How to answer the following ESL job interview question: What is your English teaching philosophy?

Answer (an example only!):

Every teacher is a personality and has his or her own English teaching experience, and consequently, English teaching philosophy. Therefore, your answer should focus on your English teaching experience. 

First, discuss your own personality. Tell briefly about yourself professionally. Then explain why you decided to become an English teacher. In addition, you should explain who influenced you as an English teacher most of all and what aspects of teaching English you consider the most important. You can briefly discuss a few linguistic theories of second language acquisition and explain who had the most profound impact on you as an English teacher. You can mention, for example, Noam Chomsky, Geoffrey Leech and Stephen Krashen. Perhaps you could express your opinion about language learning and language acquisition and explain differences between them. Do your students learn ESL or EFL or do they acquire it? You could probably add that a second language acquisition requires meaningful interaction and your students are concerned not only with the form of their utterances but also with the messages that they convey to the recipients. You should also consider what aims of a second language teaching and learning are. Most foreign language instructors and researchers claim that the aim of learning a foreign language is communication, either spoken or written. You should also discuss your role in the language classroom: explain what you teach and how you teach. In addition you can tell how you prepare your teaching materials and lesson plans.

As you probably know, students learn a foreign language better, if they are motivated to learn. Therefore, it is important for you to show that you are the teacher who knows how to motivate your students. Here are a few aspects to consider.

First of all, it is important to teach students how to study. Most students do not know how to learn vocabulary, how to develop their listening skills, and how to develop their thinking skills in English. A few useful tips might increase your students’ knowledge and motivation. Second, your students should understand that acquiring a foreign language means that students pick up the language practical skills that they need for communication purposes. Students should not try to memorize randomly grammar rules, syntactical structures and phrases. Language is a way of learning about the world and it is most effectively acquired in the meaningful context. Meaningful contexts stimulate students to think and learn about the world through the use of the target language: students learn effectively if they try to classify, contrast and compare certain facts and solve problems in the classroom. Third, you should explain which English language teaching methods you use with certain groups of children - based on their interests, age, class size, and course requirements. Also, you should explain how you motivate your students by using various strategies, such as learner-centered activities, informal assessment and cooperative learning. 

Finally, you should mention that an effective teacher should contribute to their school not only through teaching but also through community service, administrative responsibilities and research activities. 

You should summarize your statement by telling how you relate teaching to education and how you share your teaching experiences with other teachers and with your students’ parents. 

English Teaching Philosophy Example...

Personal Statement Example...

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What types of assessment do you know?

Answer:

Assessment can be divided into the following types: initial, formative, and summative.  In the classroom environment teachers conduct informal assessment and the final exams are considered as formal assessment.

Initial assessment (also called a diagnostic test) is conducted before starting the teaching process. 

Formative assessment basically involves qualitative feedback which is important to a teacher and to a student. For example, an English teacher asks students to use the correct forms of irregular verbs in a sentence. If all students perform the task correctly, the teacher moves on. If some students do not perform well, the teacher explains the rule. If most students do not understand the subject, the teacher reviews irregular verbs and pays students' attention to the most difficult or confusing cases. Formative assessment actively supports student learning and if conducted properly, it can motivate students. It is often called assessment for learning

Summative assessment monitors educational outcomes. This type of assessment, according to Bloom, 'assures adaptation of teaching and learning activities in the ways that enable students to attain intended learning outcomes'. Summative assessment is aimed at accountability and grading and is often called assessment of learning.

Assessment can also be distinguished as objective and subjective. Objective assessment is based on observation of measurable facts. Subjective assessment is based on personal opinion and personal interpretation.


Text and Style:
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Stylistics and literary criticism.


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What English pronunciation teaching resources are best?

Answer:

There are quite a few useful resources, for example, "Test your pronunciation" by Michael Vaughan-Rees, Underhill's "Sound Foundations", and "English Pronunciation in Use" by Mark Hancock – there are 60 lessons with CDs, phonemic chart, stress and intonation.

There are quite a few excellent online resources, too. You will find them in ESL Teacher Reference Desk.

ESL learners who wish to improve their English pronunciation should develop their listening skills. Many listening skill development resources are available here...    

What three tips would you give to your ESL students to improve their pronunciation, intonation, and accent?

Answer:

1. ESL learners should record their voice and then listen to it. This exercise can help them to detect the mistakes that they are making.

2. ESL learners should use audio books more frequently. While listening, they should look into the text and read at the same time. They should record themselves reading texts of the audio book. Then they should compare the pronunciation and accent of their own English with the English of the native speaker from the audio book.

3. ESL learners should read aloud in English for at least thirty minutes every day. 

To improve American accent and pronunciation, use the following links and resources:
http://www.esldrive.com/americanenglish.html


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As an educator and a teacher, what new career paths can you anticipate for those graduates whose major was TEFL, Applied Linguistics, or English Education?

Answer:

With the rapid advance of science and expansion of media in many fields of life, jobs for educational technologists are growing rapidly. Therefore, those graduates who enhance their skills in educational technology will start new careers with exhilarating opportunities. If they acquire technical knowledge and skills, they will be capable of finding solutions to various problems in the workplace. They will become effective teachers, lecturers, university professors, training coordinators, curriculum designers, multimedia specialists, virtual classroom designers, experts in the field of evaluation and assessment, e-learning consultants, and high caliber professional translators.

English language teaching professionals who acquire all the necessary technical skills as early as possible after their graduation, will discover successful ways of organizing their students’ learning process through the most effective application of hi-tech developments.


Many students lack motivation, especially male students. How do you motivate these students?

Answer:

There are many reasons why students are not interested in learning English. It sometimes happens that the subject matter of the lesson is boring.

It is important to be creative and plan lessons based on your students’ interests. Perhaps you should watch and discuss video clips. You could also choose to do some interesting quizzes, mind maps or board games. Also, discuss with your students their favorite hobbies, group projects; design posters or just watch a music video and practice singing a song.

If the topic is interesting, they will be definitely interested in learning.  Movies and stories about famous people would most probably catch their attention. Once they start showing their interest, you can work on comprehension and start developing their critical thinking skills. Try to make students feel happy. Try to create a connection based on interest, pleasure and fun.


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