Maria, 

You make a good point re:  the politics of bringing educators and employers
together to provide ESL services. Successful initiatives require that
educators understand who their customers are and what is important to them.
Return on investment has little to do with the "educationese" we use to
communicate with out peers.  The bottom line: our customers want to know if
what we have to offer can result in changes in employees' behavior and
performance.  This is another reason why the language task analysis is so
important. So here's a question:  how involved should instructors be in the
language task analysis activities and when?  I guess I'm thinking of
"Maxine" once again and what she didn't understand about delivering
instruction in the workplace.  Any suggestions?

Barbara Tondre 

-----Original Message-----
From: workplace-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:workplace-bounces at nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Maria Caratini-Prado
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 9:54 AM
To: agallup at essentiallanguage.com; workplace at nifl.gov
Subject: [Workplace 1534] Re: Managing expectations

Cathay,

Thank you for your posting.  You have brought forth all of the reasons
in the community college district in which I work, it is difficult to
find a  workforce employee who wants to provide ESL in the business
sector.  You have the business, which you must warm up to to get the
contract.  You have to have a background in ESL to understand the
curriculum process and you have to have an instructor with a background
in ESL and a lot of patience.  If the contract goes wrong, someone will
be admonished by a dean or vice-president, and no one wants to be in
that position.  That is why at our college, I am such a rare breed, and
it is the reason I work so extensively with the company, provide so much
training and mentoring for the instructor and pay him or her $30 to $40
an hour.  I also pay the instructor extra for any additional course
planning or new materials.  I do not like workforce/workplace ESL, yet I
remind my team that since our reputation is at stake every time we go
into the business community we have to do as great or greater a job than
we do on campus.

Maria



Maria Caratini Prado, M. Ed. TESOL
Program Director, ESL
Arts, Languages and Literature Division
Eastfield College
972-860-7659 office
972-860-8392 fax
mcaratini at dcccd.edu
www.eastfieldcollege.edu 
"Advancing English Education Globally"