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Another activity is a survey based on the "Materiales" from the Education Office of the Spanish Embassy. Students take a survey on which factors matter most to them in a job/carrer, rating them on a 1-5 scale. They get together in groups to discuss similarities and differences, then turn them in. A couple of days later after the results are tabulated, further conversations develop along the lines of: Are you typical or different? What differences do you notice between responses of guys and girls? What surprises are there for you? Why did students mark things the way they did? And so on.

My favorite activity involves examining want-ads from different target language countries. I select a sample from newspapers from about five or six different countries. I label the ads with letters. Students examine each ad on a grid for the various elements that one might expect to find in a job ad. I also include aspects which would not be legal to include in ads in the US but are commonly found in other countries which have different notions of what is or is not fair in hiring. For examples, ads can easily be found in newspapers in Spanish speaking countries which ask for a photo, specify an age range, direct themselves to women or men only, request a preferred marital status, etc. This helps reinforce vocabulary for application, resume, interview, salary, benefits, etc. It also give a "teachable moment" for hiring standards in our country (kids don't know that certain questions are illegal to ask in job interviews or to put on job applications). We also examine the American cultural perspective of fairness and discrimination compared to other countries in which the employer's right to hire whomever he wishes is more paramount. If you don't have a collection of newspapers hanging around, online want-ads might be usable as well.This is also a good unit to introduce business letter formats in the target country. There are lots of online job finding sites with examples of business letters, resumes, and job hunting tips that can be the basis of reading comprehension and writing activities.
I do this unit toward the end of level III. I find that this is a great unit to help students recognize that they are making the transition from learning the language to using the language as a tool for learning new things.
Bill Heller
Perry HS
Perry, NY 14530