The concerns your potential employer might have usually revolve around three essential questions:
1. Will this person be motivated and reliable?
2. Does this person know how to keep ESL students happy by teaching well?
3. Does this person know how to establish and maintain good relations with ESL students?
Let’s look at two typical ESL interview questions, the employer’s concerns behind them and how to answer them:
1. What is your teaching style?
Answer: “I think that students learn best by having fun. My teaching style revolves around my ability to maintain a balance between work and fun in the classroom.”
Analysis: The school director knows that students want an entertaining teacher who knows when to work and when to play during lessons.
2. Suppose a student keeps making the same mistakes over and over again despite your corrections. What would you do?
Concern: The employer’s wants to know if you know how to maintain good relations with his ESL students.
Answer: “I would praise this student’s effort for trying to get the right answer and thereafter give him or her more individual attention”.
Analysis: The school director knows that students can easily lose rapport with a teacher who shows frustration in the classroom. This answer demonstrates that you will make the struggling student look and feel good in front of his or her classmates.
Contract Questions
- Let’s look at a few questions you might consider asking and why you should ask them:
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1. Do you provide the teaching curriculum? Can I use my own?
Why ask this question: You will be able to find out to what extent you will receive structure from the school in terms of what to teach as well as how much freedom you will have to introduce your own creative ideas in the classroom.
2. Can I teach/tutor outside of this school?
Why ask this question: private tutoring outside of school hours can potentially boost your income by 50% per year. This question will tell you whether this school will give you the freedom to do that.
3. Are my classroom(s) air conditioned?
Why ask this question: should you decide to teach in sub-tropical countries like Taiwan or Thailand, teaching in a non air conditioned classroom with high levels of humidity could be extremely uncomfortable over the course of a year!
If you are offered a position, ask the employer to give you time to think about it. It is always better to have several offers and then choose the offer you like best.
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