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Top interview questions -- feedback

 
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What job interview style have you done for a KSA job?
Interview where above questions are asked
25%
 25%  [ 1 ]
Casual interview with interviewee asking general questions to try to get to know you
75%
 75%  [ 3 ]
Info interview where you can hardly speak
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
Total Votes : 4

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titanicman



Joined: 17 Feb 2003
Posts: 71
Location: Qatar

PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 2:37 pm    Post subject: Top interview questions -- feedback Reply with quote

After finishing a job interview for a school in KSA, here are some important questions that I was asked and my answers. Please look them over and give me feednack!


1) Tell us about your general background in teaching, what type and level of courses you taught, and your teaching methodology.

- Student-centred class: sensitive to needs
- Relate teaching to students real world needs
- Students express/use own meaning/experiences
- Students take active role in their learning
- Help students to learn how to learn (learning strategies)
- Teacher as facilitator
- Create non-threatening atmosphere
- Encourage communicative language classroom
- Teach so they can communicate in real world situation


2) How did you like working in your past jobs?

- Really enjoyed it, grew as a teacher
- Know what students need
- Read students better
- Design lessons and material
- Anticipate classroom issues (discipline)


3) What can you offer us?

 Dedicated, hard-working, reliable teacher with expertise
 Helping passive/non-cooperative students understand/participate in class
 Expertise:
 develop cognitive empathy: sensitive to Ss needs (language, culture, situation)
 quick learner for new technology
 designing my own material (supp. Or stand-alone)
 flexibility to adapt to new cultures and situations


5) What�s your teaching philosophy or methodology?

- Lessons should follow these basic communicative principles
- All Ss feel they learned ST in lesson
- Uses real, above-sentence language in real situations
- Processes of using language are important  simulates real communicating
- Learn by doing
- Mistakes are not always mistakes
- Factors when designing communicative activities:
- Info transfer (eg. Reading text to complete form)
- Info gap
- Jigsaw
- Task dependency (2nd task depends on completion of 1st task)
- Correction of content (eg Describe & draw)
- Authenticity: language, situations
- Should we use authentic text from Ss� field? Low-level: non-authentic text OK
- Ts role: depends on syllabus
- Key quality: flexibility to change from general EFL T to specific purpose T & cope with different groups of Ss
- TT: modify for Ss� level?
- Waiting time after asking Q from S1: 3-5 secs. = increased Ss participation


6) Have you dealt with discipline or motivation problems?

 Find cause of problem: teacher, student, context
 How? Self-survey (negative, unprepared, inconsistent, unfair?)
 Immediate student problem: act immediately, refer to previously established code of classroom conduct (encourage students to develop responsibility for own learning)
 Staring/silence, rewards, private meeting, should be familiar with cultural dos and don�ts


7) What strategies do you use to get students to learn and improve vocabulary?

 Teach core vocab: common / frequent / familiar / useful
 Teach words in context (collocations and whole sentences or situations)
 Ss produce clusterings around a main idea, helps Ss learn vocab relationships
 Ss need to know word families / mind maps
 Grids: putting system of words into grids � helps Ss learn vocab relationships
 Consolidation exercises: cloze, guessing game, synonyms, comprehension Qs
 Help with quick and efficient dictionary use (find words & meaning, spelling, pron.)
 Mnemonics, key word method, learning roots, common prefixes and suffixes, cognates, practice through extended reading to learn vocabulary in context,
 Limits: Ss impatient to work on precise details of vocab. They just want to know word�s mean.
 Sufficient: Getting the gist of a word/sentence/paragraph..Too much: Getting intimate with a word
 Recycling vocabulary from previous chapters and build on them (review previous chapters)
 Practice using vocab: interested in how Ss use and not in actual word
 Circumlocution: 'it's someone who...it's when you feel like...it's something you do when
 Ss produce own dictionary � incl. English definitions, synonyms, antonyms and original sentences. Also, include alternate uses of words they already knew.
 Common exercises: matching synonym with vocab in text, complete blank with suitable word, find meaning from context OR exposure to text features



Cool What strategies do you use to improve students� academic listening skills?

 Tony Lynch's Study Listening (CUP) & lots of real listening.
 Skills for taking notes during lecture: distinuish important/unimportant pts, deciding when to write, write conscisely/clearly w/shorthand, deciphering afterwards
 Ways to help with note-taking: giving overall framework of lecture, shorthand, using chart, aware of different note-taking styles � linear, mind-map
 3 problems with lecture listening: decoding, comprehend, taking notes
 lecture styles awareness: delivery: reading, conversational, rhetorical; content: giving info, ideas/pt. Driven
 listening cues: recognizing markers
 lesson: give examples, make new examples, listen and list examples
 practice: cloze lecture script, predict discourse direction, practice note-taking


9) What kinds of things would you have to be careful about when choosing an authentic reading text?

