Instituto Superior de Formacin Docente N 52

"Maestro Francisco Isauro Arancibia"

San Isidro. Provincia de Bs. As.

English Teachers Training Course

Subject: LENSE I

Teacher: Marcela Santafe y Soriano

Student:

Date: November 6th. 2017

Brief account on seminar:

HOW TO DEVEOP SOFT SKILLS IN

BUSINESS ENGLISH SESSIONS

Held on July 21th. 2017

ABOUT THE SPEAKER and the audience:

Dana Poklepovic: Has a vast experience (over 20 years) in the field of

communication skills Training & Consulting for companies
and professionals. Coaching and leadership training.

She holds the position of CEO & Director at DPL-CLD (DPL-

Corporate Language Dynamics).

Among many other things, she is also an Iatefl BESIG BOT

member.

Despite her astonishing CV, I noticed that she frequently struggled to find the
correct/proper words, in such occasions, she was duly assisted by Vivian Muller
(who I assumed was part of the staff that organised the seminar / conference).
I found her boring (and her talk business-like) but the topic actually interested me
and I think that many of the ideas and tips could be extremely useful once adapted
to a children ISL class (and human interaction in general)
The audience consisted of less than 10 women, all English teachers (4 of which
are currently attending the English Teachers Course at ISFD 52).

ABOUT THE TOPIC OF THE SEMINAR:

The whole point came down to facilitate a person to positively and effectively
interact with people
The speaker provided a skills classification that related to personal and
interpersonal competencies that aimed to focus our attention on emotional
intelligence, self-awareness and reflection upon our confidence.
She made us reflect on different communicational aspects such as:

VERBAL: choice of words, patterns, linguistic expressions.

NON-VERBAL: postures, gestures, hand, voice, eye contact, proximity.
EMOTIONAL: expression of speakers feeling and emotional state.

And she made us aware of how important is to practice effective listening to

build rapport and establish empathy by:

Maintaining focused
Listen to with all your senses
Being careful of distractions, our inner conversation and assumptions
She then provided a few tips to help speaker and listener to stand on a common
ground:

Non-verbal Signals: A smile, nodding, eye contact, etc.

Verbal Signals:
Reinforce: very good, yes, indeed, uh uh, Mm. Repeat keywords.
Paraphrase.
Ask for Clarification: Could you repeat..? Are you saying?; etc.

After that, she concentrated on discourse and told us about the importance of
assertive communication:
By communicating assertively, a person is reliable and self-confident, can
build strong relationships, influence people and work in teams.

And provided a few tips to develop it:

Empathic Statements: Recognize the other persons views. Then, express

what you need:
I understand you are having trouble working with Susan. ...however, this project
needs to be completed by Friday. Let's all sit down and come up with a plan to
get it done.
Fogging: PARTIAL AGREEMENT + ASSERTIVE STATEMENT
You are quite right about the management attitude. I totally agree with you. Lets
bear in mind though that the staff have not been ideal either
I statements to focus the conversation on you and not blaming others
I dont agree vs. You are wrong
I feel ignored vs. You dont care
I have decided not to
I have a different opinion. I think that
Avoid exaggerations: You always, You are, You constantly, You
never, You are the most.

Finally, she talked about the language of persuasion and how to put it into
practice:

Benefits
Because this is such a fast computer, you wont be there sitting and waiting.
And we all hate waiting

Emotions, storytelling. Sensory channels.

This project opens new and bright opportunities for our company

Leading questions.
I heard, XX was your favourite brand Would you like it in red or blue?
Be positive and affirmative.
I think that we need to vs. we should adopt this new project.