The beginning of any great new career starts with an interview. In the United States, the job interview is a chance for a company to see how the skills and personality of an applicant will fit their workplace. For many English learners, the American-style interview can be an unfamiliar experience because job applicants are expected to talk about themselves and their skills. This requires a vocabulary filled with strong adjectives and the linguistic competence to share plenty of details about personal qualities and experiences.

In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students will experience job interviews while practicing strong adjectives that will make them the perfect job candidate!

LEVEL

Intermediate to Advanced

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Speaking (primary focus); listening (secondary focus)

GOALS

Students will:

• Use adjectives to describe themselves and their experiences
• Practice speaking and listening through a job interview question-and-answer format

MATERIALS

• Teacher: computer, speakers, projector, whiteboard or chalkboard
• Students: notebook, pencil, paper

PREPARATION

1. Read through all the materials carefully.
2. Print a class set of the adjectives in Appendix 1. There are 20 adjectives in the set; larger classes may need two copies, and in smaller classes, you may want to choose which adjectives to include and which to set aside. Cut out the adjectives before class.
3. Print enough copies of the interview questions in Appendix 2 for each student in the class.
4. Have one sheet of blank paper for each student in the class. Students will use the paper to write down the name of their company.

PART ONE: ADJECTIVE MATCHING

In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students will practice using adjectives that can help them be more exact and assertive during a job interview. This lesson begins with a matching activity to learn vocabulary before students write and answer questions in a practice interview.

1. Begin by dividing the class into two groups of equal number. Give half the students the strong adjective cards, and give the other half the weak adjective cards.
2. Next, have the students mingle and look at one another’s cards. When two students think they have a match, have them stand together to form a pair. As students make correct pairs, write their strong/weak adjective combinations on the board. Writing the adjectives on the board will help students during Part Two of this activity.
3. Once all the students have matched cards, review their answers as a class. If a pair of students is incorrectly matched, have them return to mingling until they make a correct match.
   
   1. Note: If students do not know all the words, that is okay. Just encourage them to make a guess based on what they know. During this warm-up, the goal is for students to think about this new vocabulary as a group.

PART TWO: JOB PREPARATION

1. Once again, divide the class into two groups: Group A and Group B. Have each group sit on opposite sides of the room.
2. Have the students get out a notebook and a pencil or pen.
3. For Group A, give each student a blank sheet of paper. Have these students think of a company – this can be a real company, a sports team, or a local business they would like to represent – and tell them to write the name of the company on the sheet of paper and place it on their desks.
4. Next, give each student in Group A a copy of the interview questions in Appendix 2. Have them read through the questions and prepare to ask interviewees the questions.
5. While Group A reviews their interview questions, instruct Group B to prepare to interview for a job. To do so, they should use the adjectives from the warm-up activity. Encourage students to think about the following questions:
   
   1. What strengths and skills do I have?
   2. What education and experience do I have that make me a strong applicant?
   3. What adjectives best describe me?
   4. What kind(s) of jobs would I like to have?
6. Once all the students have had time to prepare, have Group B stand up and move around the room to see the companies and work opportunities that Group A have made available. If a student is interested in a company, have him or her sit down with a student from Group A and have an interview.
   
   1. Note: If several students are interested in the same company, have them take turns. In the meantime, encourage them to sit down with another company for an interview while they wait; it is always important to get extra interview practice!
7. Once all the students in Group B have had a chance to have an interview, have the groups switch roles and repeat the process again from Step 1.

APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW ADJECTIVES

APPENDIX 2: ADJECTIVE REVIEW

You are interviewing people for a new position at your company. Below are common questions asked during an interview. Use them to find the best candidate for the job. As the applicant answers your questions, be sure to write notes in your notebook.

1. What information can you tell me about yourself?
2. Why did you choose this field for your career?
3. How would you describe yourself?
4. What are your best strengths?
5. What would you like to improve about yourself?
6. What is the most important thing you are looking for in a job?
7. What are your career goals?
8. Do you like to work in teams, or do you prefer to work alone?
9. Why do you want to work for our company?
10. Do you have any questions for me?

