Friday, June 30, 2017

Do your ESL/EFL students need to learn how to apply for jobs? Let's have a Mock Job Fair!

You need to prepare your ESL/EFL students to seek employment and you would like to offer more real-life opportunities for your students to practice. Let me share an amazing project you can do in your language school, college or university to achieve this goal.

My coordinator Jennifer Loewen created an amazing project in which beginning and intermediate students can play the role of either employees or employers. It is a "Mock Job Fair" where all the groups meet and interact. All the steps are carefully presented and practiced with the students in class and all the participants (teachers and students) can assess all the phases of the project.

If you have beginning students - they will be the employees. They learn how to read and understand job advertisements, where to look for jobs, how to apply for positions and how to answer interview questions.

If you have intermediate and advanced students - they will be the employers. They decide what kind of business the class wants to open (hair salon, bar, restaurant, daycare, coffee shop, etc.) and they learn how to create job advertisements, application forms, job interview questions and posters for the job fair. All the intermediate and advanced classes open a different company and "hire" for various positions.

I had the opportunity to prepare my students for both roles and they got very excited to learn about all the steps of the project. I am also very happy because some students became more confident and applied for real jobs after our project and guess what?.... They got the jobs!

Some students' impressions about the project: it improved their confidence, they learned a lot of contextualized vocabulary, and learned about how to apply for positions in Canada. Even though it was a mock job fair, almost everybody felt it was like a real one. Some even got a bit nervous during their job interviews!

You can see some pictures of my students' participation in two fairs below:

Beauty Centre - Winbeauty








Coffee Shop - Golden Cup










If you teach in Canada, you can find all the details for this project in Tutela  . If not, I can send you all the files, just let me know your email in the comments.

Do you have job fairs like these too? Please share your ideas in the comments. Thanks a million!


Friday, June 23, 2017

When students teach - An amazing experience - Part 2

After my students' short presentations, they had opportunities to improve and to reflect about their own presentations. They also provided constructive feedback to their classmates. These are very meaningful ways the Portfolio-Based Language Assessment (PBLA) suggests that ESL teachers work with adults in Canada. I believe these activities encourage students to become more autonomous and this behaviour can be transferred to their workplace in Canada as well.

As my students decided to study about travel this term, I asked them to create tour packages that could be "sold". In order for them to "market" their packages, I asked them to prepare 20-minute presentations with information about the destination, including landmarks, attractions, accommodations, places to eat, among other things. I was happy that even some students who were not very familiar with digital technology were able to use Power Point and Prezi very well.

Every class, one or two students presented their tour packages and everybody was very excited to "travel" to amazing places around the globe. My students were very committed, creative, and passionate about showing amazing pictures, giving excellent suggestions, and sharing great stories. Some students went so far as to bring typical food ingredients for us to try some recipes at home! Rice paper, Vietnamese coffee, chocolate, Indian food, and Guatemalan desserts were some of the treats offered after some presentations!

Credit: Olga Krouguer

My students presented about these cities:
Jing - Singapore
Nina - Tel-aviv, Israel
Amy - Ho Chi Minh City - Former Saigon, Vietnam
Angelica - Churchill, Canada
Tong - Beijing, China
Vicky - Manchester, England
Olga - Jerusalem, Israel
Kate - Kiev, Ukraine
Li - Istanbul, Turkey
Gagandeep - London, England
Monica - Tikal and Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
M'Hamed - Casablanca and Marrakesh, Morocco
Mohammad - Sylhet, Bangladesh
Mohsina - The Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
Bing - Stuttgart, Germany
Tina - New York, The US
Debbie - Palawan, The Philippines

Their feedback was excellent and many students mentioned that they had learned a lot about many places and also about how to give great presentations. It was very interesting to see how my students developed their presentation skills with this project because even my shyest students were able to shine!

We concluded our project by writing a letter to our best friends. This letter would accompany a small box with some souvenirs from our trip. It was a great opportunity for my students to practice informal writing and to remember the amazing places they had visited. I have learned so much from them and I am going to give more opportunities for my future students to present and share their expertise too.

Do you encourage your students to present?