 Interesting and relevant with purpose
 choosing is not as hard as preparing the text for use in class
 text length short enough to avoid listening/reading fatigue (less than 4 min)
 Charts and graphs help because communicate info w/o overwhelming verbiage
 sufficient support for new vocab/concepts comprehension (pre-teach)
 technique: T determines assignment & objectives but students apply it to text from their own field


10) How would you exploit the text -- in terms of pre-reading, while reading, and post reading activities?

 Activities help important skill areas: skimming, scanning, distinguishing facts/non-facts OR important/unimportant OR ideas/examples/opinions, making inferences, guessing new vocab
 Clear purpose of reading
 Balanced activities: get students interested and build up relevant background knowledge but not too much so there is no point in reading the text.
 Reading is usually a preparation for something else, so it would lead on to that
 Variety of activities
 Prereading activity: increases the students� ability to focus on the reading (predicting text content)
 Postreading: motivates Ss to reads if they know they need to use info after reading
 Reading speed: practice
 Techniques: recognition, structuring, interpreation, reading speed, comprehension practice, synoyms, paragraph topics, summary completion


11) How do you approach writing in the EAP class (low/mid-intermediate)?

 Useful TB: Hedge, T, Writing, (OUP, 1988) Tribble C, Writing (OUP, 1996) White, Rand & Arndt, Process Writing (Longman, 1991)
 going through process of prewriting, drafting, peer editing and revising.
 Technique: Ss hand-in all of their prewriting and drafts (which were edited by another student in the class with signature on the bottom. The final version must be better.


12) What about feedback? What kind of feedback do you give your students in a writing class?

 Give feedback in these areas:
 What I�m teaching right now
 Larger discourse than sentence level input (paragraphs, essay).
 Appropriateness of topic sentences in relation to the paragraph
 Organization of ideas in paragraph
 use of transition words to provide continuity of ideas in a paragraph
 thesis statement to see if it is appropriate in introducing the overall composition.
 Once the students have a good background to work with, giving them specific items to look for.
 Peer editing (portfolios, place work on walls and students check. Use student numbers or photocopies)
 Marking errors motivates Ss they are being corrected & helps T notice trends and S weak/strong points
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Albulbul



Joined: 08 Feb 2003
Posts: 364

PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 6:24 am    Post subject: why ? Reply with quote

What is the purpose of this ? Why should I devote 10 minutes of my life to this nonsense ?
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 6:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear titanicman and Albulbul,
Grouchy today, Albulbul. Of course there's no need for you to waste ten ( or any ) minutes of you life ( especially since - close behind you can always hear/Time's winged chariot drawing near - although, admittedly, that chariot's probably closer to my back than to yours ) on this. You have a job. But I think it's very nice of titanicman to take the time and effort to post this for people who may have interviews for Saudi Arabia coming up.

Dear titanicman,
I'd say you wowed them; I'd hire you in a minute. But on your poll, didn't you mean to write " interviewer " rather than " interviewee "?
Regards,
John


Last edited by johnslat on Tue Jun 03, 2003 8:09 am; edited 2 times in total
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Irish



Joined: 13 Jan 2003
Posts: 371

PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 6:50 am    Post subject: Well, why not? Reply with quote

I think the purpose is to enlighten some of us inexperienced youngsters (and oldsters) about what we might face as we spread our wings and fly/fall into the job market while also getting feedback about his replies, other people's interviewing experiences, etc.

Thanks for the list, Titanicman. I'm not experienced enough to provide any feedback but I do appreciate reading how things went for you.
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 11:20 am    Post subject: another grouch Reply with quote

&#61623 ?

That is my final grouch for this afternoon. More, inshaallah, tomorrow.

I shall get my revenge in a week or two while in Istanbul.I shall be posting here using a public PC in a Turkish Internet Cafe and then you will #DT*&^YHUGTFVCGB and that is a *&OiKJ9*?:L

So there. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 11:53 am    Post subject: If you think an &#61623 is bad Reply with quote

Dear scot47,
What? Do you mean to tell me that someone of your long experience in this field has never had an &#61623-type interview? Well, you've been mighty lucky. &#61623s are pretty tough, but &#62627s - whoa, they're
incredibly rigorous.
Regards,
John
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