. You can make up for this by listing all the companies of the students you have taught Business English to. You can also show you are ready to teach Business English full time with a list of materials you have used, a qualification like the LCCI Cert TEB, and any other qualifications and interest in the field of business. You can make up for any lack of business experience in the classroom by lots of reading of business magazines etc.

3. Students need to describe their company structure
Most people nowadays work in organisations that are impossible to explain or where they are so distant from their ultimate boss they have no idea who they are. This topic can be useful as an introduction to talking about your job (“I am responsible for…”) or describing your company (“We have divisions that make…”), but usually needs to be simplified a lot compared to what appears in most Business English books.

4. Business English is boring/ you can’t use games in Business classes
Many Business English students come into class tired, stressed or with a history of unsuccessful language learning and need warmers, controlled practice games and the encouragement of being given points even more than General English classes. Popular business activities like case studies and roleplay meetings are also basically just games. If you do have students who are resistant to games, you can usually get away with doing exactly the same stuff by calling it “a business situation practice activity” or suchlike.

5. Your students already know about business, they just need the English
This can be the case, but you might have pre-experience students or you might be tackling a concept that doesn’t really exist in their country, company or section. This is particularly the case with Business English textbooks that cover each area of business one unit a time, but can also be true with people studying meidal English who are not doctors etc. See also below.

6. You don’t need to know about their area to teach them English
Every book on teaching ESP and Business English seems to start with this statement, so maybe they are under the impression that there is the opposite misconception that you need to be an expert. You can get away with knowing little or nothing about their area, and they will get lots of speaking out of explaining the ins and outs of their company to you. None of the books suggest, however, that explaining things to outsiders is the kind of communication skill they will need in their work. In their professional lives they are more likely to meet reactions like “Yes, I know” and “That reminds me of…”, and any reading you can do to make your own natural reactions the same will help you teach ESP better.

7. Students reading texts about their area of business is the best kind of practice for their work
Perhaps because these are the easiest resources to find on the topic of a student’s particular area of interest, many ESP classes consist of reading a text from a trade magazine and then talking about it. There is no evidence to suggest that this work as a language learning method better with ESP students than with any other kinds of learners, and they will actually need the same mix of skills, language work, controlled practice activities etc as any other kind of student gets for both short term and long term progress.

8. At low levels, students basically just need general English
There is a certain truth in this, but it is possible to adapt even a General English coursebook class by choosing the topics such as numbers and requests they will need more and tackling them first.

9. Business English and ESP are the same thing
There are similarities in the usual needs analysis and course design stages of tailored courses, but ESP also contains EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and training for practical skills like carpentry for which the materials and teaching methodology would be very different from a Business English course.

10. If their company is paying for the lessons, they must need it for their jobs
Some companies choose to offer English lessons just as a benefit to attract employees or as a cheap way of using the staff training budget. This makes including General English topics and fun activities even more important than in other ESP classes.

11. Business English students are more motivated than General English ones
See above. They may also be forced to come to lessons by their companies, in which case some adults might come to class with the attitude of a rebellious teenager. Showing that you are on their side against their HR department seems to work, as long as the HR department doesn’t get the idea that it is true…

12. TOEIC is a Business English exam
This is partly true. There is lots of Business vocabulary that can throw students who don’t know it but it is the kind of business vocab that any native speaker teenager would know and anyway is often not relevant to answering the actual question. Business vocabulary is certainly more important than grammar to get a good mark in the TOEIC exam, but probably comes lower than teaching them how to deal with a listening or reading text and just above functional language.

13. Business English students want to talk about their work
Many students want to use their lunchtime lesson to escape their work. If so, you will need to sneak in the topics like numbers that they will learn easiest, use most and please their bosses with without them even noticing that it is a Business English class.

14. You should just stick a Business English student on a Business English textbook
Most people who really need English for their present work should be working their way through a tailored course that combines the language and the skills they need today with what they need to progress in the longer term to reach the next level.

15. Business English classes are smaller than General English classes
Because it is easiest to do the stages of needs analysis etc, training for ESP teaching is often combined with training for teaching 1 to 1 classes. However, for budgetary reasons or to deal with a whole batch of new employees at once, you might have to deal with 20 students or even a lecture sized group.

