Sarah’s LP Appropriate/Inappropriate Questions in the Workplace
Posted by shoch on May 13, 2013
| International Rescue Committee March 4, 2013San Jose, CA 9:15-10:00 am | |||
| Level: Intermediate/Advanced Vocational ESL for adult refugee students | |||
| Topic: Appropriate/Inappropriate Questions for the Workplace | Number of Ss: 3-4 Background of Ss: Iraqi, Iranian, Vietnamese, Azerbaijani | ||
Materials:
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Objective(s):At the end of this lesson:
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Skills/Language Focus:
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| Procedures | OBJ? | TIME | |
| Activities | |||
| I. Warm-up: banking vocab word find reviewchecking account, savings account, charge, withdrawing, interest, deposit, balance, statement, bounce, canceled check, travelers checks | 1 | 10min
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| II. How much money did you make? 1. Go over the setting of the dialogue. (Sam asks Anita uncomfortable questions at work, not realizing he’s making Anita uncomfortable. Anita carefully tries to indirectly answer him).
2. Have Ss take turns reading the dialogue. 3. Check for comprehension, review any unfamiliar vocabulary. 4. Go over questions for discussion. |
2, 3 | 10 min | |
| III. Can you ask that? 1. Ask Ss to think of a question that they have been asked that made THEM uncomfortable to answer. Why didn’t you want to answer the question?
2. How did you respond to the question? 3. Give each Ss a copy of the Can you ask that? handout. Have Ss read aloud to each other to see if it is appropriate or inappropriate. 4. Review responses as a class. 5. Discuss why some answers are not appropriate. 6. Ask Ss for suggestions on how to indirectly answer these questions. |
2, 3 | 20 min | |
| IV. (time permitting) General Practices in the United States versions A/B1. Have Ss read their prompts aloud to their partner. The partner will tell them the word that is missing from their own sheet.
2. Review full answers as a class. |
4 | 10 min. | |
So I felt better about this lesson than any yet, primarily because the second part of it involved an opportunity for the students to work together to negotiate whether certain questions are appropriate or inappropriate in the workplace. Some examples of inappropriate questions from the worksheet would be:
“How much money do you make?”
“Why aren’t you married?”
“Why don’t you live with your husband/wife?”
Some other questions were less clear, since the appropriateness might depend on the context (e.g., how close you are with your coworker):
“Are you going to get married?”
“How much money did you make in your country?”
“Will you invite me to your house some day?”
This task really got the students to speak up and converse in a natural way. They really seemed to enjoy arguing over the more controversial questions, and were even being creative with the language by making jokes.
However, since I always tend to overplan lessons, we didn’t have enough time to begin the
cloze passage General Practices in the United States (we did this in the following lesson). Looking back on this task, I realize I didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly I wanted them to learn from this task. Certainly I had isolated some vocabulary words (some of which they had heard before, e.g., employer, children, meeting, and some that were new, e.g., affiliation, illegal, especially), but I hadn’t thought about how to build from this vocabulary task. In hindsight, I should have spent more time on the new vocabulary and then had them do something with these words, such as matching meanings and terms and then making their own sentences. On this note, can any of you think of other ideas for applying and using this vocabulary (to address the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy)?
SAM: Anita, did you have your review yet?
ANITA: Yes, I talked to my supervisor yesterday.
SAM: I did, too. I didn’t get the raise I was hoping for. My supervisor told me I had to finish the
probationary period before I could get my raise. I don’t think it is fair.
ANITA: I’m sorry to hear that.
SAM: Did you get a raise?
ANITA: Well, I have been here for a year now. Everyone gets a raise after the first year.
SAM: Wow, I wish I didn’t have to wait for my raise. My family really needs the money. My son just went
to college. How much money do you make now? I bet you have a good paycheck.
ANITA: I think it is the same as other people in my position.
SAM: Well, how much is that?
As for how to expand upon the first dialogue activity here above, Peter and Leslie had some great suggestions. First, because the dialogue exhibited some authentic ways people handle uncomfortable inappropriate questions, they suggested that maybe it would be a good idea to focus on hedging techniques, e.g., via intonation, pausing, avoiding directly answering a question, and the discourse marker “well”, and how it’s different from other meanings of “well” that they are familiar with (e.g, “That went well”). Then we could talk about other expressions such as “I bet” and “wow”. I could also have the students listen and try to imitate the intonation patterns, and possibly record themselves so they could listen to themselves.