I am looking for a curriculum development, editing, or writing position.
As you can see from my enclosed resume, I have four years of experience teaching ESL, and two years of experience writing ESL material. As well, I have two years of professional editing experience in Canada. I¡¯m Canadian with a Master Degree and eight years of professional work experience.
For two years, I worked as an ESL Curriculum Developer and Editor for Cleverlearn Inc. in the Philippines. During that time, I used my writing and editing skills to produce over two thousand pages of book content, an English grammar manual, and an English assessment test.
I¡¯m looking for a good, long-term position. You can reach me at 204-721-1806.
Regards, Andrew Oakden
Below are my thoughts on writing and teaching ESL.
In my opinion, an effective ESL content developer & editor must have a passion for teaching, the ability to inspire and engage the student, and the motivation to use exceptional language and grammar skills. My methodology seeks to balance form-focused, language-learning instruction with abundant, real-life examples. In my opinion, an effective content developer & editor engages students¡¯ interests while advancing the learning process.
Additionally, I am very familiar with hundreds of published ESL sources. My favorite ESL texts include: Cambridge¡¯s Vocabulary in Use, Longman¡¯s Cutting Edge, and Oxford¡¯s Natural English & Streamline English. My most beloved grammar source is Fundamentals of English Grammar by Betty Azar.
There are currently hundreds of ESL books on the market. Grammar is basically a fixed entity. Meaning ESL developers & editors don¡¯t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they have to be innovative in their layout, content, and presentation. Each subject and grammar point should flow smoothly with exciting pictures, stories, grammar charts, and exercises.
Among my favorite types of classes are SAT, IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC and writing. In Canada, I taught these classes to young immigrants in Toronto. For the SAT¡¯s, a good teaching source is Learning Express Acing the SAT. Regarding the IELTS, there are many good sources, including: Longman Press - Focus on IELTS and Peter Collin Press -Check Your Vocabulary for IELTS. For TOEIC, there are a number of great teaching sources published by Learning Express, McGraw Hill, and Mo Media. As for TOEFL, I wrote example questions while working as a Curriculum Developer at Cleverlearn Inc. Indeed, I enjoy writing stories and teaching reading classes. A great secondary source for stories is Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by Neal Browne and Stuart Keeley. However, there are literally hundreds of good secondary sources for writing classes.
I have taught students from real beginners to advanced students. In Canada, most of my students spoke very well, but had noticeable and problematic writing issues. Cambridge has produced an excellent serious on collocations, idioms and phrasal verbs, including: English Collocations in Use, English Phrasal Verbs in Use, and English Idioms in Use. Also, Headway¡¯s Phrasal Verbs and Idioms is rather helpful. As well, I¡¯d always suggest that student¡¯s purchase The Oxford Collocation Dictionary ESL. This is an invaluable source of language that really helps in the learning and writing process.
I¡¯ve found that beginner¡¯s require a lot of games and fun, interactive activities. Some of the published sources are great, but they aren¡¯t enough. Incorporating interactive, multi-media sources, such as ESL television programs and motion pictures, is generally a good idea. In public school students learn grammar, but generally their speaking ability is poor. There are many good published sources for teaching beginners, such as: Longman Press - Basic English Grammar, Cutting Edge – Elementary, Oxford¡¯s Natural English – Beginners, and Oxford¡¯s Headway – Beginners.
In Korea, I had no placement options. Students arrived and stayed in the same class regardless of level. In the Philippines, I created a two part placement test focusing on verbal communication skills and written grammar. Generally, students do better in the grammar portion and worse in the speaking portion. I used a seven level system from basic beginner to high advanced.
One of my pet peeves in the ESL industry concerns writers that make poorly designed test questions. I believe that all ESL test questions should have only one possible correct answer. However, in many cases, a writer makes questions with many half truths, which are sort of correct yet marked as wrong. A writer should be smart enough to make questions without half truths, which only confuse students from the correct answer. Also, some writers include cultural biases which alienate people from other parts of the world. Just like a good IQ test that has only one right answer for each question, an effective ESL writer should make their test questions fair and logical.
