Earlier this week, I was teaching about work and interviews, which was posted previously. For lesson material and ideas, please view “Job Interviews: A Student’s Guide (Part 1)“. The previous lesson, looked at interviews and provided a good sample of a job interview. We also looked possible questions and developed answers for this. I also uploaded (with the learners’ permission) a spontaneous role-play dialogue between learners with the use of SoundCloud yesterday. It was a good opportunity for learners to access their speaking and re-listen to this again.
Anyhow, today we looked CVs and the art of writing a good CV. We started the lesson by reviewing which sections were included in a CV. Some sections included: Personal Details, Qualifications, Experience as well as Interests and Hobbies. These were elicited and boarded up, with language scaffolded such as reference letter, a referee, supporting an application, etc. We also explored briefly language associated with describing qualifications: MA, undergraduate degree, college (or high school), etc. The learners were making notes and writing down all the language, which was about to be put to good use.
The next part of the lesson, learners were handed out the CV Template (see below) and they were advised that they were going to ask each other questions associated with the CV and then write their partner’s answer. Thereby learners in essence were writing their partners CV. Overall, I found the learners were able to develop invaluable skills in the classroom as well as practice question and answer forms. I always find it useful to highlight language appropriate for reiterating and checking spelling: “How do you spell …?” and wrote this on the whiteboard.
ELT Experiences – Curriculum Vitae Template
I never got round to showing a video related to job interviews but I was thinking about how not to do a job interview and the great Monty Python sketch was something that I was really considering but perhaps this would be developed for future business related classes.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjHCXcwpcvE]
As always, please leave a comment below and share your ideas or experiences of teaching CV related lessons.
The above CV format is good but it should have a photo column, cause most of the companies are now asking for the photo resumes for their process.
http://www.cvtemplate.org/
Photos are not requested in the UK, it is illegal for an employer to request a photo for an application. If employers request a photo, it could be argued that the employer has selected the potential employee based upon their looks rather than their qualifications or experience.