Archive for April, 2011
Teenage Depression
Eleanor Wilson was a struggling actress back in the 1940s who wanted nothing more than to be a star. She auditioned for every part no matter how small it was. She did get some bit parts but never landed the role that would put her name in lights. The lack of success in her career made her frustrated angry and finally depressed. For her life was as good as it was going to get. One day Eleanor trudged up the stairs to the roof of a 40 story building in New York City and stepped off falling to her death. Eleanor died thinking that her depression would last forever. She was wrong. Two days later her agent received a phone call from a hugh motion picture production company. The studio wanted her to take the lead role in what would have been a major motion picture. When the agent received the script he was shocked at what he read. You see the role Eleanor would have played was that of a women who was so depressed about her life that she walked up the stairs to the roof of a building in New York City and stepped off falling to her death. There is no doubt that if Eleanor had sought the help she needed she would have been
the star she always wanted to be.
The message from of this true story is simple: Things DO get better in life if you do two things:
1. Get the help you need for your depression.
2. Stick around to see the results because things will get better.
Need help with depression? Dont wait. Go talk to you parents counselor friends neighbor anyone you feel comfortable and who you can trust. Want to stay anonymous? Call the HELP LINE at 18004483000. Its free and no one is going to know who you are. Or visit our web site choicesforteens.com
Things DO get better but you have to take the first step.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Youth worker for 25 years
Author of teenage book TEN ESSENTIAL FACTS OF LIFE EVERY TEENAGER SHOULD KNOW
Creator of a nation wide program… OPERATION AWARE
Lecturer to rural high school students
Teaching Listening As An English Language Skill
Introduction:
English as a foreign language has the greatest motion in Bangladesh. Status of English as the library language and the increased international interdependence are the two reasons of this which led to a greater focus on facetoface language usage crossing the margin of pen and paper exercise. As the decline of GrammarTranslation method in 1960s proved that language learning might not be limited to reading and writing or literacy the provisional continuation of Direct Method confirmed too that listening and speaking that is oracy is not all that is language. Language must be taught in an integrative way where all four skills are focused.
But most often even in the modern methods of SL teaching quite surprisingly listening skill is ignored in a way or another! David Nunan 1997 commented that listening is the Cinderella Skill which is overlooked by its elder sister speaking in SL learning. As to expertise the productive skills like speaking and writing has become the standard of the knowledge of second language listening and reading have been turned to be the secondary ones. Besides in our schools colleges and even in the higher levels instructors direct how to read and write not how to speak or listen. It is believed that these would be mastered by the learners automatically. Although listening had a boost up in 1960s direct method and in 1980s Krashens input hypothesis 1981; James Ashers Total physical response 1988 and Gillian Brown 1988 it turned a fashion in most cases!
In this article I have tried to show how listening helps EFL learners to develop language skill. Despite the fact that it is not a research article a small scale survey has been done at Noakhali Science and Technology University Bangladesh in order to demonstrate that listening practice is insisted by the learners and they find it functional in language learning.
What is listening?
Listening is a skill in a sense that its a related but distinct process than hearing which involves merely perceiving sound in a passive way while listening occupies an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds. This correlation is like that between seeing and reading. Seeing is a very ordinary and passive state while reading is a focused process requiring readers instrumental approach. Listening has a volitional component. Tomatis 2007 view is while listening; the desire to listen as well as the capability to listen comprehension must be present with the listener for the successful recognition and analysis of the sound.
What listening really means is listening and understanding what we hear at the same time. So two concurrent actions are demanded to take place in this process. Besides according to Mecheal Rost 1991 listening comprises some component skills which are:
discriminating between sounds
recognizing words
identifying grammatical groupings of words
identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning
connecting linguistic cues to nonlinguistic and paralinguistic cues
using background knowledge to predict and later to confirm meaning and recalling important words and ides.
