August 24; back to school…and Business English
What first sounded annoying to every student in year 12, turned out to be a thrilling opportunity to improve our English knowledge with native counselors from Commerzbank. Within the first two days of the term we learned a whole bunch of helpful phrases for small talk as well as lots of special vocabularies – such as “balance sheet, break even and turnover”. But not only phrases and expressions were taught by our friendly teachers, they also prepared us to manage critical situations abroad, either in our host family or even at the office. For instance we were quested to think of a way to apologize for destroying the gallery of family portraits by accidentally squirting ketchup over it. And how exactly would you explain your guest father that you feel embarrassed by him walking around in underwear? Admittedly, this is not too realistic, but at least we had fun thinking of ways to get out of this mess.
On Tuesday afternoon the session was rounded off by an “Investment fair”, where groups of approximately four or five pupils had to present a newly invented product and the belonging company. Both by being creative and by performing linguistically well you could make the counselors and students invest in your idea. At last, the winning team with their urgently demanded “SozPäd-Watch” (A bracelet that displays whether a social education worker is around or not – guess why;) received little presents for their effort with producing an advertisement. After these two days of intense English training we felt thoroughly prepared to surmount any cultural or linguistic challenge – and to start the term with warmed up grey matter.