English by Crystal

All things teaching and learning English

Building bridges: Teaching English to professionals in Bahrain

I got back into teaching English over the last year, and I came across an opportunity to teach online with the relatively new Virtual Educator Program through the US Department of State English Language Programs. I’ve had colleagues do the specialist and fellow programs before, and I thought the opportunity to teach online from Germany sounded really great.

I went through the process of applying to be a Virtual Educator last summer. The application process is pretty extensive, but once it gets rolling, it moves pretty quickly. The Virtual Educator program is relatively new, and it offers remote projects with partners around the world. Teachers can work from home and offer English language services in a variety of capacities. For example, some projects work with local English instructors and teacher training while other projects partner with local government officials and provide other types of training in English.

The project I was matched with was to teach an 8-week English for Professional Purposes course with employees at the Institute of Public Administration in Bahrain.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

About the Virtual Educator project

The project began at the end of October. There was about a week between when I interviewed with the regional officer and stakeholders in the project and the start of the project, so it was a quick turnaround. In addition to developing and teaching the 8-week course, I conducted a needs analysis in the week prior to the start of meetings.

Needs assessment

I’ve written a bit about crafting a needs assessment for this project in a previous post. Basically, I collected information from stakeholders at the institute via email. Then I shared an online survey with course participants to get more information about their experience with English, feelings about using English, needs related to using English at work, and general English proficiency. To gather a bit of information about language proficiency, I included a short listening task with a video and comprehension questions. 

In addition to the online survey, I scheduled live interviews with small groups of participants to get to know them a bit and learn more about their speaking and listening proficiency. In the US, I worked to develop a speaking proficiency exam with stakeholders at the business college, and I modeled the needs assessment for the Bahrain project on that speaking exam a bit. You can read more about the needs assessment and see the materials in my previous blog post.

Planning the course

After I collected information about the participants and stakeholders and what the course needed to be about, I started planning. It can be exciting and daunting to plan a course from scratch, but I think the best place to begin is with the course learning outcomes. I used the information collected from participants and administrators to draft a course outline with simple learning outcomes, course schedule, and specific topics to include.

The learning outcomes for the course were: 

  • Build confidence and fluency in speaking English
  • Build confidence and fluency in writing in English
  • Build vocabulary related to communicating effectively
  • Speak and communicate more confidently, compose understandable emails and increase their list of vocabulary

The outcomes were intentionally general because I wanted to leave room to adapt the specific topics covered in the course to suit the participants’ needs as we got to know each other.

Making cultural connections

In addition to these learning outcomes, another goal of the course was to build relationships and connections across cultures. Specifically, the US Department of State employs English Language Programs to foster cultural understanding between US and international counterparts. With this in mind, I also wanted to allow for activities in the live meetings to meander through topics and discussions that participants found most interesting and engaging. I integrated topics related to the workplace, but we also discussed our daily lives and how we celebrate holidays and other general topics that allowed us to make connections and learn about each other. 

Photo by Ajmal Shams on Unsplash

To help facilitate more opportunities for making cultural connections, I organized a small panel discussion during one of our course meetings. The panel included three Americans living in Germany (like me) with different professional and cultural backgrounds. The activity was loosely organized around the theme of intercultural communication in the workplace, but I encouraged everyone to discuss whatever topics were most engaging and interesting. The panel discussion was a quick and easy way to connect and build relationships around the world.

Project-based learning

Initially, I wanted to organize the course using a project-based learning (PBL) approach. With project-based learning, participants from different departments at the institute could focus on building language and skills that are most meaningful and useful for them. My thought was that I could facilitate the course and learning through projects like: 

  • Research and presentation about a topic of interest (informational presentations)
  • Story writing about a topic of interest (fiction or nonfiction writing)
  • Design problem project – design a space or task or event for a specific purpose (research process, presentation of findings)
  • Business problem project – find solutions to a specific business problem (research process, presentation of findings)

In the first half of the course, we could build some basic skills and understanding together. Then in the second half of the course, participants could focus on topics most useful for them through the projects. As course planning became more detailed, I worked out the schedule and topics to cover during the first half of the course as well as a more structured introduction to the project aspect of the course.