As McDonough and Shaw 1993 and Rost 1991 explain that a listener as a processor of language has to go through three processes using three types of skills:
a. Processing sound/ Perception skills: As the complete perception doesnt emerge from only the source of sound listeners segment the stream of sound and detect word boundaries contracted forms vocabulary sentence and clause boundaries stress on longer words and effect on the rest of the words the significance of intonation and other languagerelated features changes in pitch tone and speed of delivery word order pattern grammatical word classes key words basic syntactic patterns cohesive devices etc.
b. Processing meaning/ Analysis skills:
Its a very important stage in the sense as researches show that syntax is lost to memory within a very short time whereas meaning is retained for much longer. Richards 1985:191 says that memory works with propositions not with sentences. While listening listeners categorize the received speech into meaningful sections identify redundant material keep hold of chunks of the sentences think ahead and use language data to anticipate what a speaker may be going to say accumulate information in the memory by organizing them and avoid too much immediate detail.
c. Processing knowledge and context/ Synthesis skills:
Here context refers to physical setting the number of listener and speakers their roles and their relationship to each other while linguistic knowledge refers to their knowledge of the target language brought to the listening experience. Every context has its individual frame of reference social attitude and topics. So members of a particular culture have particular rules of spoken behavior and particular topic which instigate particular understanding. Listening is thought as interplay between language and brain which requires the activation of contextual information and previous knowledge where listeners guess organize and confirm meaning from the context.
However none of these microskills is either used or effective in isolation or is called listening. Successful listening refers to the integration of these component skills and listening is nothing but the coordination of the component skills.
Nature of listening as a skill:
Besides the division of the skills as receptive and productive another subdivision focuses on oneway reception and interactive reception in this age of active learning. Reading and writing are oneway skills where learners dont get direct feedback. But in speaking and listening learners may have their understanding and reproduction checked instantly. Thus active and selflearning takes place.
Moreover there is a traditional labeling for reading and listening as passive skills. But linguists believe that a listener is involved in guessing anticipating checking interpreting interacting and organizing by associating and accommodating their prior knowledge of meaning and form. Rost 1990 thinks listeners coauthor the discourse and they construct it by their responses.
Even as a receptive skill listening differs greatly with reading as reading materials are printed and permanent enough where the learners are required to interact with the next sentence using the knowledge of the previous one while listening involves continuous material presentation where they have to respond to the immediate expression. From the view point of product or process listening is more a process than a product which instantly shapes the understanding and utterances of the learners.
Why listening?
No doubt listening is the most common communicative activity in daily life. according to Morley 1991 p.82 We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak four times more than we read and five times more than we write.
So listening as a skill is assuming more and more weight in SL or FL classrooms than ever before. Rost 1994 p. 141142 points out listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level any learning simply cannot begin. Listening is thus fundamental to speaking.
Limited listening input fails to promote facetoface communication by shaping their social development confidence and selfimage. Adequate listening practice could give the learners essential contact with handy input that might trigger their utterances. Teacher talk or peer interaction might be the options for this. But according to Rod Ellis 1990 its not only the exposure to L2 that is enough and learners need L2 data suited to the accurate stage of their development. If the learners dont have optimal exposure in the target language they cant transmit the comprehensible input into intake through production strategies where learners attempt to use L2 knowledge. Krashens 1981 view is that acquisition takes place as a result of the learner having understood input that is a little beyond the current level of his competence that is the i1 level. We must take into account that the level of listening input must be higher than the level of language production of the target learners. So language teaching pedagogy must incorporate academic and designed listening practice.
Obviously listening influences other skills. A theory of Tomatis shows that the quality of an individuals listening ability will affect the quality of both their spoken and written language development. He also views that if the sounds of the target language are presented to the learners before presenting them in written form the ease with which they integrate those sound will be reflected in their understanding and production of the language. However a preexposure or a followingexposure to listening input is a must on the part of a learner.
