Quick Email Activity for intermediate Business English Class

Just found this link. It's for the Top 5 most useless Phrases in Emails.

I think it is pretty accurate.

I am going to use it in my English tutoring lessons this week.

Activity wise:

Introduction discussion about emails, what kind of emails does the learner write, do they write or read a lot of business or personal emails. How often?

Print it off, with the cartoon. Maybe do a quick discussion about how our perception of Email has changed over the years.

Then read through the article. Check vocabulary.

Discuss what the learner agrees with or disagrees with.

Then see if the learner has any tips or tricks for writing business emails.

Conclusion: maybe write a quick business email using the new phrases. Or, if possible, look at an email written by the learner and see if they commit any of the "sins" mentioned on this website.

Simple 10-15 minute activity depending on how interested the learner is and how much time you have.

Enjoy!

English Stack Exchange Question

I forgot I was posting my English Stack Exchange Questions here!!!

Anyways this is one from awhile back about how to end business emails or letters in English.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/55161/whats-the-difference-between-yours-sincerely-and-sincerely-yours

New Website for ESL teachers

Well new for me!

It's called Busy Teacher. Seems pretty decent. After searching through a bunch (read more than 15) activities I found two good activities for my business class.
We are learning how to write emails, our text book only has activities like fill in the blanks D____ M ____:, or Yours __________.
Not the best!
But I found a work sheet that let's students go through and decide which word is appropriate (pg 5 I think on the Email English Handouts sheets) and the other one (pg 11 I believe) is writing informal or formal emails. It just talks the students through writing an email (i.e gives them a reason to email etc.)  and tells them who they are emailing (friend or business).
Hopefully these will be a good change from our normal vocabulary drilling and listening exercises that our textbook (and this company) wants us to do (thinks is the way to learn English!).

The only downside is that you do have to sign up to download their handouts, but so far it seems like I won't be spammed (I told them not to send me their WEEKLY newsletter).

Lions and Tigers and Tenses....oh my!

English tenses!

I remember when I was taking my English grammar course during my TESL studies I loved the English tenses section! My professor had an excellent sheet on them all; however, I left that sheet in Canada when I came to Germany >.<. So when I went back for holidays in July I searched through all my boxes, but to no avail, it seems to have jumped ship! I will have to email her and ask if she can forward it me....maybe....
Until then though I found a decent replacement on Englishstackexchange, the diagram in particular makes me happy :).
This is exactly what I needed as I am now teaching an English 3B business course and for some reason I need to teach them the Future present continuous and Future present simple, which they do not like.
"Teacher, why can't we just use 'will'? Why do I need "have" and "been" and "-ing verbs!?"
"Teacher, can't I just say I worked here for 20 years next week?"
Anyways, I really just wanted to post something since it's been sooo long! That's it for now!

Edit: So I got excited too fast, there are a couple of tenses missing from this answer for example the future "going to", but that's all right I will just have to add that in! 

Booking a Hotel Room

So similar to my telephone cards I also made booking a hotel room and a reserving a table at a restaurant. Same idea, a couple of different phrases and with the all important, "Can you spell your name please", question. None of my students like that one! They hate having to spend their names, it seems to be very difficult to remember the letter "h" for Germans...I'm not quite sure why.
Wow, so I have had this post half-finished for three days! I came home from work on Thursday night and the internet had decided to go away! Silly internet...

If I want to eat my 'after-table', I will have to practercise...

On Friday I taught my first set of Business English at an office!
It actually went fairly well, the office seems pretty laid back. Which I was not expecting. Today, I went in for my second lesson with them, and the one lady got me a coffee and another student brought me some cookies! So I am taking that as an 'we don't mind you as our English teacher" sign. : )
On Friday in the lower level we did conversing on the telephone!
In order to get all of the vocabulary for taking a phone call or making a phone call, I tried to elicit the phrases from the students, the one is a secretary so she didn't have too many problems with that. I had handy little cue cards ready with the different phrases you need for answering and making phone calls. Each was colour coded to the type of speaker and the action. I thought it was pretty neat! The participants liked it, they said it was a very intensive lesson, which I was worried meant that they didn't like it. However, they all came back today and said they want to keep the pace that I have set (we will see how long that lasts!!!).
To sum up:
Taught polite telephone English/business telephone English, with cue cards. After we had the cue cards all laid out in the correct order, we practiced dialogues until they could do the dialogues without the cards : ).
P.S for those of you wondering about the title: In German dessert is Nachtisch and a direct translation is after table, my German friend who knows some English asked my husband if he was ready for his after table. I think it was a joke, but I am not sure. Either way we liked it! And the practercise, is a new favourite of mine. One of my business English students wanted to say that she needed to practice her English and that she needed to do exercises in order to do that. And she said "I need to practercise...", and the damnedest (excuse my french!) thing was I almost let it go! I almost didn't catch it. Then I thought wait a minute, you want to what?! Ah, so excellent :) We both had a good laugh...

Here are the cards I made for the telephone conversation, I hope you can see it, you might have to zoom in on your browsers!

I will figure out how to turn it soon promise!