LESSON 2: BLOGS, WIKIS, TWITTER

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NETWORKING STRATEGY:

INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWS

Lesson time: 1 hour

Listening, speaking, reading, writing

Level: mixed intermediate (low-high) ESL for work

Note: In the previous lesson students watched a video, What is an Informational Interview, and answered T/F questions about the video. Students interviewed each other about what jobs they wanted to learn more about and why. The teacher modeled writing a summary. Students wrote summaries of their partner’s information, made corrections and read them to the rest of the class.

 

I. Modeling the informational interview

Directions:      

                        1.  Listen to your teacher interview a store manager from Goodwill EasterSeals 

                             about a Retail Sales Clerk position.

2.      Use the worksheet below to write down the answers. You may ask to hear the conversation several times.

 

INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1.      What is your job title?

2.      How did you get started in this kind of work?

3.      What are your main responsibilities?

4.      What skills do you need for an entry-level position in (retail sales)__?

5.      Do you need experience for an entry-level position in ____________?

6.      What level of education or training do you need?

7.      What is the starting pay for this job?

8.      What are the most difficult parts of your job?

9.      What do you like the most about your job?

10.   What is the best way for me to find out about available positions?

II. Practice writing a summary

Directions:

1. Write at least 4 sentences to summarize what you learned about being a Sales Clerk.

2. Read your summary to a partner, then listen to your partner’s summary.

3. Give respectful feedback and make changes.

III. Attach and email your interview summary 

 

Directions:       1. Open a new Word document.

                       

2. Type up your summary of the Retail Sales position.

3.  Save the document with the name: your name_retail sales

                        (For example: Kate_retail sales)

4.      Click here to open a new message

5.      Attach your word document to the email and send.

6.      Kate will post your summaries to the class wiki at esl career connections

III. Extension Activities/Next Lesson

1.      Opening and reading the home page on the class wiki (with more on it than is there now!).

2.    Learning how to use the assignment page on the wiki.

3.    Reading the class retail sales summaries. Writing about the retail sales job. Do you think you would like this job? Why? Or why not? Give reasons: I like this job because…

4.  Students will choose a person on their Personal Network worksheet and set up an

informational interview to learn more about that person’s job. Students will use the questions above and write additional questions of their own if they prefer. Students will type up and email their summaries to the teacher to be posted on the wiki. Students will hand in their interview sheets.

 

REVIEW

How will you use this resource to meet the needs of your instructional purposes?

I will use the wiki as a template website, which will allow me to create and edit a class website without having html or website programming skills (from lesson 2 overview). This will also help me to make student time in the learning center more social and group-oriented. The CD applications we have (Rosetta Stone, GED, Typing Tutor) are all individual activities (except when students work together on workbook exercises). I have wanted a way to create a job board, where students can post jobs they found for other students. I will start by having students email me information about different careers (informational interview summaries) and job postings they have found. Then, I will introduce how to use an assignment page for actually doing assignments on the wiki. Next I will create a job posting area where students can enter information themselves and teach them how to use that. I think student use needs to increase very gradually and be limited to certain areas of the wiki. Most of my students don’t know how to send an attachment by email and many don’t know anything about email until they come to our class. So, using email as a way to send me their work to be posted on the class wiki  will be a skill upgrade for them already!

The students enjoy using the computer and are learning to integrate keyboarding skills, spelling, and complete sentence formulation into their writing. However, using all of these skills at the same time is sometimes too hard. For this reason, I’m having them write their summaries and then type them into a word document. In this way, they can focus on different skills at different times.

What handouts or directions will you provide students to focus learning and adapt this resource for your instructional resources?

Each time the class uses the wiki, the first activity will be to review wiki use. I will create written instructions for using the assignment page and the job-posting page, as mentioned above. These will be lessons in their own right. I plan to place instructions for different wiki tasks in plasticized covers and have many sets available for use during class. Above all, I will be careful to teach how to use the wiki separately from how to perform employment-related tasks. Students will take time to integrate these skills and gain confidence in being able to use them.

Why is this topic, information or content appropriate for the lesson you plan to create (e.g., level of authenticity, relevance to target language, register, accuracy, interest level, and motivation)?

A big part of job search is learning different ways to look for a job. Networking is a strategy that is increasingly important, as more and more of the application and interview process are done on-line or by telephone. Networking is an authentic and necessary skill in the US. Sometimes it is the only person-to-person contact that applicants will have until they go to an interview.

The interview between the teacher and Goodwill store manager takes place in person (could be tape-recorded as a back-up). Because many students are interested in retail positions, I thought this would be a good first interview. I’m very tired of finding ELL job descriptions for dishwasher and janitor. Although many students do work in these positions, I want to educate them about a variety of employment opportunities and encourage them to continue to improve their English language skills, so they can move into more enjoyable and less grueling work.

The students will conduct their own informational interviews as homework, before the next lesson. I will try to get each student to interview a person in a different profession (if possible). So, this could be a project similar to Coast to Coast. Students could write about many different professions and then read what other students found out as well. The main difference being that I would post their work on the project page.

5. What are the potential problems, either language based or technical that you may need to troubleshoot or prepare for?

Some of the students are self-conscious about the low-level of their reading and writing skills vs. their aural skills, which are often 2 levels higher. In the beginning, I want to give them the privacy to practice these skills. So sharing or having other students give feedback would be voluntary in the beginning, until they got used to it.

In the first few lessons, it may be beneficial to pair students weak-strong: a better computer user with a less able, newer user.

There are many potential problems for me as a first-time teacher using a wiki. I won’t always be ahead of the students 100%. In planning lessons that incorporate the wiki, I will need to have alternate activities ready, in case the site is down or there are problems with our computer network.

I do think the possibilities outweigh the potential problems. I started out to write a lesson using a blog. But in the process, wikis demonstrated that they were more flexible and capable of storing a greater variety of information. Ultimately, the wiki served my purpose better. Wikis won me over!