2. Directness
People who are aware of the Japanese reputation for being even more indirect than the British can be surprised to be told “People in your country are fat” or asked “Are you married?” in Japan. This could be a misunderstanding about how direct non-Japanese are, enjoying the lack of restrictions of not speaking Japanese, or just a personality trait of the kind of person who is interested in learning English and meeting foreign people. Alternatively it could be a lack of language, and Japanese students usually appreciate and benefit being taught how to be indirect in English more than being taught to be more direct. One vague use of language that doesn’t transfer from Japanese to English is that excuses and apologies in Japanese do not include specific reasons, and so the Japanese can come over as if they are saying “Sorry, I’m washing my hair”. As with many things in the classroom, giving a totally natural reaction to rude or too vague questions is usually the best way of showing their effect.

3. Hospitality and gift giving
In Japan it is traditional to take a gift away and open it when you get home, but a young person or foreigner doing this might be met with surprise. The same thing is somewhat true of the Japanese habit of opening presents slowly and carefully. The best thing is simply to ask “Can I open it now?”, to which the answer is usually yes, and then to open in a way that is a happy medium between Japanese grandmother and Western kid at Xmas. Teachers are not usually expected to return presents, but a little snack from your country would be much appreciated. Japanese people often make a disparaging comment about presents similar to “It’s just a little something I picked up” or “Don’t get too excited, it’s nothing special”, so teaching phrases like this in a connected lesson might be appreciated.

4. Nationalism/ attitudes to foreign countries
Many of the strange comments and questions you get from Japanese students like “Do you have four seasons in your country?” or “I want to learn English so I can tell foreign people about Japan” come from a combination of the things taught in school and the media, and so as in any country it is going to take several years of lessons from you before any false impressions are going to change, if indeed such a thing is possible. Another thing that is true anywhere is that them criticizing their own country does not necessarily mean it is okay from you.

5. Status
This can be a huge problem with in company classes, where for instance a roleplay meeting can always end up with everyone agreeing with the proposal of their real boss, even if he was just reading it off a piece of paper. It is particularly bad if the highest status person, e.g. the oldest, is the highest level, has a habit of using obscure vocabulary or likes to guide the conversation to topics they only know about, as the other students might be shy about asking them to explain. Status and language level can also be a problem the other way round, with people unwilling to show that they know more English than their boss. One solution to all of these is to use lots of pairwork, with in the worst cases the highest status person usually being paired up with the teacher. The other approach is just to group Business English classes by management level or starting year in the company rather than language level, and although this leads to mixed level classes students are usually happier with that than with being in class with their managers.

6. Gender
There are not usually status problems involved with mixed male and female classes in Japan, but most Japanese people do spend most of their lives after primary school in single sex groups and the usual rule of a better atmosphere amongst single sex teenage and housewife classes are even more true in Japan.

7.Food and drink
One factor relevant to Japan is the fact that Japanese teachers usually avoid drinking even water in class and certainly try not to drink straight out of the plastic bottle. Another is that the Japanese are outdone only by the Italians in their love of talking about food, making this a great classroom topic- if one that needs a lot of language input in order to make it possible for them to talk about properly. Japanese students often ask “Can you eat (sushi)?” rather than “Do you eat sushi?” or “Do you like sushi?” This could be because of direct translation and/ or surprise that foreigners like raw fish etc, and subtly pointing out that it sounds strange in English is often helpful.

8. Embarrassment
Signs that a Japanese person is embarrassed include nervous laughter and rubbing the back of the head. Things that can make people embarrassed in class are the usual things of taboo topics, insensitive correction, suddenly realising that they’ve been doing the wrong thing for ages, making them seem ignorant about their own country or the world, making people stand out, and too much praise, with the last three often more of a factor in Japan than in some other countries.

9. Small talk
Japanese meetings tend to start with quite a lot of small talk but have a clear transition to the business of the day, so students might be caught out by teachers trying to move smoothly between the two or think that the small talk is going on too long. Students will often expect small talk at the end of the lesson as well, so finishing on a crescendo bang on time is not often a success.

10. Politeness
Although Japanese politeness is famous, it is fundamentally different from British politeness, for example, in that someone being served like a customer in a shop is not expected to use polite language. This could mean that polite language in restaurants etc. needs more practice than you might think. Students might also expect to be shown a very clear step up in politeness between words and expressions in the way that such groups of words exist in Japanese keigo, and be confused by vague answers. Otherwise, the rules of “more polite equals longer sentences” and “more polite equals more indirect” translate well from Japanese.

11. Eye contact
Asian students often close their eyes to concentrate during listenings etc, much to the annoyance of their teachers when they study abroad. There is also a tendency to avoid eye contact that can result in businessmen etc giving a bad impression and is well worth practising in class.

