English for Operation Managers

Abstract

The target audience for my Portfolio is a group of operation managers working at a customer care center for a global brand. Their English level ranges from Intermediate-Mid to Intermediate-High, according to ACTFL. They are in their mid 30’s to late 40’s, and are lacking in communicative competence in English. This is due to the curriculum in Korean middle and/or high schools, which is mostly based on receptive skills, rather than productive skills (Lee, 2015, p. 38-42.) There are a number of areas in which the managers I teach need to use varied communicative skills in English. First, they participate in daily operations meetings every morning. Meetings are led by a moderator, who observes the performance metrics chart from the previous day, and identifies any outlying data or struggling companies from different regions (or referred to as “sites”.) The managers have to understand when our site is identified as performing poorly in certain areas, and then provide explanations for the questions asked by the moderator. At times the moderator would ask if there are any plans for improvements and which actions will be taken moving forward. As a result, the managers must understand and be able to read numbers accurately from charts, be able to offer appropriate action plans to improve performance, and to balance other communicative skills on conference calls.