In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, we highlight vocabulary that students can use in the workplace to sound more dynamic and professional. Students will learn this vocabulary through a matching exercise and then practice the vocabulary through a sentence completion exercise

LEVEL

Intermediate to Advanced

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Reading (primary focus); Speaking (secondary focus)

GOALS

Students will learn and review business related vocabulary through the following:

• A vocabulary and definition matching exercise
• A sentence completion exercise

MATERIALS

• Teacher: computer, projector
• Students: notebook, pencil, paper

PREPARATION

1. Read through all the materials carefully.
2. Print copies of the business vocabulary infographics in “Appendix 1: Business Infographics Blanks” and the word cards in “Appendix 2: Business Vocabulary Word Cards.” Print enough copies for each pair or small group of students to have a set.
3. Cut out the business vocabulary cards from Appendix 1 and the word cards from Appendix 2.
4. Print one copy of the activity in “Appendix 3: Business Vocabulary Sentence Completion” for each student in the class (Answers to the activities are included in Appendices 4 and 5.).

PART ONE: VOCBULARY GUESSING

1. Begin the class by placing the students into pairs or small groups.
2. Next, give each pair or group a set of the Business Vocabulary Infographics in Appendix 1.
3. Provide the students a few minutes to look at the cards. During this time, encourage the students to guess the words based on the pictures and definitions on the cards.
4. Next, provide each group with a set of the Business Vocabulary Word Cards in Appendix 2.
5. Have the students match the vocabulary word cards to the correct vocabulary infographic. a. Note:​ Encourage the students to use the parts of speech and example sentences on the infographic cards to help them match the cards.
6. After the students have matched the words, have the groups turn to another group and compare their answers. If the groups have different answers, have them work together as a large group to agree on an answer.
7. Once the pairs or small groups have compared answers with one another, bring the class together as a large group and review the answers as a class.

PART TWO: SENTENCE COMPLETION

1. Have the students put away the cards from Part One of the activity.
2. Next, give each student a copy of the sentence completion activity in Appendix 3.
3. Provide students time to fill in the blanks of the activity with the correct vocabulary words.
4. Once students have completed the activity, have them compare answers with their partner(s) from Part One of the activity. If the pairs or small groups have different answers, have them work together as a large group to agree on an answer.
5. Once the students have compared answers in their pairs or small groups, bring the class together as a large group to review the answers as a class.
   a. To encourage additional reading and speaking practice, have students volunteer to read sentences aloud during the review.

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When adapting materials, some teachers might think only about how to make them more accessible for beginners or lower level students; however, materials can also be adapted to be more challenging to meet the needs of more advanced learners. In this Teacher’s Corner activity, teachers learn how an article can be adapted to raise the level of its vocabulary. The reading, “Iditarod: Annual Sled Dog Race,” from the journal English Teaching Forum, focuses on Alaska and the annual 1,000-mile dog race across the state. There are a number of readings in this resource, but the article used for this activity is found on pages 52-53.

LEVEL

Advanced

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Reading
Vacabulary

GOALS

During this activity, students will be able to:

• Use an article about Alaska to practice using and manipulating new vocabulary
• Recognize and define new vocabulary words from the Academic Word List (AWL), highlighted in the reading
• Change highlighted words to appropriate synonyms

Rewrite sentences so that highlighted words must change their form to a different part of speech

MATERIALS

• Copy of the original reading “Iditarod: Annual Sled Dog Race” (for teacher)
• Copies of the adapted reading with highlighted AWL vocabulary (see Appendix A)
• Access to dictionaries and thesauri (print or online)

PREPARATION

• Read the article (Appendix A) and practice completing this exercise prior to asking students to complete it
• For each student, make a copy of the article with the AWL vocabulary highlighted (Appendix A)

PROCEDURE

1. Begin class by putting students into small groups and asking them to share what they know about Alaska. As they discuss, offer some other topics related to the state of Alaska. They can then discuss what they know or guess as to what these topics might mean.
   
   1. For example, ask them to discuss the climate, geography, people, etc.
   2. As the students discuss the topics, write the name of the article on the board: “Iditarod: Annual Sled Dog Race.”
   3. Draw students’ attention to the title of the article and have them discuss in their groups what they know about this specific Alaskan event.
   4. Bring the class together and have them share what they know and what questions they might have.
2. Explain to the class that today they are going to use an article about Alaska to work on some new vocabulary words from the Academic Word List (AWL).
   
   1. If students have not worked with vocabulary from the AWL before, explain that it is a list of the 570 words most commonly used in academia.
3. First, students are going to read the article with the new AWL vocabulary words highlighted.
   
   1. Hand out copies of the article (see Appendix A) to each student.
   2. Give students sufficient time to read the article on their own, paying close attention to the vocabulary words that are in bold print.
      
      1. Encourage students to write a definition and a translation next to the highlighted words if they know what a particular word means.
   3. Once students have had a chance to read the article, have them return to their groups to discuss the highlighted vocabulary. Have students work together to write down definitions and translations of the new words.
   4. After students work for several minutes, hand out dictionaries to learners or tell them they can use computers or their mobile devices to look up the new words.
   5. As they work together to find and define the words, tell students to correct any incorrect definitions they had written down.
4. Tell students to return to working individually. Have students go through the article again, but this time they replace each AWL word with an appropriate synonym.
   
