Baan Ajarn

Wishing you all the best for a spectacular 2012
filled with joy, laughter, and happiness.

There is a shortage of foreign English teachers in Thailand. Nevertheless, one job posting online often results in more than 100 applicants responding.  That’s some tough competition, and since you never get a second chance to leave a first impression, your initial e-mail to the recruiter will be extremely important.

I have helped to recruit teachers for a number of schools and over time have received hundreds of resumés and application letters. This post will deal with some of the most common mistakes I have seen people make.  Some of these mistakes may just be minor inconveniences for the recruiter, but some of them may cause a recruiter to delete your application right away.

Mistake #1:
Using poor English

The spelling and grammar you use in your application tells a recruiter a lot about you.  See my previous post How to NOT get a job as English Teacher for an example of a horribly composed cover letter.  Sure, that cover letter is an extreme example of poor English language skills, but as an English teacher looking for a job, you won’t be given too much room for bad English.  You will be judged by your spelling and grammar more than for most other jobs.  Make sure you double check the language in your resumé and cover letter.

Mistake #2:
Adding too many attachments

The purpose of your initial e-mail or online submission is NOT to get the job. The purpose is to open the doors and get to the second step in the recruitment process: the job interview.

All too often, applicants send e-mails with way too many attachments. I’ve processed application e-mails that had a whopping 20 MB worth of documents attached: in addition to the required resumé, they’ve included copies of their passport and even drivers license as well as all their degrees, diplomas, and certificates. In addition, some of those applicants felt compelled to send numerous photos of themselves in various school settings. Not only do such attachments take valuable disk-space on a recruiter’s computer, they also slow down incoming mail drastically.  Your first e-mail to a recruiter should only contain your resumé with photo and a cover letter. If it is compelling enough, you’ll get to the next step in the hiring process and will be asked to show your qualifying documents.

Mistake #3:
Assuming your e-mail and your resumé will stay together

I have seen many resumés that didn’t include an e-mail address and/or a telephone number. This information was only on the cover letter or in the e-mail body.  I can only assume that the applicant thought that the e-mail and the attached documents would forever stay together. They often don’t. Recruiters often save resumés on their hard drive and either archive or even delete the original e-mail (especially if they are several megabytes in size).  If a recruiter later opens your e-mail and they don’t find your contact information on the resumé, they will either have to look for the original e-mail to contact you — or worse, they simply won’t contact you.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to include your contact details (phone and e-mail) on your resumé.

Mistake #4:
Attaching your resumé in an uncommon format

Do not send your resumé or other attachments in an unusual format, like Open Office’s .odt or Apple’s .pages. Recruiters often aren’t all that computer literate and if they can’t open an attachment, they often ignore your application rather than contacting you to resend it in a format they can open. Also, do not attach your resumé as an image file (jpg, png, gif). Recruiters sometimes copy information from your resumé and paste it into their database. This is not possible with an image file and a recruiter will have type in your information. In such a situation, some will opt to just ignore your application. The best format for your document is PDF, because it’s readable across computer platforms (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). Alternatively, a Word file (.doc or .docx) will work as well. 

Mistake #5:
Not giving your resumé a meaningful name

The most common file names I see for resumés is either “CV” or “resume”.  Recruiters typically save your document on their computer’s disk and this will require them to spend extra time adding your name to the file. A good way to save your resumé is to put your first and last name in file name of your resumé. For example “JohnSmith_CV” or “Resume_JohnSmith” or any other document name that will include your first and last name..

Mistake #6:
Submitting your application repeatedly

Don’t submit your resumé several times for the same job – it makes you look desperate, impatient, and pushy.  Trust that your submission made it the first time.  If you don’t hear back immediately (or at all), your resumé might not have matched the criteria of the recruiter.  If you do want to send it a second time, wait four or five days and then send it to the recruiter again with a note that you didn’t hear back from them and want to make sure they’ve received your resumé.  If you still don’t hear back from them, it’s safe to assume that they are not interested.

