How to teach to company employees? There is no easy route and a lot depends on the chemistry of the group and their willingness to expose their weaknesses and their willingness to absorb what is being taught. But then again I have been taught when a certain method such as repetition doesn't work; try another method such as incorporating activities, before insisting. The student will easily pick up didactic frustration and either become more unwilling as a result or develop some invisible handicap.
Company people will sit in front of you with empty faces and yet be thinking that you are talking too quickly or that you are impatient because you have skipped an explanation when you haven't but they weren't paying attention or the information went over their heads. It is important to create an outline first of all in what you want to cover and then carry through with it so that the client sees that you are covering a set program. This doesn't mean that you have to be following a given text. A growing challenge though is that appearances are often misleading, the group looks as though they know what you are saying and yet everything said hasn't been understood.
So I wouldn't stick with the application of drills at the work place especially if there is a mix of employees some wanting to know the precise form of do in speech and others who just want to learn oral comprehension and develop their ability to respond.
I like to know what the needs of the employees are when I sit down with them and where the want to be with English at the end of the course session or at the end of a given time period. Teachers should not fall into the trap of expecting employees to open up on their needs and abilities or on relating where they want to be in ten years. And an individual may have no need whatsoever because his department head has just imposed the language learning.
So if an individual has to do troubleshooting and find out why his product hasn't been packaged according to standards or why it was returned to the manufacturer from retail he has to learn the language of troubleshooting rather than the language of meeting Jane. Granted that the marketing manager may need to know the language of introducing himself but usually when he talks about more pressing issues, social talk is usually secondary to expressing more pertinent issues.
