Every Business English firm has been screwed up...
Every Business English firm I've had dealings with so far are completely screwed up in one way or another. It's amazing how mismanaged and disorganized they are. Here's an example. Three weeks ago I interviewed on a Thursday with ISD, a language firm that prides itself on its relations with LBBW and the Bosch Corporation. LBBW is a major German bank. I was interviewed by an over-talkative lady who turned out to be from Minneapolis. While giving me a tour of the place she apologized for such things as tears in the rugs and splotchy paint jobs, etc. The next day I was offered two classes back to back at LBBW that would meet Tuesday afternoons.
I accepted the classes and since Monday was a holiday in Germany and the firm would be closed, I told them that I would have to meet on Tuesday morning during my language class break to get course teaching materials, review the needs analysis documents, etc. I learned quickly while I was there that I was taking over the class from someone, that the needs analysis docs were not available and just to spend the first day finding out what their needs were and do introductions. Fair enough, that is what I did. The first group's conversational English was middling at best, while the second group's was excellent. I learned from both that the main thing they wanted to learn was legal English as their main responsibilities were to read and approve lengthy bank loan documents written English. I said no problem. I would ask for a legal English book from the firm and start in on it next week.
On Friday I went to ISD to pick up the book, learn how to do time sheets and sundry matters and was told that they had received a blistering email from one of the second group members who was incredibly pissed at the incompetence of the language firm. The previous instructor was terrible and had wasted their time, ISD had not provided me with their needs analysis docs, they had had to go through introductions again with me, I was not a banker or a lawyer with strong command over legal English, and on and on. The ISD manager panicked, told stories of the previous Instructor, relating how they had become concerned about criticisms of his teaching from every place but LBBW (which they had been quite confused about), that they did not know that legal English was the main thing they wanted to learn and that she was pulling me from the class so that she could teach it herself. Then, she realized it was on Tuesdays and conflicted with one of her other classes. This caused verbose consternation and I left feeling pissed for having been a fall guy for matters out of my control.
I accepted the classes and since Monday was a holiday in Germany and the firm would be closed, I told them that I would have to meet on Tuesday morning during my language class break to get course teaching materials, review the needs analysis documents, etc. I learned quickly while I was there that I was taking over the class from someone, that the needs analysis docs were not available and just to spend the first day finding out what their needs were and do introductions. Fair enough, that is what I did. The first group's conversational English was middling at best, while the second group's was excellent. I learned from both that the main thing they wanted to learn was legal English as their main responsibilities were to read and approve lengthy bank loan documents written English. I said no problem. I would ask for a legal English book from the firm and start in on it next week.
On Friday I went to ISD to pick up the book, learn how to do time sheets and sundry matters and was told that they had received a blistering email from one of the second group members who was incredibly pissed at the incompetence of the language firm. The previous instructor was terrible and had wasted their time, ISD had not provided me with their needs analysis docs, they had had to go through introductions again with me, I was not a banker or a lawyer with strong command over legal English, and on and on. The ISD manager panicked, told stories of the previous Instructor, relating how they had become concerned about criticisms of his teaching from every place but LBBW (which they had been quite confused about), that they did not know that legal English was the main thing they wanted to learn and that she was pulling me from the class so that she could teach it herself. Then, she realized it was on Tuesdays and conflicted with one of her other classes. This caused verbose consternation and I left feeling pissed for having been a fall guy for matters out of my control.
posted by paulmediaeye at 6:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home