John Clements, Camarines Sur Government Train English Trainers
by Paul Catiang

From October 24-29, 2005, 22 trainees were schooled in Small Group Communicative Methodology in the Conversational English Classroom, a program used by John Clements English Consultant Rocky Peltzman. Held in the Eco Village Government Compound in Pili, Camarines Sur, the training course was fully sponsored by Governor El Rey Villafuerte, Jr.

The class met every day for six days from 8:30 AM to 7:00 PM in what Ms. Peltzman calls “a grueling training course”. The first two days were spent learning a compressed version of Ms. Peltzman’s training program, and two days after that, the group engaged in practice teaching with each other to get an impression of how the program is applied in a teaching situation. Taking it a step further, the last two days saw the trainees taking government employees working in the compound and practice-teaching to them to see how effective they were in using the teaching method with people other than English trainers. The course was topped off with around six hours of customer service orientation so the trainers can also offer a brief course on dealing with customers.

The trainees came from different professions, and were grouped into two units. The first group is composed of English teachers, who will be eco-training their colleagues in the province in order to raise the level of oral English spoken by students and to supply a steady stream of competent English speakers for the BPO industry in Camarines Sur. The second group is made of former call centers agents who worked in Manila and returned to their home towns in Bicol; their task would be to take call center applicants and polish their English so they pass the interview process. Either group of people may be asked to provide a private call center course that will be open to the public.

All the participants commented that when they actually had to teach, it was much harder than they had anticipated, but rewarding nonetheless. One of the trainees was Japanese who teaches the Japanese here; she commented that the Small Group Communicative Method can also be applied to that language, and that she will implement some of the methodologies in her classroom.

For more details and inquiries, please email Rocky Peltzman at rocky.peltzman@johnclements.com and Kristine Bernardo at kristine.bernardo@johnclements.com, or call John Clements Human Resource Development at 845-2117.