It is widely known that individuals ability to process and analyze the sounds influence their ability to translate the sounds of language into their written form. We know reading is not only a visual process rather involves the rapid analysis of letters and words that represents sounds and it is sound which gives the words meaning. A learner can decode the graphic images or recognize their meaning efficiently if their auditory processing skills are well developed. In a similar way sounds are translated into graphic form in writing and if the sounds are poorly integrated their graphic representation will be hampered and problems like spelling mistakes may arise. So we see the foundation on which reading and writing skills are built is spoken language again listening is the fundamental to spoken language as without listening anything we cant reproduce or reply.
In a learnercentered approach it is deducted that listening provides the learners with the following features of the target language:
How the language is organized
How native speakers use the language
How to communicate in the language
Strategies for Listening:
Two types of strategies for listening have been in practice. They are defined so according to the ways of processing the text while listening:
a. In Bottom up processing like reading learners utilize their linguistic knowledge to identify linguistic elements in an order from the smallest linguistic unit like phonemes bottom to the largest one like complete texts top. They link the smaller units of the language together to form the larger parts and its a linear process where meaning is derived automatically at the last stage. It is absolutely text based process where learners rely on the sounds words and grammar in the message in order to create meaning.
b. Top down interpretation on the other hand requires learners to go to the listening with their prior knowledge of topic context and type of text as well as knowledge of language to reconstruct the meaning using the sounds as clues. This back ground knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.
It is assumed that bottom up process is applied while practicing minimal pairs taking pronunciation tests listening for specific details recognizing cognates and wordorder pattern but topdown interpretation is used in the activities like listening for the main idea predicting drawing inferences and summarizing where learners relate what they know and what they hear through listening comprehension.
According to the types of situation where the understanding takes place listening is divided into:
a. Reciprocal or interactive Listening where the listener is required to take part in the interaction and alternately listens and speaks. Interactive listening situations include facetoface conversations and telephone calls in which listener has a chance to ask for clarification repetition or slower speech from conversation partner.
b. Nonreciprocal or noninteractive Listening where the listener is engaged in listening passively to a monologue or speech or even conversation. Some noninteractive listening situations are listening to the radio CDs TV films lectures etc. and here listener usually doesn’t have the opportunity to ask for clarification slower speech or repetition.
We believe this type of listening is not totally non interactive too. The interaction takes place here is the cognitive one where students respond through understanding and creating the meaning. On the other hand this might be turn to semi reciprocal if the instructor makes them responding while checking their understanding through questionanswer or discussion and clarification in the class or lab.
Methodology:
Methods applied for the survey included questionnaire and group interviews taken with 40 students who attend listening classes in the language lab regularly and it has been observed by the author that they do better in speaking and reading than others. The subjects are the students of 1st year 1st term from the department of Pharmacy and CSTE ACCT and FIMS. Although they are really not beginners and have learnt English at their secondary and higher secondary level they have no exposure to authentic English speaking and listening. Here they have been practicing listening in a language lab using headphone using audio and video for three months. The purpose of the survey was convincingly explained to them and they took 30 minutes to think on the questions and to answer them.
Findings:
30 students claim that listening practice has raised their confidence by throwing away their fear hesitations inertia and shyness that they had before to speak in English.
All of the 40 students have told that watching video clippings and movie while listening enables to identify the right responses styles expressions behaviors attitudes and emotions in particular situations through concentrating on gesture body language non linguistic cues planning utterances adjacency pairs turntaking repairing utterances by asking for repetition preclosing and closing.
5 students have said that it has quickened their planning to respond as they listen to faster speaking than their own.
35 students opine that exposure to naturally spoken input by native speakers gives them practical experience of using language in target situations.
20 students who are highly motivated have found a change in their speaking style.
36 students think that listening to dialogues and conversation enriches their vocabulary and teaches how to use them appropriately.
10 students have found that intensive listening practice helps to remember the syntactic structures spelling accent and intonation.
19 students mention about learning of the cultures feelings reactions trend and customs of the English speaking people that helps them feel motivated integrative to speak English.
All of the 40 students opine that watching movie or video clippings draws more attention during the class and add to their learning.
All of the 40 students believe that interaction with teachers for assessment or other purposes while listening help them greatly to remove confusion and use their newly gained knowledge immediately and make it regular in use.
