Most quality Business English and VESL (Vocational English as a Second Language) programs provide extensive training and practice  in both short and long job interviews. Job interviews are stressful – especially for English language learners.  In fact, many adult, community college, and university ESL programs also include mock job interviews in the curriculum so ESL students can learn how to better answer simple and difficult questions. After all, many career experts recommend native speakers practice and practice again for these high-stakes interviews. It behooves English language learners to practice, practice, and practice some more for job interviews.

During these difficult economic times, however,  Business English trainers, advanced ESL (English as a Second Language), teachers and VESL (Vocational English as a Second Language) job coordinators should focus on an even wider range of interviewing skills. Many people have to interview co-workers, customers, strangers, and even more senior professionals at work. Speaking skills – in particular interview skills – matter.

Informational interviews – where future professionals ask questions to working professionals that hold a desirable position – achieves this goal – and a few more.   Informational interviews deserve far more attention in English language programs, but especially in Business English programs and VESL classes since informational interviews provide practical opportunities to develop business contacts and remain a savvy  job hunting tactic.

A common practice in the United States in many white-collar professions, informational interviews allow students (or individuals seeking a career change) to meet more successful and senior professionals in a field. From scheduling an appointment and preparing questions to  collecting information on common business practices, this professional exercise tests the fluency and language skills.  Informational interviews also expand their personal network of valuable business contacts. Sometimes these 20-30 minute interviews, often at offices, offer surprising insights into the typical work experiences and best workplace practices. Topics can range from the biographic to industry trends.  Best of all, informational interviews can also lead to job leads, internships, and even new jobs.

This real world assignment can work with high-intermediate and advanced Business English clients. In fact, asking clients or students to find, research, and conduct an informational interview requires a certain level of fluency and confidence – outside the classroom. This challenging, authentic class assignment requires English language learners to perform a vital workplace skill, respond in real time to a potential supervisor, and ask appropriate questions.

What are appropriate questions? Here are a few classic informational interview questions:

• How did you first enter the field? Why?
• How has the industry changed since you began your career?
• Can you describe a typical day at work?
• What are some trends that you are watching?
• What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
• What question should I have asked that I didn’t ask today?

These simple questions often provide illuminating glimpses into the professional lives of successful professionals.

I recommend requiring a “trip report” or  a presentation to show the results of the informational interview with fellow Business English students,. This reflective exercise requires students to concisely summarize their interview.  Learning how to conduct an informational interview is a crucial skill that they can use over and over again during their business careers. Many graduate programs strongly recommend (and sometime mandate) their students conduct regular informational interviews.

From my perspective,  adding  information interviews to Business English classes and VESL programs seems extraordinarily sensible.  It also qualifies as an effective use of precious instructional time. Practical and popular, this multidimensional assignment consistently engages students and provides surprising insights in a university setting. I’ve been requiring informational interviews for several years in my university courses for both native and non-native English speakers. Students consistently rate the informational interview highest among the course assignments – and often praise it on course evaluations.

Therefore, I’m quite confident that quality Business English and VESL programs can clearly benefit from adding this real-world, authentic task to their curriculum too.

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As readers of this blog know, I have given several presentations at CATESOL conferences on “Informational Interviews: A Practical, Multi-skill Activity for High Intermediate and Advanced ESL Students.” Based on my six years of assigning both undergraduate native speakers and international graduate students at the University of Southern California to conduct informational interviews, this presentation demonstrated how this one presentation assignment can lead to an entire month of engaging, demanding, and career-focused lessons for advanced ESL students. Students expand their vocabulary, write questions, conduct an off-campus interview with a working professional in a field of interest, and share the career advice they collected in a short oral presentation. It’s a challenging, satisfying, and popular assignment in my oral skills classes.

