Thursday, September 7, 2017

A Job That's Rewarding

I am on my way back from a corporate seminar. It was held at a nationally acclaimed company that all people in Japan know. Every year the company sends its employees to Hawaii as part of their welfare program. This year they have decided to offer them a seminar to help them learn some useful English phrases which they can use in Hawaii to get the most out of the opportunity. My job is to have them be positive about talking in English by doing some fun role play based on situations where they are most likely to need to talk in English.

From among a number of situations where English is needed, I focused on four, learned some simple phrases, and enjoyed acting out some conversations.

The live audience was a small group of six, but the presentation was televised in seven different places at the same time. So the total number was a lot larger.

The presentation was the first of its kind for me, and I was a bit nervous, especially because I did some activities that I had never done before. But the participants liked what I did, and I was glad. I can't tell you exactly what I did, because it's kind of a secret (ha ha), but one thing I can say is that no matter how much fun a certain activity is, if you do it too long, participants' concentration goes down. By the same token, if you rely on one mode of communication too long, again they start losing interest. So every now and then you need to change media to keep them engaged.

Today's audience was all so young. And young participants nowadays LOVE activities and participation. They also get such a kick out of acting things out, which is good for me, because my presentation has a lot of it. All six live participants had a chance to come to the front and show a model conversation for the rest of the audience, and none of them were shy about it. I was impressed.

I hope that they'll have lots of memorable experience in Hawaii, and come back more positive about talking with someone in English.

No comments:

Post a Comment