12. Writing styles
You only have to read one newspaper editorial translated from Japanese to see that their is a cultural tendency for writers to chase around an idea with lots of seemingly unrelated facts and opinions, and without a clear beginning and end. This can translate into your students’ writing, and lots of work on paragraphs with one single topic etc is especially important for academic writing but can even be a factor when they are writing to penfriends.

13. Attitudes to strangers
Japanese people tend to be uncomfortable around strangers but get very attached to who and what they know, so with new classes and when a new teacher starts there tends to be a period of adjustment. This can be shortened with intensive application of the usual activities for good classroom dynamics, such as lots of GTKY activities, learning people’s names, introducing new things slowly and boosting their confidence.

14. Attitudes to grammar
Japanese people often have the opinion that they have been taught too much grammar at school already and that anymore will just be a distraction from finally learning how to speak. This can be a battle, as the fact that they have been taught the grammar in such a boring way that it hasn’t stuck or even that the grammar they have been taught is wrong means that it is actually grammatical range and accuracy when speaking and writing that is holding them back from reaching the next level. A good approach is often to show them that they can use the language they do know in communication, e.g. getting them to make a story out of the irregular past tenses they learnt at school, show them the gap in their knowledge such as the pronunciation and uses of those past tenses, fill in the holes, and then give them more communicative activities.

15. Attitudes to games
Although there are the usual businessmen who think games are beneath them, most Japanese people study English as a hobby and therefore expect it to be a morally acceptable way to have a bit of fun. Games therefore go down well in even most Business English classes, with the only difficulty being that learning new rules tends to be a struggle as they are unfamiliar with games like dominoes and their school teachers tend to just reuse the same old games. This can be made easier for the first few attempts by using games that also exist in Japanese such as Paper Scissors Stone (janken) and pellmanism/ memory game/ pairs.

The book is clearly broken into 3 sections entitled “Discussion and Sharing”, “Discussion as Exploring”, and “Discussion as Decision making”. Section One encourages students to share ideas and value each other’s input; Section Two focuses on stating positions and understanding other’s views as well as your own and the last section encourages students to think both inside and outside of the box and define their criteria for constructing good arguments as well as uncovering assumptions. Within these sections, students are also exposed to the 7 principles which are integrally linked to the 3 sections above and reinforce the progression that good discussions follow. Students who are taught and use these principles effectively will ultimately understand the essentials of critical thinking and discussion as well as argumentation much better.

Obviously, students with only one discussion strategy approach every discussion the same way. Discussion Process and Principles identifies several different approaches to discussion, each having its own language and clearly tied to the pertinent discussion principle or principles. This book not only exposes students to authentic language resources, but also offers topic-centered activities that facilitate the use of particular language structures. With meaning making as its core, it helps engage students in an easy to understand and well constructed format which leads them to be critical of both their own and other’s arguments and points of view. It also provides EFL teachers with a practical resource to empower students to use the language for authentic context-based communications. My only criticism is that both the edition I have (and the ones offered for sale on Amazon, for example) do not include the tape scripts or the audio CD. The website offers downloadable scripts, sample syllabuses, an overview of the teacher’s book, scripts and other useful resources, but I personally prefer books that do not require teachers to buy a separate CD, Teacher’s book, etc in order to teach them effectively or even use them in class. Having said that, if you can get an edition with the CD and scripts included, this would be another great addition to your teaching library as well as giving you a much more useful approach to encouraging students to discuss than simply handing them a list of conversation questions or trying to get them to “free talk”.

Authors: Charles LeBeau and David Harrington
Publisher: Language Solutions Inc
Components: Textbook and CD (not included)

1. Body language and gestures
English gestures that Japanese people do not usually understand include rubbing your finger and thumb together to show money, tapping the side of your nose for “nosy/ mind your own business”, kissing the tips of your fingers for “delicious”, pointing to your chest for “I” (the Japanese point at the nose), the hand position for “come here” and “go away”, a cut across the neck for “time up”/ “stop the speech” (in Japanese it usually means “you are fired”), and cross your heart for “I promise” (in Japanese that is linked little fingers). Gestures that could be considered offensive by Japanese people include raising your eyebrows to say hello (it is a come on in Japanese) and thumbs down for bad (it means to “go to hell” in Japanese). People also tend to stand up and sit very straight and to avoid putting their hands in their pockets. Like most nationalities, they are generally not aware that the first two fingers with your palm towards you is offensive in the UK and Australia. Gestures they might want to use that don’t really exist in English include the neck cutting gesture mentioned for “you are sacked”, and the little finger as a non-offensive gesture for “woman”. You might also find male students tipping their heads to one side and/ or sucking air in through their teeth, or rubbing the back of their heads. These are signs of not knowing the answer, doubting what you are saying and/ or stress. Although the Japanese don’t usually use thumbs up, handshakes and hunched shoulders for “I don’t know”, all these are usually no problem.