   1. If teachers find it necessary to model, elicit synonyms for the first word in the article teams. Write students’ suggestions on the board and then have them choose the word they think is the best fit.
   2. If a highlighted word is repeated in the text, students should try to find different synonyms for each instance of the word.
5. After students have worked through the article and changed the words to appropriate synonyms, tell students to return to their groups and share the changes they made.
   
   1. Also encourage them to speak up in their groups if someone’s synonym does not have quite the same meaning or does not work as a substitution.
6. Bring students back together as a large group and explain that the next changes they are going to make relate to parts of speech of the highlighted words.
   
   1. Clarify that when a word changes to a different part of speech, the meaning of the word is slightly changed. By understanding these changes in meaning, learners will have a better understanding of the word and all of the words in its family.
   2. Remind students that not all words can change to another part of speech.
   3. Explain that if a word changes its part of speech, it will not work in the same position in the sentence. For example, change the word economics to economical, and the word changes from a noun to an adjective. In English, nouns and adjectives do not sit in the same place in a sentence.
7. Begin by modeling and working with the students on a single word from the article.
   
   1. First, write the word transportation on the board and ask students which part of speech it is.
   2. Then, ask students to suggest other parts of speech for the word, e.g., transport, transportable, transportability, transporter.
   3. Have students look at the first sentence in the article using transportation.
   4. Ask students to rewrite the sentence using the word transport instead.
   5. Have volunteers write their new sentences on the board or share them with the class.
8. Explain that now students will do this for each of the highlighted vocabulary words in the text. Students will alter the text to retain the meaning but use different parts of speech for the new vocabulary words.
   
   1. Try to have students start this activity in class, but if time is short, return to the activity in the next class or assign it as homework.
   2. Save a few minutes at the end for students to return to groups and share one or two sentences that they have rewritten.

VARIATIONS

This activity can be adapted to fit additional needs of advanced learners in terms of other language skills. Instead of focusing on vocabulary, teachers could adapt the text to focus on a grammar point that has been studied in class. For example, if students are working on writing complex sentences, the teacher could rewrite sentences combining and adding information as a way to model sentence complexity. Then, the activity could be adjusted to practice this particular skill or grammar point.

Another variation is to focus not on language skills when adapting the text but on another element such as content or rhetorical structure. Teachers could focus on a particular genre of writing that would require changing the language used to present information and ideas. For example, teachers working on comparative writing strategies might bring in another topic to incorporate into the article to create a comparison, such as between two traditional dog races.

APPENDIX A

The following article’s highlighted vocabulary words are all listed on the Academic Word List (AWL). In order to identify AWL words, a AWL highlighter was used. The original article was copied and pasted into the tool’s text box, and a version was created where the words from the AWL were highlighted.

Iditarod: Annual Sled Dog Race

By William P. Ancker

Mushing is the sport of racing teams of dogs that pull sleds over snow. It grew from an ancient and practical means of transportation of native people of Alaska: using muscular dogs to carry cargo through harsh winter weather. The largest and most famous sporting event in Alaska is Iditarod, an annual race of teams of sled dogs and their drivers (or "mushers") that takes almost two weeks and covers approximately 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles) from Anchorage to Nome. “Mushing" is the act of racing teams of dogs that pull sleds over snow. It grew from an ancient and practical means of transportation of native people of Alaska: using muscular dogs to carry cargo through harsh winter weather. The largest and most famous sporting event in Alaska is Iditarod, an annual race of teams of sled dogs and their drivers (or "mushers") that takes almost two weeks and covers approximately 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles) from Anchorage to Nome.

The Iditarod commemorates a historic event from the winter of 1925, when a relay of 20 teams of dogs and mushers was used to deliver urgently needed medicine to Nome. Severe weather conditions made delivery by boat or airplane impossible. That heroic effort of men and their beloved dogs prevented an outbreak of diphtheria in Nome and saved hundreds of lives.

The first Iditarod was held in 1973. The race has grown steadily since then, both in the number of entrants who compete and the number of volunteers who help behind the scenes. Over the years, mushers and their dogs have come from Alaska, 20 other U.S. states, and 14 foreign countries to compete in "the last great race."

