English for Cabin Crew Trainer's Guide - Heinle

UNIT
4 Case study
LEAD IN Speaking
Write, I think airline food is ... on the board. Ask students to
work in pairs and give them time to complete the sentence with
their own thoughts. Then get feedback and discuss in open class.
You could brainstorm positive and negative words used to
describe food:
+ delicious; tasty; fresh; tender; succulent
– disgusting; tasteless; bland; dreadful
EXERCISE 1 Reading
Give students time to read the questions. Then ask them to read the
text and make notes. Let students discuss the answers in pairs before
discussing in open class.
Answers
1 Passengers = 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10
Crew = 4,5,6
Either = 7
2 positive: 1, 3 and 10; negative: 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9 (3 contains both
negative and positive comments); no opinion: 4, 5 and 6
3 positive: fi ne, well prepared, look great, taste even better
negative: the worst, bland, not very hot, badly presented, tasteless,
dreadful, not fi t for human consumption
EXERCISE 2 Speaking
The aim here is to get students talking about their personal experiences.
Give students time to read through the questions and think of responses.
Ask them to discuss their responses in pairs or small groups. After a few
minutes, get one student from each pair or group to briefl y summarize
the main points of their discussion.
Pre-teaching vocabulary
Check the following key phrases: engage with passengers (talk to them);
gauge passengers (work out what sort of person they are); get to know
passengers (meet and become friends with them); appease passengers
(say things to calm them down when they are angry).
EXERCISE 3 and 4 Listening
Give students time to read the situation and questions in exercise 3. Play
the recording. Students listen, take notes and then discuss their answers
in pairs. Get feedback in open class at the end.
Follow the same procedure for exercise 4.
Answers
1 because she had the chance to engage with the passengers and get to
know them
2 during the pre-fl ight briefi ng; the number of meals and the nature of
any special meals needed
3 The woman’s children were given food from First and Business class.
CD1 Track 4.9
1 Did you enjoy this part of the fl ight?
S: I enjoyed all parts of the in-fl ight service but the nicest part was probably
doing the meals and the drinks because that was the chance you had to
engage with the passengers for the fi rst time after take-off and you’d come
through the cabin and you could really hold some good conversations with
passengers and fi nd out, you know, how they were feeling, and you know, how
excited, or, or if they wanted to be left alone and you could really gauge that
quite well during that fi rst part of the meals or drinks service, and you could
get to know people a little as well. You know, you’d get to know that little
old lady who was very nervous about fl ying to Australia for the fi rst time and
you’d also get to, you know, speak to a wide range of people for, you know, a
duration, which was, which was good. During the food and drinks service quite
often, particularly on international fl ights you’d have a lot of people on board
who wouldn’t be able to speak the language, but there was never any problem
with the food and drink. People all over the world seem to know what a coke
is or whether they are having beef or chicken, so food and drink was never an
issue with foreign language, which was always useful.
2 How much do cabin crew know about the meals in advance?
S: During the pre-fl ight briefi ng that all airlines carry out, the crew get to know
about the meals in advance. We would know how many passengers we have on
board – we would know any special meal requirements that are needed and any
dietary problems and we would know of any special requests that a passenger
may have given prior to their fl ight, so we have all that information and by
the time we get on board we check the catering to make sure those passenger
requirements are actually on board.
3 Do you remember one special incident during the meals service?
S: During the meals service it can be horrifi c because although I’ve said that
it’s a really great time to engage with customers, it’s also quite a frenetic
time because passengers are also worried to know whether the meal they've
requested is on board. One particular occasion I remember was a lady
travelling from London to Hong Kong and she had three children and had
requested three special children’s meals. Unfortunately, my stewardess had
actually given the three children meals to the row in front of her, who just
happened to have three children in the row in front, so of course the fi rst I
heard of it was when the call bell rang and this very irate lady was so cross – I
mean she was shouting and screaming at the stewardess at how stupid the
stewardess had been and why should these other people get her children’s
meals that she had requested. It was a diffi cult situation but I managed to
calm her down by listening to her and sorting out the children with food from
Business class and First class which was very fortunate because this particular
fl ight we had a lot of children and a lot of children’s meals and there weren’t
any spare, so the only way I was able to appease this lady was to go and make
up a dinner from the First class menu and fortunately managed to do that. But
yes, it was an occasion I remember well.
EXERCISE 5 Speaking
Ask students to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups. Get
feedback in open class and encourage students with interesting ideas
to share with the class.
ROUND UP
Revise vocabulary from the unit by asking students to write
words and phrases connected with food and drinks under the
following headings:
Breakfast / Drinks / Fruit and vegetables / Food adjectives /
Duty-free goods
Ask students to work in pairs to write all the words and phrases
they know, or to search the unit to fi nd words and phrases to
write.
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