Teaching listening:
Unfortunately as I find a very diminutive effort in teaching listening in our country this discussion may appear too much redundant to read to the language teachers! What we find in a traditional EFL classroom? Most of the classes complete their Language course without practice listening even for a day! Very few ELT trained teachers nowadays in line with the flow of CLT; efforts for listening practice consisted of teacher reading aloud a written text slowly once or more so that it is understood and than asking some comprehension questions. It seems the objective here is to present the written language in an alternative way where characteristics of naturally spoken language is totally absent and listening practice is farther beyond. If the materials used for listening class comply with that in speaking class it will certainly give a fully fledged input to the learners.
Teaching listening requires a bit more on the part of the teacher than that of the learners. One of the main principle of teaching listening as I believe should be Language material intended to used for training listening comprehension should never be presented visually first. Good listening lessons go beyond the main listening task itself with related activities before and after the listening. The format may be like the following:
a. Prelistening Stage: Some activities before listening may serve as preparation or warmup for listening in several ways. These function as reference and framework by giving prior knowledge of listening activities. Some recommended perlistening activities include:
a.Introducing the topic and assessing their background knowledge of the topic or content of the material through commenting on a picture or photograph.
b.Activating their existing knowledge through discussion. Reading through comprehension questions in advance working out own opinion on a topic predicting content from the title etc. can be done.
c.Clarifying any necessary contextual information and vocabulary to comprehend the text. In this regard showing pictures maps or graphs and may be helpful.
d.Informing them of the type of text their role purposes of the listening etc. A short reading passage on a similar topic may help them.
b. WhileListening Stage: activities in this stage must follow the learners specific needs instructional goal listening purposes and learners proficiency level. While listening activities directly relate to the text and listeners are asked to do these during or immediately after listening.
. Some specific cares are required in designing whilelistening activities. These are:
a.If the students are asked to give written information after listening they should have chance to listen the text more than once which makes it easier for them to keep concentration while listening with specific purposes.
b.Writing activities should be to a minimum. As comprehension is the prime target writing would make the listening more demanding. are samples of this.
c.Global activities like getting the main idea topic setting summary that focus on the content and forms of the text should be given more so that listeners are guided through the text. Listening for the gist is such an activity.
d.More questions should be set up in order to focus students attention on the crucial elements that might help to comprehend the text. Following the rout on a map or searching for specific clues to meaning or identify description of the given pictures might be appropriate here.
e.Attaching predicting activities before listening so that students can monitor their comprehension as they listen. Listening with visuals may serve here.
f.Giving immediate feedback to make the students examine their responses and how it was. Checking off items in a list distinguishing between formal and informal registers conducted by teacher are examples here.
Listening activities here become varied according to their purposes and objectives. Four major distinctions include Attentive listening Extensive listening Intensive listening Selective listening and Interactive listening.
Attentive listening:
Both of the ideas are true that attentiveness is a prior condition for understanding and listener often lapse attention for various reasons. Losing interest inability to keep up with losing track of goals less confident are some of them. Teacher can help the listeners to hold their attention by personalizing the martial using the target language while talking to them to keep flow and lessening their stress and motivating by asking oral responses repeatedly. Activities in this stage would be interesting and easy including face to face interaction using visual and tangible topics clear description of the listening procedure minimum use of written language and immediate and ongoing responses etc so that learners can easily keep pace with the text and activity.
Listening to short chunks music image personal stories teacher talk small question answer and interview etc may be applied in this stage.
Extensive listening:
This type of listening has also a greater ease than other types as it is concerned to promote overall comprehension of a text and never requires learners to follow every word and understand them. Learners need to comprehend the text as a whole which is called global understanding. Activities in this section must be chosen in terms with the proficiency level of the listeners.
At the lower level they may have problems to organize the information so some nonverbal forms in responding might be given such as putting pictures in a right sequence following directions on a map checking of items in a photograph completing a grid chart or timetable etc.
