Advanced Communication (English)

Are you able to speak English well but sometimes lack the confidence in an interview? Do you at times stumble over words in front of someone you are trying to impress? This class is for anyone that is fluent or near fluent in English but would like to polish their communication skills. It will also be created around a simulation with immediate goals. Each student will become a new employee at an office selling time shares (vacation homes, yachts, etc.). This has more of a sales training focus, so the methods learned will have real world benefit for those that are in this field or hope to be soon.

This course will last five weeks.

Each week will consist of two 60 minute classes where the first one will be a traditional class of lecture, activities and feedback and the second class will be a workshop where the students will be creating a project with my guidance that will showcase their skills and prepare them for their final test.

Methods that will be used to teach the course will include but are not limited to the following: audio, video, role-playing, reports, presentations, student presentation, and workshops.

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Week One : Listening

This week will be spent studying the process of listening, common barriers to listening and ways to improve our listening skills. In addition, the mock campaign will be introduced at this time and students will partner up and begin their project.

Week Two : Speaking

This week will be focused on each student analyzing great speakers across the world and why they are great. Students will be challenged to take these ideas and incorporate them into their own speaking. In addition, we will analyze the foundation of speaking and I will give feedback on areas that students should focus on. Our campaign will hit a higher gear as we will be looking at students projects from last week with suggestions for improvements.

Week Three : Spontaneity

Do you have the ability to ‘shoot off the hip’ (as some of us Americans say) and not shoot yourself in the foot (as some of us Americans do)? This ability can all be wrapped up in one word, spontaneity. Often times if we have time to prepare what we are going to say, it isn’t a problem. However, when someone asks us an unexpected question, we get flustered and may say something regrettable. This week, we will work on ways to improve our spontaneity and answer those unexpected questions that seem to magically spew forth from customer’s mouths. The workshop will consist of students creating an FAQ sheet for their campaign.

Week Four : Rapport

Some people, well some people are just naturally liked by almost everyone immediately. Is this because they are nicer than everyone else? Probably not, more than likely they know how to build rapport. While this may be one of those God given gifts to certain people, the rest of us commoners can also improve our building rapport ability. This week, we will work on building rapport while dealing with difficult customers. The second class will be spent creating a profile of the different types of difficult customers that exist and tricks on how to deal with them.

Week Five : Confidence

After going through the last four weeks, everyone’s confidence ability should be much, much higher. Just in case it isn’t we will make sure it is this week. This is also the week where we will be putting together the final project and making the last minute changes before the final publishing of their projects.

Final Project (optional)

The capstone project will be each student calling a designated ‘customer’ and attempting to sell their time share. Students will be graded in the five key focus areas plus grammar, pronunciation and general sales ability. Detailed results can be sent to each student after the class as long as the call is recorded and sent to me with recommendations for each student to improve their ability in the future in an additional paid meeting through Edufire.

Class requirements are for each student to have:

1. Headset
2. Skype account (for testing and small group workshops)
3. www.slideshare.net account (FREE)
4. Microsoft Powerpoint or Openoffice equivalent