A small vocational college in Los Angeles, CES College, asked me to share the exercise with their faculty last week.  Would middle-aged immigrants in blue collar jobs find this exercise worthwhile? I’m quite confident that immigrants would learn from all steps of the exercise, and expanding their social network beyond relatives and friends remains essential. Mechanics can interview mechanics and car repair show owners, and construction workers can interview construction workers – or managers. The proof, as the cliche goes, will be in the pudding and let’s see what happens with their students in the next six months.

Would this exercise work in an EFL context? I’m not sure. Many American universities can count on alumni to help their students in their job search, and granting an informational interview is a relatively easy way to contribute. Many American professional organizations also encourage their members to both assist and recruit students into the field. It may be difficult in many cultures for a younger person with less status to directly contact an older professional to seek career advice.

I do know, however, that many American colleges and graduate programs train their students to go on informational interviews to gain more detailed knowledge of their prospective careers. As in so many other areas of American life, white collar professionals have far greater access to both more information and stronger personal networks. This assignment brings a best practice outside of the elite circles.

Informational interviews can also be used with high school students as they begin to focus on their career ambitions. Here is a short list of additional links that I found last night as I prepared my presentation. The links are loosely organized from the most general sites that explain the concept to general audiences in simple English to professional documents for more specialized, often graduate-school audiences. Adult and community college ESL programs would probably find the earlier links more helpful than the later ones. As ever, use or lose.

Quintessential Careers emphasizes the importance of informational interviews in short, clear, and informative articles. High intermediate and advanced ESL students should be able to handle the vocabulary.
http://www.quintcareers.com/informational_interviewing.html
http://www.quintcareers.com/information_results.html
http://www.quintcareers.com/informational_interview_questions.html

University of Notre Dame Informational Interviewing – This six-page guide provides excellent step by step instructions for students needing assistance with locating individuals, asking interview questions, writing thank you notes, and professionally networking.
http://careercenter.nd.edu/assets/488/informational_interviewing_guide_8.16.pdf

Case University, also recommends their undergraduate students go on informational interviews during their junior and senior years.
http://studentaffairs.case.edu/careers/alumni/network/sample.html

Cornell University Law School recommends informational interviews too.
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/careers/students/explore_options/informational_interview.cfm

Finally, here’s a 13-slide PowerPoint presentation titled “Networking and Informational Interviewing: Nuts and Bolts” by Scott Turner from USC Marshall School of Business, one of the world’s top MBA schools. Although I’m biased as a USC instructor, I think this presentation captures the practical possibilities of information interviewing. Many Marshall instructors advise MBA students that they should always be networking and conducting informational interviews during their graduate studies.

Given the difficult economic climate in many countries, I would suggest that it behooves more ESL and EFL teachers and tutors to consider adding informational interviews to their oral skills courses for their high-intermediate and advanced students.

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• Are you ready?
• Are you prepared?
• Aren’t you nervous?
• Do you have enough time to do that?
• When are you going to sleep?

Friends – and close relatives – ask these questions out of concern and curiosity.  I appreciate their questions and enjoy our discussions.  My confidence can lead me to underestimate the difficulty of  projects, tasks, and chores. I should manage time better, probably reduce my commitments, and prioritize more. Yet that’s easier said than done when pursuing multiple projects and working with people on different continents. I also like my work, and appreciate new challenges.  And I can draw on a considerable amount of experience as a  world traveler and English teacher. Despite approaching deadlines, I tend to feel strangely comfortable.

For instance, this week I left Los Angeles to begin a new position creating a Practical and Academic English program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Packing for a ten-week summer trip takes considerable time. So does writing up detailed course descriptions, planning professional development workshops, and writing a high school graduation speech. Tracking Compelling Conversations book orders, planning website and blog changes, and interviewing ESL/EFL teachers also takes time. So sleep becomes a lower priority and friends keep asking those few simple, reasonable questions.

They are good questions and fine conversation starters too. In our often-hectic world, many people make the same “good mistakes” as me. As a result, these simple questions seem about time management seem timeless. English teachers can – and I’d suggest should – introduce these practical questions to their students. Business English teachers and workplace instructors, of course, frequently include entire lessons to personal time management skills. Letting students ask these questions and interview each other will also lead to interesting classroom conversations.

