International Negotiations

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International 

Negotiations

Trainer’s Notes

Professional English

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in these materials 

are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and 

can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

 Jeremy Day

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Introduction

Welcome to the International Negotiations Trainer’s Notes. In these notes you will find 

advice on the following:

•  Timing: how long each module should take, to help you plan your schedule.

•  Group dynamics: what to do if you have a very large group, an odd number of students or 

a single one-to-one student.

•  Resources: how to make the most of the support resources available in the book and online.

•  Technology: how to use technology (e.g. video cameras, the Internet) to enhance 

the course.

•  Feedback: how to support trainees in their development as negotiators.

•  Final thoughts: my own advice to negotiators and their trainers.

Timing

International Negotiations has been designed to allow plenty of flexibility in terms of teaching 

times. Most modules (e.g. Module 1) consist of two parts (e.g. 1A and 1B). Modules 3 and 10, 

which look at the opening and closing stages of the negotiation, contain one part each, while 

Module 7 and 8, which cover the broader skills of bargaining and persuasion, consist of three 

parts each. The coursebook includes an introductory module, Developing negotiation skills, 

and a major negotiation role play (The East Africa Tender) to be found on the course website 

(

www.cambridge.org/elt/internationalnegotiations

) completes the course, making a total of 

22 module parts.

It would be possible to cover each module part in a 45-minute session, giving a minimum 

course length of around 18–20 hours of input. However, it is vital that this input time should 

be balanced with plenty of opportunity for trainees to conduct negotiations and to give and 

receive feedback on their negotiating techniques (see Feedback on page 3), so an ideal 

course length would be at least 36 hours.

The suggestions for additional activities throughout these Trainer’s Notes enable trainers 

to expand each module to 60 or even 90 minutes. These activities also provide additional 

flexibility to help teachers shorten or lengthen input in order to adhere to a timetable, if 

necessary.

Of course, this schedule will depend on the size of your group and the amount of time you 

have available.

The whole course can take place in the classroom, with no need for trainees to prepare for 

the role plays at home. In-class preparation time is built into these notes. This means that you 

do not need to keep to a tight schedule (e.g. one module per lesson) – if you finish a module 

before the end of a lesson, you can simply start the next one. If a module is taking longer than 

planned, you can allow it to continue into the next lesson.

Most modules end with a case study, role play or game to practise the language and skills 

from that module. It is vital to allow plenty of time for these final activities, including 

feedback. If you find you have only ten minutes of class time at the end of a lesson for a 

final activity, it would be better to save the final activity for the next lesson, in order to do it 

properly, and to start the new module instead.

It is not essential that you work through the modules in numerical order, although this would 

be the most logical order: the order of the modules in the book closely follows the order of 

events in a real-life negotiation. However you organise the course, you should begin with 

Developing negotiation skills and Module 1.