Improve Your English Communication Skills

Keine Vorkenntnisse erforderlich

1- Write Professional Emails in English

This is a course to help you write effective business emails in English. This course is unique because each module will provide tips on writing more professional emails as well as lessons to improve your overall English writing skills. Therefore, you will improve your grammar and vocabulary skills for email writing and also improve your cross cultural knowledge to make you more powerful and successful in your business communication. You will look at different email formats to analyze tone, formality levels, and various organizational styles. You will be able to improve your emails of introduction, announcements, requests and emails that apologize or revise a request. In this course you will write and revise 4–5 emails, complete several comprehension quizzes and review the emails of other participants.

By the end of this course, you will be able to • Improve your overall written English skills • See differences and similarities among the different email formats • Write more effective subject lines and email text • Apply various key language to different types of emails • Correct common errors such as punctuation and capitalization • Study tone and level of formality in emails • Understand how culture affects what is appropriate in a business emails • Write powerful business emails for professional needs

2- Speak English Professionally: In Person, Online & On the Phone

Do you want to speak better English? This course will help you reach that goal. Speak English Professionally: In person, Online and On the Phone will boost your English speaking skills. In this 5 week course, you will learn how to identify and make a strong personal introduction. You will develop and demonstrate the speaking skills for group discussions: how to agree or disagree, how to clarify, restate and summarize. You will review and practice how to give information and respond to requests on the phone. You will study and role play effective interviewing. You will prepare and give a sales “pitch”, introducing a product or service. Throughout the course, you will adjust how you speak English and you will become more fluent and accurate when you speak. You will demonstrate culturally appropriate body language and tone. As you work through the course, you will complete self- and peer-evaluations. Through a combination of lectures, comprehension and vocabulary quizzes, practice and performance, you’ll gain the skills and confidence to communicate well in English, anywhere in the world.

By the end of this course you will: • Change how you speak English • Improve your pronunciation and fluency • Increase your English vocabulary • Identify how culture influences your speech • Use culture to help you speak correctly • Demonstrate the best body language for different cultural settings • Know statements, questions and responses for different settings and situations

3- Build Your Professional ePortfolio in English

Roughly half of the world’s population is already online and so setting yourself apart from the crowd is more important than ever before.  One of the best ways to do that is by creating your own ePortfolio.  An ePortfolio is a site that showcases or shows your background, your resume, and samples of your work.  In this course, you will learn step by step how to build the site and you’ll learn the grammar, vocabulary and writing skills needed to create it.  You will learn how to apply information from your ePortfolio to other online tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube in order to network with others so that you get a job or connect with other professionals.  For each step in that process, you will listen to lectures, take comprehension quizzes, and learn how to use English appropriately to each part of your site.  You will also complete self and peer assessments and gain the needed skills to make your ePortfolio a reality and establish yourself online.

By the end of this course, you will be able to 
•    Write a proper headline or title for your ePortfolio
•    Describe your work in 1 sentence and in longer forms
•    Identify how to use hashtags effectively
•    Write an effective summary about yourself and your work
•    Apply appropriate vocabulary to write your education and professional experience for your resume 
•    Understand how to write a tweet to get a job 
•    Discover how to write specific comments and network work with others 
•    Apply what you have on your portfolio to other tools like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube.

4-Take Your English Communication Skills to the Next Level

This Capstone builds on the communication and content skills you’ve acquired throughout the Specialization and develops them further. During course lessons and Peer Assessments you will practice and expand the language skills necessary for success in the professional world. Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to complete assessments relevant to the working world.

In this course, you will: * Study cultural influences on communication more thoroughly, identify key cultural influences in your own experience and compare your culture with a different one to identify ways to improve communication and decrease misunderstanding. * Develop your email accuracy and style and engage in email correspondence with potential employers, clients or investors to set up interviews and/or meetings. * Practice and Demonstrate fluent and accurate spoken English as you prepare and present a short talk about a personal accomplishment or “Sales Pitch” for a product or service. * Polish your pronunciation through more connected speech including use of through groups, contractions/reductions, and linking. Week by week, as you practice your language skills, make connections with people important to you and develop your network, you will increase your opportunities for success. Completing this Capstone Project will help you reach your English language and professional goals now and in the future.

Gerry Landers :

Bio

Education: M.A., Georgia State University. Gerry grew up in Atlanta. He graduated from the Paideia School in the Emory area. He attended Georgia State University where he majored in Spanish, with a minor in Psychology. Gerry studied in Mexico as an exchange student in high school and participated in two summer abroad programs in college, one in Costa Rica and the other in Japan. After undergraduate studies, he worked at the Atlanta airport for Japan Airlines for ten years. When that job ended, he went back to school at GSU for a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics. He has worked in education ever since. First, he was at Auburn University for five years. Then, he taught middle school for three years for Gwinnett County Public Schools. Afterwards, he spent a 1.5 year period at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. Returning again to Atlanta, he taught for two private ESL schools before joining Georgia Institute of Technology. He loves swimming, cooking, seeing live music performances, and hanging out with friends and family.

Amalia B. Stephens:

Bio

Education: M.A.T., Emory University. Amalia Stephens has developed and taught a wide variety of classes at the GA Tech Language Institute for more than seven years. She also taught English in the Fulton County Georgia Public School System and in Cairo, Egypt and the Central African Republic. Prior to teaching, Amalia worked as a business writer in New York and Atlanta for newspapers, business publications and private companies.

Karen Peterson

Bio

Education: M.S., Georgia State University. Karen Peterson joined the faculty of the Language Institute in 1993. In addition to teaching in the Intensive ESL Program, she taught in the summer program for Chinese students, Pre-MBA program at Emory, taught Georgia Tech MBA students and QCF students. She has taught twenty years in the field. She received her master’s degree in TESOL/applied linguistics at Georgia State. She has traveled to Brazil, China, Japan and Tajikistan and taught ESL in both Japan and Tajikistan.