Mistake #7:
Assuming recruiters won’t look at your Facebook profile

Try this experiment: enter your e-mail address on Google as a search term.  You might be surprised at all the results you’re getting. The top links often include a link to your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. Now imagine that a recruiter is doing the same thing when they receive your application. Whenever I’m helping out recruiting teachers, I do a quick search for all the candidates that have made it to the short list.  I’ve just recently removed a candidate from the short list and added their resumé to the much larger stack of rejected applications because they listed their languages on Facebook as “English, Drunk, and Gibberish”. This just sends the wrong signal to a recruiter. What may be funny to your friends may be a red flag to a recruiter.

Whenever you are looking for a job, prepare your documents and then step back and look at them through the eyes of a recruiter. Put yourself into their position of having to sift through hundred(s) of applications and do anything you can to simplify things for them while at the same time putting your best foot forward.

Good luck on your search for a suitable home for your teaching talents!

A question I often get when I talk with people interested in teaching English in Thailand is “Do I need to be able to speak Thai to be effective as a teacher?”

My answer to them is a resounding “No.”

When I went through my TEFL training, I was taught to never use the local language in the classroom. I fully agree with this advice.

I’ve discussed this point with many foreign English teachers. Those who speak some Thai and use it in the classroom defend their position by saying: “Using English in the classroom saves a lot of time. How could I possibly explain some of the things in English when the students don’t speak it all that well yet?”  I always wonder if those teacher have considered that they may be teaching above their student’s level?

A poll at Ajarn Forums back in 2005 resulted in 54 % of teachers saying “Yes, it makes a huge differene,”  23 % of teachers saying “It helps, but it’s not a big deal,” and 23 % of teachers saying “No, it makes almost no difference.”

To be clear, I highly recommend learning to speak Thai fluently to anybody who lives in Thailand. I also agree that it will make a huge difference for English teachers to speak the language well. You will not only be able to build better relationships with your Thai colleagues, but also understand what your students are gossiping about…

Nevertheless, I hold on to my opinion that Thai should not be used in the classroom.  Here is why: as I wrote in “Why do kids learn languages so easily?”  research suggests that learning words by inference is more powerful than just being told their meaning. In other words, refraining from speaking Thai in the classroom forces your students to use different muscles in their brain. They will discover the meaning of a word based on your pictures, drawings, realia, gestures, and descriptions.  Sure, it is a bit more work for you, but the results will speak for themselves, and will make you a better teacher in the long run.

Children have an uncanny talent for learning languages.  The younger they are, the faster they seem to acquire a language.  Just by playing around with others, kids add vocabulary at an astonishing rate.  In a 2007 study, which was just made available on the internet, Meredith Brinster found at least part of the answer: Kids figure out words for themselves.

This has the potential to drastically shift how we view language education and our role in the classroom.

Meredith Brinster’s original research suggests that learning words by inference is more powerful than just being told their meaning. Interested in how very young children learn to attach the names of objects to the objects themselves, Brinster designed a study to measure which word-learning strategy was more effective: direct instruction, in which an adult “directly” points to and names an unfamiliar object, or inference, in which kids use reason (such as process of elimination) to mentally “fasten” an unfamiliar word to an unfamiliar object.

Although Brinster’s research was done with 3-year olds, it is most likely true for learners of any age.  What does this mean for English teachers in Thailand? Design activities in which students can discover the meaning of words and immediately use them in context, rather than telling your students the meaning, or worse, give a translation.

Read the full article on the Science Daily website.

Good News for English teachers in Thailand.  Bangkok Post today ran an article about the need for Thai’s to learn languages to keep competitive with other South East Asian nations.

Thai students have been urged to improve their English and also learn a third language so they can compete with people from other Southeast Asian nations when the region becomes a single economic community of more than 600 million people in 2015.

Sakkarin Niyomsilpa, a demographic expert at Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR), said Thailand’s weakness was its language limitations, especially in English. He said Filipino labourers could speak better English than Thais, giving them a much better chance of getting hired in other countries.

It was now time for Thai students to improve their English and learn a third language such as Vietnamese, Bahasa, Japanese or Korean, he added.

Read the full article