The final project introduction outlines the project that I intended to use during the last few weeks of the course. However, after getting feedback from participants, we decided to scrap the final project and focus more on discussion skills during the final weeks of our time together. Making this shift was difficult for me because I felt so excited to get into the final project during our last weeks together. I was excited to see what participants put together, and I thought that their final products could possibly be really valuable for their work and English use in the workplace. 

Photo by Łukasz on Unsplash

Discussion-based approach

As we were about to begin working on the final projects, one of the participants brought up the topic of adjusting our plans to include more discussions instead of the final project. After a discussion about it, we decided to make the change.

So, during the last few weeks of our time together, I organized our synchronous meeting time around group discussions. We reviewed useful language and skills for interacting effectively during discussions including: 

  • Making small talk
  • Having casual conversations in the workplace
  • Describing what you do (at work, within your department)
  • Agreeing and disagreeing
  • Having successful meetings
  • Giving advice and recommendations

Depending on the size of the group each day, we would have discussions in small groups and debrief as a larger group or just as a larger group. There were nine participants in the course, but all of them were not able to attend every meeting due to other work responsibilities.

Each discussion included four different prompts that participants could respond to. Everyone was encouraged to share their ideas and use the language we had reviewed together. We debriefed or discussed as a whole group in addition to any small group discussions as well. The discussion activities also included a basic self-reflection with true/false statements for the participants to consider what happened during the discussions.

The participants reported finding our discussions enjoyable and useful because they don’t have many opportunities to just chat in English at work. While they use English in different ways to do their jobs, there are fewer chances to connect with their colleagues casually and share ideas in English. Because of this, I think these discussions were really valuable and helped us work toward achieving our learning goals related to building fluency and confidence.

What I learned from the experience

My little Virtual Educator setup

Learning about teaching

Being responsive to participant needs and flexible in my approach in the classroom is really important. Yes, my past experiences in the classroom help me craft engaging and effective activities to support learning. But, sometimes what I know as a teacher or what I’m excited about as an instructor doesn’t matter. 

All of the work is focused on the aim of supporting the participants and building a safe and meaningful learning environment. Within the context of this project, I was allowed a great deal of freedom to choose activities and conduct the course as I saw fit. So, I also had the freedom to adapt our plans to better suit our needs as I did when we moved from the final projects to a discussion-based approach in the final weeks of our course.

Related to being flexible, adjusting the way we approached different activities during our meetings based on how many participants were able to attend was also something that I needed to do throughout the course. I planned lessons to suit the full group of nine participants, but I was also mentally prepared to adapt how we went through the material if fewer participants were able to attend on any particular day.

Learning about culture

In addition to learning about myself as a teacher, I learned quite a lot about Bahrain through this Virtual Educator project. I’ve worked with learners from the Arabian Gulf region of the world before, but I hadn’t had any students from Bahrain. 

During our discussions, we talked about different aspects of work and daily life, and it was interesting to hear about what life is like in Bahrain. More than just learning about the details of daily life, though, I was also reminded how similar people are around the world despite cultural differences. This is one aspect of teaching in different countries with international learners that I’ve really enjoyed throughout my career. As much as people like to highlight differences between cultures and countries and backgrounds, we are all really more alike than we might notice.

Final thoughts on being a Virtual Educator

Reflecting on this project, I’m reminded of the importance of adaptability and responsiveness in the classroom. While my initial plan involved project-based learning, the valuable input from participants led us to shift our focus towards focusing on discussion skills. This experience highlights the crucial role of flexibility in creating a truly effective learning environment. This project also provided a unique window into Bahraini culture, enriching my understanding of the world and fostering meaningful intercultural exchange. And I was reminded that people really have more in common than we recognize sometimes. The project was a really rewarding experience for me, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to get involved.

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