By the way,  despite my last minute style, I was actually quite prepared. I quickly packed, arrived safely in Vietnam and lead an engaging workshop on creating autotelic materials for EFL students.  Experience and expertise help – even on limited sleep!

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Speaking English means being able to actually holding clear, comfortable conversations. Yet holding a conversation in English remains a challenging task for many ESL and EFL students. Personally, I blame an old-fashioned, grammar-obsessed curriculum for creating the common situation where students can recite obscure grammar rules, but can’t discuss their weekend plans or talk about the movies. Yet here we are. Students want to develop their speaking skills, but crowded English classes provide little opportunity for authentic conversations. Therefore, many English students hire English tutors to help them develop their conversation and speaking skills.

Yet effectively tutoring English students in conversation can be more difficult than it sounds. What does the student want to learn? What will you really teach? How will progress be measured? While sometimes younger students just want to talk and be heard, I have traditionally worked older, more serious students. Time is money, and money matters.

I strongly suggest you establish clear expectations about both content and business matters. Some tutors even present a written contract outlining their rates, the location and times of meetings, and payment policies. One of my university colleagues makes students sign a form allowing her to videotape the entire tutoring session for her research. Another demands prepayment for packages of 10 sessions at a time. I’ve never been that formal, but I have also never been burned the way some tutors have been. In fact, I’ve had only very positive experiences with conversation clients.

Why? Perhaps luck; perhaps because I carefully screen potential clients. I only work with professionals, graduate students, and/or friends and spouses of friends with a solid foundation in English. Be explicit about what you want and don’t want to teach a client. Be prepared to provide options for potential clients that you reject.

I also set very clear expectations. This process eliminates potential confusion and establishes clear benchmarks. We will review X number of articles and discuss Y number of topics during the next month or semester. We will cover a significant amount of ground in a comfortable, relaxed manner.

For students who want to improve their conversation, I strongly suggest that you select the topic and materials in advance. You can use newspapers and/or magazines to find appropriate articles to begin the conversation. I used to assign the articles a week ahead and give English students my conversation worksheets.

Partly as a result of these tutoring lessons over a few years, I wrote Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics. The conversation book includes 45 chapters with over 1400 questions, 500 quotations, and 450 targeted vocabulary words. The combination of poignant questions, vocabulary lists, proverbs, and witty quotations makes your job much easier. Each chapter is self-contained.
If you have a weaker student looking to improve their speaking skills, then I would advise using a picture dictionary. There are several fine choices. You might use the Oxford Picture Dictionary to open conversations, and I would be tempted to ask the client to bring in photographs and ads each week. Confession: I almost always referred weaker students to other English tutors who enjoyed working with lower level ESL students.

Naturally, you will need patience tutoring ESL clients on speaking skills. Be prepared to repeat words, listen very carefully, and remind students to pronounce word endings. Many students will want to work on their pronunciation. Recording your tutoring lessons can be quite helpful for students.
You can also ask/assign them listening activities on the web. I like Voice of America’s Special English programs for intermediate and advanced students. You will have to direct lower levels to websites to practice their listening and speaking skills with drills. They will love the work; you might go mad repeating vowel sounds and noting stress words.

Finally, the key to tutoring ESL students – or anyone else – remains respecting the student, meeting their needs, and providing a solid structure for your lessons. I have found that using a set text, developing a known routine, and combining conversation, vocabulary and some writing skills makes for a successful and satisfying experience.

As William Shakespeare noted four centuries ago, “All’s well that ends well”. Therefore, you should also have the grace to know when to end your lessons. Some clients will want to keep working with you. Yet you remain the tutor. Therefore, set a clear goal for your package of lessons, and conclude when the students have reached that goal. As the Hollywood cliché goes, “leave them wanting more.”

What are your plans and goals for tutoring English students this year?

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