Gender, jobs, and job interviews

Hello everyone! How are you doing? Can you believe that the end of this 10 week course is coming very soon??? I cannot. Time is really flying.

We started out Monday’s class with a little riddle/story. I told you that a father and his son were driving in the country side. The father was driving and he was driving a little too quickly. They had a car accident and the father was killed. The son was badly injured. An ambulance came and rushed the son to the hospital. When the son arrived at the emergency room, the doctor said, “I cannot operate on him, he is my son!”

If you don’t know who the doctor is, you will have to think about it, or ask someone.

We spent the first hour on Monday talking about gender and jobs. Some questions that we considered where, “What do you think about stay-at home dads? and, “What do you think about women in the military?” 

Remember: How do you think about ….. ? >>> How do you feel about….? 

These questions started quite a lot of interesting discussion.

In the second hour, we changed the topic from women and jobs to just jobs. The first question for discussion was, “When you were a kid, what was your dream job?”
I was very interested to hear everyone’s different answers.

The next question was, “Have you ever had a job interview?” I think it was a good chance for people who have had interviews to give some advice to those who had not. People automatically shared their experiences and advice. I was happy about this.

My next question was,  “What are the most common job interview questions?” People shared their ideas. I was waiting for Miyoung to ask how we can fit an elephant in the refrigerator, but she never did. After lots of discussion about job interviews and dreams. I handed out copies of 20 of the most common interview questions in America. We used these for some discussion as well. Here is a link for some common behavioral questions that might be asked in an interview. Want more interview questions? Click here. Would you like a sample answer? Well, then, click here.  I do not know very much about getting a job in Korea, but this link might provide some useful advice for answering hard questions.

We continued the job theme on Thursday. We started out the class with a 10-opinions that each person either agreed with or disagreed with. I was very impressed with how well everyone worked together to explain what a yes or a no answer would mean in each case. Because I am a very strict teacher, people that came late had to survive without the paper. I thought this actually worked very well, because those with the paper had to speak very clearly for the late people to understand. Again, very good job with this. I found the conversations fascinating. Many people gave answers that were the opposite of what I would have expected.  Also, these questions caused people to get into serious discussions that were a few steps away from the questions on the sheet. This was, of course, fine. I am always happy to see such discussions in English.

When we came back from the break I asked everyone to pretend that this was a job interview. I think people got a bit confused because I did not want you to make an interview again… but to imagine that your partner had given these answers in a job interview. My question was, “What would your answers tell an employer about you?” 

After about 10 minutes with one partner on the above question we changed back into bigger groups (with a more balanced male/female ratio) and the next question to consider was, “What would the ‘right answers’ be?” This was very interesting for me to listen to because many people had different opinions and different opinions from me as well. I think that Eric said it best. He said that your answer is not so important, it is more important that you speak well. I tend to agree. Roger asked me how to say a Korean proverb, I roughly translated it as, “It is not what you say, but how you say it.” I think that this sentence applies very well to job interviews as well as to life.

As I said at the end of class on Thursday, my next question was going to be, “How would you change your answers if you were applying to become a member of a religious organization?”  I felt as though the class (much like the 10 weeks) really flew by. Good job.

Some words that have come up in the past few classes:

babysitter     Let’s go out tonight! I’ll call the babysitter to watch the kids.

nanny     It is quite expensive to hire a full-time nanny. Let’s think of another option.

housekeeper    They must be rich. They have a housekeeper to clean the house.

housewife     His mom doesn’t work. She is a housewife.

stay-at-home mom/dad    Mike’s dream is to be a stay-at-home dad.

ambidextrous    She can use both hands equally. I guess she is ambidextrous.

cartoonist    She is very good at drawing. I think she wants to be a cartoonist.
successful     His mom always tells him that it is important to be successful.

successfully    I finished the term successfully.

success     I wish you great success in all your future endeavors.

succeed    If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

atheist     He said he is not an atheist because he believes in God.

testosterone   She complained there was too much testosterone–she wanted more girls.

devil’s advocate    Don’t think this is my opinion. I am just playing devil’s advocate.

kiss up/kiss _ _ _  He said the best way to get someone to like them is to kiss up.

on the surface   On the surface it might seem easy, but it is actually quite hard.

Of course there were some errors as well. A few people said sentences like:

Love is important than money.
Success is important than love. 
I believe love than sex.

I think we forgot the comparison words to make these sentences work. So:

Love is more important than money.
Success is more important than love.
I believe in love more than I believe in sex.

A common topic on Thursday night was blood type. I guess this was the case because we were talking about personality types. A very usual sentence about blood types that I heard was, “You look like ‘O’.” I don’t really think that people can really guess someone’s blood type by their personality. I certainly don’t think that we can tell someone’s blood type by their looks. I think a better sentence would be, “You seem like you are ‘O’.” 

One word that I hear a lot in class is, “charge.” As in,  “My charge is ….” This sounds quite strange to me. I think that I would choose another word, like duty or responsibility.

OK. That is all for now. I hope everyone has a great day/night/weekend. See you next week!