At the developed stage some language based tasks requiring constructing meaning inferring decisions interpreting text and understanding gist are usually recommended. Completing cloze exercises or giving one or two word answers multiple choices predicting the next utterances forming connected sets of notes inferring opinions or interpreting parts of the text are some samples.
Intensive listening:
Hearing clearly is also a prime aspect of listening as it includes accurate perception without which the second phase of processing meaning becomes very difficult. Listening intensively is quite important to understand the language form of the text as we have to understand both the lexical and grammatical units that lead to form meaning. So intensive listening requires attention to specific items of language sound or factual detail such as words phrase grammatical units pragmatic units sound changes vowel reduction and consonant assimilation stress intonation and pauses etc. Feedback on accuracy and repetition on the teachers part promote success here.
Paraphrasing remembering specific words and sequences filling gaps with missing words identifying numbers and letters picking out particular facts discriminating the pronunciation of same phoneme in different positions replacing words finding stress and boundaries are some good intensive listening practice.
Selective listening:
It involves listening to selected part of a text as its name suggests to predict information and select cues surrounding information. Thus the listeners may have an assessment of their development in listening to authentic language. Here the focus is on the main parts of the discourse and by noticing these parts listener construct their understanding of the meaning of whole of the text through inferring. As the expectation on understanding is focused and has a purpose in these activities listeners have the chance of second listening to check understanding and have feedback repeatedly.
Listening to sound sequences documentary story maps incomplete monologues conversation cues and topic listening are examples of selective listening.
Interactive listening:
This is a very advanced stag of listening practice as it implies social interaction in small groups which is a true test of listening. In interactive listening learners either in pairs or in groups receive new information identify them continuously. Besides they have to work out the problems of understanding each other and formulate responses immediately as we are required to do in real life. So in spite of calling practice this goes beyond of it. As this phase involves both comprehension and production it directly promotes speaking skill. Teachers have a central role in this stage. They have to set up specific goals so that learners can asses their own performance observe learners language in order to provide immediate feedback on their interaction strategies.
Group survey self introductions short speeches chatting and discussing exchanging news and views interviewing and being interviewed etc. might be appropriate here.
c. Afterlistening Stage: post listening activities can be used to check comprehension valuate listening skill use of listening strategies and use the knowledge gained to other contexts. So these are called listening exercises at all and defined as followup works. The features of these activities are:
a.Related to prelistening activities such as predicting.
b.May create a real life situation where students might be asked to use knowledge gained through listening.
c.May extend the topic and help the students remember new vocabulary.
Using notes made while listening in order to write a summary reading a related text doing a role play writing on the same theme studying new grammatical structures practicing pronunciation discussion group craft project etc. are some postlistening activities.
Variables affecting and effecting successful listening:
Noise: Distractions and noise during the listening segment should be reduced and soundproof language lab is perfect for this purpose.
Equipment: If the cassette player or CD player being used does not produce acceptable sound quality it may harm developing skill or motivation.
Repetition: playing the text 23 times might be required in respect of the types of texts. In case of no chance of repetition learners may become anxious about catching it all the first time and that will impede their actual performance.
Content: It is a strong variable to be able to make difference in developing skill. The material should be interesting and appropriate for the class level in topic speed and vocabulary. Some guidelines for judging the relative ease or difficulty of a listening text for a particular purpose or particular group of students might be:
a.The selected material must be relevant to students real life; language of the text should be authentic and would vary in terms of learners interest and age group.
b.The storyline narrative or instruction should confirm common expectation in organization. It may contain main idea details and examples. An informative title might also be helpful.
c.Learners have to be familiar with the topic. They might feel major comprehension difficulties because of misapplication of background knowledge due to cultural differences.
d.At the beginner level of proficiency the language of listening text should discard redundancy while in the higher proficiency level students may benefit from redundant language.
e.If the text involves more than one individual the differences between them should be marked conspicuously which can make the comprehension easy.
f.Most texts should have visual supports like clippings maps diagrams pictures or images in video that contextualize the listening input and provide clues to meaning in order to aid their interpretation.
