Koyo Bearings Europe

Koyo Bearings Europe

When the group from Vigo went back to Spain, I felt quite sad because it had been a really enjoyable experience, both professionally and personally, and I had got a real taste of just how good teaching English could be - and I wanted more.

It wasn’t too long before my next assignment, teaching Business English to Yann, who worked in the Customer Service department of the JTEKT Corporation in Dijon, France. The company manufactures steering gear, bearings and machine tools and Yann had been seconded to Koyo Bearings Europe Ltd, in Barnsley, to learn more about the manufacturing side of the business.

My brief was to teach Yann for a total of 40 hours, over two weeks, using Business Result, a whiteboard and my own resources that I brought with me on my laptop. In the first week, my brief also included having lunch with him in the company canteen. This helped him to adjust to his new work surroundings, as well as giving me a little bit of an insight into the work taking place on the shop floor and the Health & Safety measures in place, as we walked to the other side of the factory to the canteen.

Barnsley Interchange

Without a car, the journey from Treeton to Dodworth was a bit of a trek, with one bus and three separate train journeys, but it was well worth the effort and, as an English teacher, it added another string to my bow. Using a Glossary of Technical Terms for this industry, we explored the vocabulary that Yann would encounter, discussed points of grammar and pronunciation - as necessary - and examined the language used in corporate literature, reports, letters and e-mails. 

Although my experience with my Spanish teenaged students had been fun, this project made me realise that my own varied professional and commercial skills and experiences were being put to much better use and that this was what I really wanted to do, as an English language teacher.