The race begins every year on the first Saturday of March in the city of Anchorage, which is on the Gulf of Alaska in the northern Pacific Ocean. It ends in the town of Nome on the coast of the Bering Sea. The middle section of the racecourse, between the villages of Ophir and Kaltag, alternates each year. A northern route is taken on even numbered years and a southern route on odd numbered years. This enables more villages to participate as checkpoints during this test of endurance across very sparsely populated wilderness.

The checkpoints are essential for a race of this length, difficulty, and isolation. Because there are no roads linking every section of the race, airplanes are used to ferry supplies and people before, during, and after the event. In fact, the race has its own "air force" of 23 volunteer pilots who transport dozens of race personnel, such as judges, dog handlers, and veterinarians, and tons of cargo, including dogs taken out of the race due to sickness or injury.

There are important rules in Iditarod to protect the health and safety of the teams of musher and dogs. During the race, the mushers must take several mandatory rest stops. One eight-hour stop occurs in the middle of the race, and another occurs before the last 124-kilometer (77-mile) section of the race into Nome. In addition, at one point during the race whenever each musher decides is best the team must rest for 24 hours. The mushers have to carry certain safety equipment for themselves, such as a warm sleeping bag, a pair of snowshoes, and a small cooker for boiling water.

This safety equipment also includes items for the teams of dogs, which can range between 12 and 16 animals per sled. Two pairs of "booties" for each dog are required to protect the animals' paws from sharp ice and other obstacles on the trail. Most of the sled cargo is dog food. Each musher must also carry a special veterinarian notebook, which is presented to the veterinarian who examines all the dogs on a team at each checkpoint. The rules of Iditarod specifically state, "There will be no cruel or inhumane treatment of dogs." A unique feature of Iditarod, in addition to the extreme climatic conditions and unusual mode of racing vehicle, is that women and men mushers compete together. In fact, in the 30 years of this grueling race, a woman has won five times. In 1985, Libby Riddles was the first woman to win. Clearly, winning Iditarod takes months of planning and training. Perhaps an indication of the tremendous dedication is that 20 editions have been won by only five mushers.

Iditarod has an education component, too. Every year, a Teacher on the Trail is selected among numerous applicants to observe the race firsthand and prepare lessons based on the race for elementary students. The selected teacher follows the trail where the teams race, sleeps in a sleeping bag at checkpoints, travels on Iditarod Air Force planes, and is present for the finish in Nome. Every day during the race, the teacher uses a laptop computer to post news reports, photos, and lesson plans to the official race Web site for classroom use around the world. There are other responsibilities, too. The Teacher on the Trail must also attend and report on the Junior Iditarod, a short sled dog race for teenage mushers held beforehand, and may be called upon to serve as an official spokesperson for Iditarod and make many public appearances at schools in Alaska and other states

I dig dish/fish
You dig fish dish
We dig fish/dish
Who digs dish/fish?
I said, we dig dish/fish
because they’re slick!

Refrain
I’ve never met a living thing I didn’t like.
No, nothing bothers me.
In this whole, wide world, I dig
Just about everything I see.

I dig dogs / frogs
You dig frogs / dogs
We dig frogs / dogs
Who digs dogs / frogs?
I said, we dig frogs / dogs
because they’re smooth.

I dig snakes/cakes
You dig cakes/snakes
We dig snakes cakes
Who digs snakes cakes?
I said, we dig cakes snakes
because they’re sssss-super!

I dig herds/birds
You dig herds/birds
We dig herds/birds
Who digs birds/herds?
I said, we dig herds/birds
because they’re fly!

Refrain
(or smell. . .)

I dig skunks/bunks

You dig skunks/bunks

We dig bunks/skunks
Who digs bunks/skunks?
I said, we dig skunks/bunks
because they’re sweet!

I dig cubs/grubs
You dig grubs/cubs
We dig grubs/cubs
Who digs cubs/grubs?
I said, we dig grubscubs
just like those skunks!

I dig pants/plants
You dig plants/pants
We dig plants/pants
Who digs pants/plants?
I said, we dig plants/pants because they’re
great!

I’ve never met a living thing I didn’t like.
No, nothing bothers me.
In this whole, wide world, I dig
Just about everything I see.

I dig mushrooms/brooms
You dig brooms/mushrooms
We dig mushrooms/brooms
Who digs brooms/mushrooms?
I said, we dig mushrooms/brooms
because they’re fun - gi!

I dig lichen/hiking
You dig hiking/lichen
We dig lichen/hiking
Who digs hiking/lichen?
I said, we dig lichen/hiking,
we be liking!

I dig rocks/locks
You dig locks/rocks
We dig locks/rocks
Who digs locks/rocks?
I said, we did rocks/locks
because they rock!