I’m going to give a link to my latest post from my other blog, at ‘The Book Next Door’. It’s a list of ways you could still use the ESL Extras reading books in a Pre-Employment class – not by pretending the books are all about employment, but by pulling out threads that invite discussion. It’s a massively long post – the kind of thing to bookmark for later, perhaps?
Why pre-employment?
Why am I so obsessed with pre-employment English that I have to post on both blogs? Well, I need to be! The AMEP** changes in July, with the new streams of Pre-Employment and Social English. Just how employment-focussed will that Pre-Employment stream be, at Prelim and CSWE I?
I still can’t quite get my head around that, but then I remind myself that SEE teachers have been doing this for a long time now. (I’m also trying to think back to when I worked in a prelim class in the LLNP, years ago.) And of course social English is such a huge part of any workplace, anyway…
What’s out there for beginners?
I want to make my next post a list of ‘what resources are around for pre-employment English at beginner level?’, and I’ve already had some good ideas from comments on my last post – please keep them coming!
I know there are some really good books out there, though changes in how people apply for jobs have made things like ‘abbreviations in newspaper ads’ rather less relevant than ‘how to apply on seek.com’ – or that’s how it seems to me.
**Finally a little acronym lesson…
Apologies to any non-Aussie readers, or to librarians or school teachers, for that matter. (How much we take our own terminology for granted.)
The AMEP is the Adult Migrant English Program – a national program that provides English to new arrivals – that’s migrants and humanitarian entrants, not international ‘language college’ students. Different organisations are contracted to deliver the AMEP, and the latest tender, due to be announced soon, and to start in July, has some big changes.
The SEE program is Skills for Education and Employment, also federally funded, but specifically for job-seekers who need language, literacy or numeracy support. A previous iteration of this was called the LLNP (Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program). Then there’s also state-funded low-cost English… it can get confusing…
CSWE stands for the national Certificates in Spoken and Written English – up until now, that’s what we always delivered at AMEP. There are other certificates around, of course, but that’s the one I know best and tend to refer to. End of lesson. Thanks for your attention!