Recording own tape: Any way recording must be of an English speaker. Copying recording two to three times is preferred in order to avoid rewind which may discrete attention of the listeners.
Using video: Using video clippings with sound off and then asking students what dialogue is taking place is a good practice. Next the teacher may play sound and check their understanding and interpret them about the discrepancy between their predictions and reality. It may also be done with the video first and giving only sound to guess what the context is can obviously effect comprehending.
Homework: In teaching listening homework is a must. A listening task between two classes prevent them forgetting. Encouraging public listening and having notes on them is a free pave to walk in teaching listening which leads to success. Providing tape recording with questions dictation or a worksheet to complete may bring the expected results.
Using internet: If learners have opportunity to use a computer with internet access and headphones or speakers teacher may direct them toward some listening practice sites and home works can also be assigned from these accesses
Limitations of the essay:
This essay doesnt focus on every aspect of teaching or developing listening skill; rather it focuses mainly on the necessity and functions of listening input in learning a foreign or second language. The survey also reflects on the service of listening to the EFL learners who are instrumentally motivated. The context of the assay is this country though it reflects that of some other countries where the features dont vary much.
Conclusion:
Definitely we have to admit that language learning depends on listening as we respond only after listening something. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the stimuli for language acquisition and make the learners interact in spoken communication. So effective and ideal language instructors should help the learners to be introduced with native speaking to be respondent to that both cognitively and orally. In order to do so first they should show the students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with variety of situations types of input and listening purposes.
Questionnaire
Name:
Role:
Department:
Q1: Does practice listening in the language lab help you to develop English skill?
Q2: How does it promote your learning?
Q3: Do watching movies or using video clippings add to your understanding?
Q4: How does interaction with teacher or interference of teacher while listening help you?
Reference:
Byrnes H. 1984. The role of listening comprehension: A theoretical base. Foreign Language Annals 17: 317329.
Coakley CG Wolvin AD. 1986. Listening in the native language. In B. H. Wing Ed. Listening reading writing: Analysis and application pp. 1142. Middlebury VT: Northeast Conference.
Gass SM.1988. Integrating research areas: A framework for second language studies. Applied Linguistics. 9:198217.
Lund RJ. 1990. A taxonomy for teaching second language listening. Foreign Language Annals 23: 105115.
Mendelsohn DJ Rubin J. 1995. A guide for the teaching of second language listening. San Diego CA: Dominie Press.
Morley J. 1991. Listening comprehension in second/foreign language instruction. In M. CelceMurcia Ed. Teaching English as a second or foreign language pp. 81106. Boston MA: Heinle Heinle.
Nunan D Miller L. Eds.. 1995. New ways in teaching listening. Alexandria VA: TESOL.
OmaggioHadley A. 1993. Teaching language in context 2nd Ed.. Boston. MA: Heinle Heinle.
Peterson PW. 1991. A synthesis of methods for interactive listening. In M. CelceMurcia Ed. Teaching English as a second or foreign language pp. 106 122. Boston. MA: Heinle Heinle.
Richards JC. 1983. Listening comprehension: Approach design procedure. TESOL Quarterly. 17: 219240.
Rixon S.1981.The design of materials to foster particular linguistic skills. The teaching of listening comprehension. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 258 465.
Rost M. 1990. Listening in language learning. London: Longman.
Rubin J. 1987. Learner strategies: Theoretical assumptions research history and typology. In A. Wenden J. Rubin Eds. Learner strategies in language learning pp. 1530. Englewood Cliffs NJ: PrenticeHall.
Rubin J. 1995. The contribution of video to the development of competence in listening. In D.J. Mendelsohn J. Rubin Eds. A guide for the teaching of second language listening pp. 151165. San Diego CA: Dominie Press.
Underwood M. 1989. Teaching listening. London: Longman.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Mili Saha Ali Rezwan Talukdar Lecturers Dept. of English
Noakhali Science Technology University
Sonapur Noakhali Bangladesh.
