Bienvenue-Welcome-Bienvenidos
Will Nardo Get the Job?
Venette Cook, City College of San
Francisco
TESOL Electronic Village Presentation
March 11, 1999
Objectives:
Students will review and practice downloading a file from the
server; students will evaluate work history and job skills for the story's main
character, Nardo, by reading the text and then completing well designed reading
exercises; students will strengthen resume writing skills by creating a resume
for Nardo in cooperation with each other;students will begin evaluating their
own work histories and work skills in preparation for writing their own resume.
Procedure:
Day One: approximately 2 hours
1. Class reads the
text, "The Baseball Glove," from The Parrot in the Oven, by Victor Jimenez.The story
describes the work history of a zesty yet still immature young man who finally
gets fired from a job.
2. Students work
in pairs or triads at one computer. Together they open a reading text, which
has been previously loaded onto the classroom server. (In a non-networked
class, students could open texts from a floppy or the hard drive.)
The students open and use MacReader to read the same text as
a scrambled version or cloze exercise, using
·
their
combined understanding,
·
the
software's hints, and
·
the
software's glossary.
Students sometimes choose to reread the story several times
going through different sorts of exercises offered by MacReader.
3. After thus
decoding and reading the story on screen, students reread as homework and
complete comprehension questions.
Day Two and Three:
1. Students
discuss and review the story. Should he have been fired? Should he include that
job on a resume? Class composes a list of his jobs. Teacher explains that
students are going to work together to create a resume for Nardo, using the
jobs we know about from the story and adding details such as dates and
addresses from our imaginations. Students are encouraged to be creative with
company titles, dates, addresses and etc.
Teacher clarifies that the objective is to practice using
resume format with complete and correctly spelled and formatted information for
this fictional character in preparation for writing their own resume. Students
are encouraged to use teamwork as editors to be creative and accurate-two basic
elements of strong resumes.
2. Students work
in pairs to download two sample resumes in template form from the classroom
server. These are provided in ClarisWorks, and most other software programs.
One follows a centered format, the other follows a column format. These resumes
are saved to students' disks.
3. Students insert
information about Nardo into the resume and delete the original information.
They choose Font, Size and Style to create a complete, albeit fictitious resume
that will help Nardo get a job.
4. Pairs use spell
check and word processing skills to complete and print their resume for Nardo.
Resumes are rewritten as needed.
5. Finally the
class compares their varied but similar resumes. We discuss and evaluate
different approaches to format. We discuss how someone with a limited amount of
work history and proven job skills can still create a strong resume. Student
reflect and discuss what information can be well presented in their resumes.
Strengths and limitations:
1. Strength: MacReader
offers some excellent ways for students to build reading comprehension skills.
Students usually choose to redo the exercise several
2. Limitation: The
glossary in MacReader is not large (7000 words) and so has limited usefulness,
especially with slang and idiomatic expressions. The glossary can be modified.
3. Strength:
Resume templates get students started with a very clear format and layout in
mind. By using templates, students can focus on the content, rather than tab
stops and line spacing, and other word processing elements.
4. Limitation:The
templates for resumes which are provided in ClarisWorks are for a very high
tech professional. Sometimes students get overloaded trying to read the work
histories, or borrow vocabulary that is inappropriate. The teacher needs to
help students see that they are useful as templates, not sources of vocabulary.
Software Used: NewReader, Nameless Software
John McVicket, c.
1995
5 Sunnyside Drive, Athens OH 45701 USA 614-594-4609
System requirements: Mac 6.0.7 or above. Best installed on hard drive with at least
2 megs RAM available.
ClarisWorks 4.0 or AppleWorks 5.0 Other software such Word
are also fine. Choose software which provides a resume template.
ESL Department
City College of San Francisco
URL for this page: http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~vcook/nardo.html
Last update: 10/17/05 by Venette Cook.