Developing EFL Learners ’ Job Interview Skills Through Autonomous Learning Kentei Takaya

Junior Conversation & Composition Class Job Interview Task 5 weeks of preparation Job Interview Exam

Objectives To help the learners become competitive in today’s job market To develop the learners’ competence and performance regarding their job interview skills

Competence v.s. Performance Competence = Linguistic knowledge Performance = Language production (Chomsky, 1965)

Why AL for developing job interview skills? To identify learners ’ weaknesses To make learners control their own learning To facilitate peer learning To enable learners to monitor their own learning

Procedure Searching for interview questions Practicing in pairs in & outside class Writing journals

Identifying Weaknesses In the first place, when I was interviewed, I didn ’ t know how to answer questions and spent too much time in figuring out the question itself as well as finding out the way to answer the question as properly as possible. Thus, I was a little bit confused and frustrated after going through the first-time practice. I had never thought it would be difficult for me to have a job interview.

Identifying Weaknesses I answered the self-introduction question easily, and I was able to articulate my dreams and motivation. Listing my experiences and skills wasn't too difficult either. But the "why" questions were much harder. "Why do you want to apply for this job?" and "Why should we hire you?"

Identifying Weaknesses I think that my mouth is too lazy no matter I am speaking Chinese or English. That makes my intonation and pronunciation much more unclear.

Identifying Weaknesses I find that I have difficulty finding the proper terms to deliver myself which in turn makes me use lots of tedious words during the interview

Controlling learners ’ own learning I thought it ’ s the best part in the interview practice because I could find out what I didn ’ t consider about and tested my ability of contingencies as well. Then, I would search some useful information on the Internet after the practice, so I could have a better idea. I found out that it did work because I could think faster and answered in long sentences when the second time I practiced with my partner.

Controlling learners ’ own learning I gave my partner the questions I found on the Internet while practicing. Some of the questions were hard to answer. Take one for example. A mother asked you for some painkiller, what would you do? At first, I feel that the flight attend cannot offer medicine. However, after reading Qatari flight attendant’s blog, flight attendants do offer medicines. The medicines are in the basic first aid kit.

Controlling learners ’ own learning Through the process of preparation, one’s mind gets clearer while new ideas come up at the same time. I am not a person who is used to memorize what has already been written down. However, as experiences of practicing job interviews accumulate, I realize it’s essential to memorize things in certain cases. By memorize I don’t mean memorize things word by word. Instead, one must be flexible and objective when memorizing. In this way, one can see the flaws and adjust properly.

Facilitate peer learning My partner is very responsible that she will help me to get a better answer, and so do I. I will also think about the answers of her questions when I ask her and do my best to give her some suggestions. I think we should all help each other to earn what we want.

Monitoring Progress Mostly, my reply to the questions would be too short. It would be better if I elaborate a little more.

Monitoring Progress After many time practices, almost all the questions have been asked already. Therefore, we decide to ask and answer previous questions again. Surprisingly, I find out that although we answered those familiar questions before, we still hesitate about some of questions. I think it shows that we are not fully prepared. Therefore, I think I should do more work and get the information together.

Monitoring Progress This time we focused on our previous questions since we wanted to know whether we have improved after many times of interview. As usual, we started our interview by asking each other to introduce ourselves within one minutes. To be honest, it was quite boring for repeating the same questions over and over again. However, I did find out that we were very skillful which is really good news to us.

Conclusion Autonomous learning enabled learners … To identify their weaknesses To control their learning To facilitate peer learning To monitor their learning