2. Dress
Despite what pop culture cliches might make you think, the Japanese tend to be quite conservative in dress, and age appropriacy and different clothes for different places have been very important concepts since the age of the kimono. This means that the famous short skirts, floppy socks and garish make up of various teenagers might not be considered appropriate for older people or in professional settings. This is also somewhat true of bright colours. For any age groups and even at the weekend, showing shoulders, bra straps, or even a slither of belly is considered daring and so Japanese girls usually wear another T-shirt under a strappy top or see through blouse. Not wearing make up is also considered slightly risque. If you are working in a Japanese style school or room, you might have to take your shoes off- in which case be careful of holey socks!

3. The teacher’s role
Unlike the cliche that many people have of East Asian classrooms, Japanese students do not usually expect foreign teachers to be an authoritarian font of all wisdom who leads everything. This is partly because they choose foreign teachers, study abroad and conversation schools in order to experience free conversation and a more relaxed atmosphere, and also because certain parts of the Japanese education system such as primary schools and some juku cram schools are quite freewheeling and responsive to student needs. The things that most Japanese students will expect from a foreign teacher therefore are, in approximate order: (1) A friendly personality and friendly atmosphere, (2) A personalised touch in terms of giving personal information and responding to student needs, (3) Giving them a model for the language they can use in bothcontrolled and freer activities, including lots of pronunciation help, (4) Cultural information and realistic real life practice of interacting with a foreigner.

4. Asking questions/ saying you don’t understand
This is the one where Japanese students can fit in with the Asian stereotype. One classic example is that in a Japanese company it is normal for a subordinate to say “Yes, I understand” to any instructions from the boss, and then find out from elsewhere whatever they didn’t understand. Another is that people giving presentations and speeches they have given in other countries who leave the usual 20 minutes at the end for questions often have to improvise something to fill up the time when no questions are forthcoming, but then find themselves deluged with questions at the drinks afterwards. Some people can show the same reaction to grammar explanations and game instructions in the classroom. This is particularly the case in teenage classes where the factors of not wanting to stand out by either being too keen and fluent or making a mistake are strongest. Solutions include making sure you answer what their questions might be without actually waiting for the questions (maybe with “If you are wondering why…”), looking over their shoulders to see what they are getting wrong or missing out in their books, and making yourself available for questions during pairwork and after the class when people don’t stand out so much.

5. Making mistakes and correction
One of the most heard comments about Japanese and other East Asian students is that they won’t speak because they don’t like making mistakes, but in fact silence and long pauses are just as likely to be because of a lack of ideas, vocabulary or functional language as it is to be worries about grammar. One proof of this is that Japanese students are less likely to demand more correction than some European students, and the percentage of students who will get stuck at a low level because they aren’t interested in correction as long as they can communicate is as high in Japan as it is in any place I have taught. Where the number of students who don’t like obvious mistakes to be made is higher than in some countries is in written work. Most Japanese students are not happy for their mistakes to stay on the page, and therefore they will erase a whole line and start again rather than just adding the one extra word that is needed. This can also be a factor in games involving drawing, where some of the students will try and make an error free work of art every time. The only solution seems to be to continue with games where writing and drawing speed are important, but to let them erase such sloppy efforts when the game finishes.

6. Modesty
Modesty is famously a Japanese attribute, and in the classroom it can result in some students not asking if they think they should go up a level, and not mentioning their achievements in English and study abroad during needs analysis. Modesty might also make some students unhappy about topics that could seem to result in them boasting. This is also one of the reasons why Japanese housewives spend so much time slagging off their husbands and most English conversation school teachers have an exaggerated idea of how unhappy Japanese family life is.

7. Strictness
Although you might not expect it from the fact that the streets are clean and the trains run on time, the Japanese expect a very Eastern amount of flexibility from their teachers and practises like bumping up everyone’s marks so they all seem to have passed the exam are usual. Young children are also very much indulged or ignored when they misbehave. Students do, however, expect to be motivated by their teacher, and nagging, cross looks and even the occasional outburst are all considered perfectly acceptable motivational techniques.