Teaching Jobs Abroad For Newly Qualified Teachers
Newly Qualified Teachers NQTs may be preventing themselves from beginning their international teaching career as soon as they qualify because they are finding misleading information on the internet.
How does this happen? When NQTs search the internet for teaching jobs overseas the companies that host international teaching recruitment fairs usually show up on the first page of results. And so the first information they are exposed to contains the selection criteria for candidates to be invited to attend one of these recruitment fairs which is that candidates have at least two years practical teaching experience.
These organisations prescreen candidates for international school recruiters. While this can save time for the recruiters it can cut them off from a number of exemplary candidates who have recently gained their credentials NQTs.
NQTs are mistaken if they think their lack of experience means they are not an attractive candidate for many international schools.
NQTs are attractive employment prospects for many reasons:
1. NQTs are cheap if a school operates a salary scale based on qualifications and years of teaching experience.
2. NQTs have uptodate teaching pedagogy and methodology that will bring a fresh perspective to the experienced teachers already employed by the school.
3. In an educational environment that is utilising information technology more and more NQTs bring cuttingedge techniques for utilising cuttingedge technologies.
4. NQTs that are applying for overseas teaching jobs are determined and passionate about teaching abroad. They have to be to find positions in spite of the wealth of information that says they cant. Therefore they are more likely to adapt quickly to the challenges of living in another country.
So how does an NQT find a job teaching abroad?
They do it by using jobhunting strategies that bypass attending recruiting fairs. One of the best places to find teaching vacancies in international schools is the TES Jobs website. While the website is affiliated with a newspaper in the UK it is the 1 resource for teachers of any nationality searching for teaching vacancies abroad.
The TES Jobs website has vacancies listed that say NQTs welcome. These are the schools that newly qualified teachers should be applying to in the first instance. But not exclusively as many international recruiters include a wish list of qualifications and experience in their advertised vacancies but often realise that they may end up employing someone with fewer qualifications.
How can NQTs enhance their resume?
There can be no argument that NQTs dont have two years of teaching experiencehellip; But they can make sure that their resume shines with additional qualifications and experience that will cause international school recruiters to overlook their lack of practical teaching experience. This may take some time and effort on the part of the NQT but the payoff will far out weigh the cost:
1. NQTs can get a TEFL qualification which can be done online or facetoface at a TEFL teacher training provider. A TEFL course will provide the NQT with techniques and tactics to support second language learners that they will encounter in an international school. It can also count as experience with multilingual and multicultural students.
2. NQTs can volunteer to spend time or get a parttime job tutoring students who have English as an additional language. A recommendation letter from the parents can provide evidence that the NQT has sought opportunities to interact in multilingual situations and has had practice with the needs of a learner who is trying to learn a subject in a language they arent familiar with.
3. NQTs can volunteer to coach or act as assistant coach for a multicultural sports team. The head coach can then write a recommendation letter that can show the candidates willingness to get involved in extracurricular activities as well as experience in coping in multicultural situations.
4. Completing a teaching practice in an international school is an excellent step in the right direction for an NQT if the situation arises. Whether the international school is local to the teaching college the NQT is attending or if the NQT is able to travel abroad a recommendation letter from the principal at a prominent international school cant be beaten in value. If attending an international school to complete a teaching practicum is not possible then the candidate should consider making arrangements to visit one while on vacation abroad.
Teaching abroad is not only for the experienced teacher there are plenty of vacancies suitable for NQTs. If youre not sure you are going to get a job teaching overseas then by all means apply for domestic jobs at the same timehellip; But dont cut yourself off from the opportunity to make more money for less stress and to truly enjoy your first experience as a professional educator simply because you have received incorrect or incomplete information!
About the writer: Kelly Blackwell has been teaching abroad for over 10 years and began as a newly qualified teacher herself. She has refined a number of successful jobhunting strategies over the years that utilise resources that bypass the international teaching recruitment fairs. NQT or not secure yourself a teaching job abroad with her proven strategies.
