Teacher Interviews

Recruitment Questions for Prospective Teachers If you must hire strangers hire competent strangers. General 1. Do you have any experience? Why or why not? 2. How is your English? 3. What is it about teaching that appeals to you? 4. Why teach in China? Why not Japan or Korea? 5. How should we measure student achievement and progress? 6. How can I evaluate your performance at the end of the year? 7. Which age group do you feel most comfortable teaching? Why? 8. Who was the best teacher you ever had? What made him or her different? 9. How would you delineate learner levels? 10. What do you think your primary goal as a TEFL teacher would be? Experience 1. What ages did you teach? Detail your experience. 2. Have you been formally observed? How was that? 3. Which was your best lesson? What made it good? 4. What would you eliminate from the curriculum you taught? 5. How did you handle classroom management? What incentives and discipline did you offer? 6. How do you plan for lessons? 7. Did you ever speak to parents? 8. Give me an example of an unsatisfying class. How could you have improved it? 9. Have you read any TEFL books? 10. Have you attended any TEFL training courses? What did you learn? What-Ifs 1. How would you handle a disruptive student? 2. What would you do if an angry parent insisted on speaking to your during a class? 3. What would you do if students brought in homework obviously done by parents? 4. How would you feel about covering a class for another teacher? How much notice would you need to prepare well? 5. Have you worked with any disabled or special-needs students? 6. How would you handle a large group size – say seventy to one hundred students? 7. Would you be comfortable teaching in public? 8. Could you teach a two-hour class without any materials? What would that class consist of? 9. Could you organize school events like Spelling Bees and speech competitions? 10. How would you motivate a group of much older total beginners? Renato Ganoza for EF Zhengzhou, 2009