8. Groups and individuality
Japanese students might be embarrassed if a classroom activity or a question about their previous studies and travels makes it obvious that they are a higher or lower level than the rest of the class. With Junior High School students, you might also find that they will prefer to come to a consensus and report back to the class or teacher through a spokesman rather than give their views individually.

9. Hygiene and cleanliness
Some Japanese can be very sensitive to, and even openly critical of, both body odour and strong perfume. Some older people have also not got used to the smell of garlic, and for this and other reasons Japanese school teachers will clean their teeth and/ or gargle before lessons and after lunch. Blowing your nose in front of people is also much frowned upon among the older generation, and if you point out to a student how annoying sniffing instead is considered to be in most countries they will more than likely be shocked. Although it is fairly common to see people wearing masks in the street during the colds and hayfever season, in class this is much more unusual and people will almost always take them off if asked to do so to facilitate communication. As with many Latin students, bags are not usually put on the ground if at all possible, and you might want to provide a spare table or chair for students to put them on instead. You might also find your students collecting up the bits that are left behind from their use of the eraser, which is nice, and worrying about whether scraps of paper need to go back to the teacher or not.

10. Names and titles
In Japanese in-company classes students will expect the teacher to call them by their first names but might continue calling each other by their family names- in fact, they probably won’t know each others’ first names. Students might also make mistakes such as using Mr plus first name. Students might also call you “teacher” thinking it is an honorary title like “sensei”, but most people have got used to calling native speaker teachers by their first name since they had ALTs at junior high school, and can even go too much the other way.

11. Showing your real feelings
Although the Japanese have a reputation for hiding their true feelings, in fact hiding your true feelings in a situation when you should show them like in front of your family is as bad as being rude by showing them to someone you shouldn’t. Unlike in Thailand, I have found that my Japanese classes have always had a positive reaction to me showing my real feelings about them not doing their homework for the 15th time etc, and it is not unheard of for Japanese school teachers to have a bit of a shout. As in most countries, even with students who are critical of Japan there might be a negative reaction to you showing too much disapproval. It can depend a lot on the students, but safe things to say you don’t like usually include some types of Japanese food you can’t eat (e.g. raw fish), general disapproval of the political and educational systems, and how crowded the country is. Criticisms more likely to cause confusion or embarrassment include comments about the ugliness of some tourist spots, racism in Japan and the quality of housing.

12. Taboo topics
Taboo topics in conversation between Japanese people include the bukakumin traditional underclass, uyoku rightwingers and their black vans, and the royal family. Other things that might cause discomfort include anything that gives away social class (area you live in, name of university, name of school or juku, your hometown, your parents’ jobs, your or your family speaking a dialect) and which newspaper you read (as it can give away your political position). Questions that Japanese students might need to be told to avoid elsewhere include asking about marital status and kids in the UK, and talking about cleaning your house and sleeping at the weekend.

13. Pacing
In Japanese schools there is very little streaming and classes tend to go at the pace of the slowest, so even the higher level students might be surprised (often pleasantly so) if you aim the class at the average or better students. This is also a factor in the number of mixed level classes that teachers are likely to have in Japanese schools and businesses, and in the tendency to move all students up to the next level together.

14. Yes and no
As well as the well-known tendency of Japanese negotiators to say “I’ll ask my boss” and “That could be difficult” when they mean no, this could also involve the Japanese answers to negative questions, where “Yes” means “Yes, I don’t”. It is also worth teaching them that a tick is a positive thing (in Japanese a similar mark is sometimes used to show something is wrong and a right answer is illustrated with a circle) and that the Japanese gestures of waving your hand in front of your nose or making a cross shape with your fingers or palms to mean “no” look a bit too strong in English.

15. Silence
In some countries, most famously Japan and Finland, silence between conversation turns and when thinking are quite normal. The danger is that the teacher or another student might jump in to fill the silence and so prevent them from speaking, or that they will make others feel uncomfortable with their silence. The best short term solution is to teach phrases to fill the thinking time like “Well, let me see”, with the next stage being teaching sentence stems to at least get them started quickly, e.g. “I think that…” In complete contrast, when listening to someone else in Japanese people make a lot of encouraging noises, so students might misinterpret your silence or feel uncomfortable not knowing how to say “Really?” and “I don’t believe it!” in reaction to others when speaking English.