Becka Garonzik

11/28/07

CMPL 700

Best Activity - The professions

These activities were developed from an activity in El manual de actividades to accompany ¡Atrévete!: “Consejero, ¿qué puedo hacer?” (p. 48). The first activity is taken directly from the text.

This class should be conducted in the Computer Classroom in Dey 107A. I think it is most appropriate for levels 102, 105, or 203.

Preparation:

The activity “Consejero, ¿qué puedo hacer?” in the Atrévete workbook includes a graph with a list of types of people and professions:

One client is… / Profession 1 / Profession 2 / Profession 3
Model: an extroverted woman / A boss / A manager / A lawyer
1. a patient man
2. a diplomatic woman
Etc.

Students complete the graph for homework.

Activity 1:

(7/8 min) In pairs, students act out the roles of career counselor and client. The client describes his or her personal attributes using the identities listed in the graph and the career counselor suggests several careers in which the client would likely be successful.

Model Client: I am a very extroverted woman. What kind of jobs could I do?

Counselor: As an extrovert, you could be a boss, a manager, or a lawyer.

(2/3 min) After the students have gone through the personality types listed in the graph, each student describes his or her own personal attributes and request career advice from his or her partner.

Activity 2:

(20/25’) After talking about themselves and their career options with a partner, students complete an online career quiz for reading practice and increased exposure to work-related vocabulary. I found an online quiz for Spanish through la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León: http://www.uanl.mx/utilerias/test/. Quizzes for other languages can be found by doing an advanced Google search for “career test” and requesting pages written in your language.

Before taking the quiz it may be necessary to go over some of the unfamiliar vocabulary words in the quizzes, (i.e. agradar is a synonym for gustar: “to be pleasing, agreeable to”). However, most of the unfamiliar vocabulary in the Spanish career test consists of cognates or words that can be defined through context.

Homework:

Students respond to the following questions in a paragraph:

What were the results of the career test you took in class today? Do you agree with the results of the quiz – did it recommend a career that you think you would be good at and/or that is of interest to you?

What kind of job you want to have when you graduate, or what career do you plan to pursue? Why does this career interest you? What aspects of the job do you like the most? Why do you think that you will do this job well?

Activity 3:

(7/8 min) The following day, students share their paragraphs with their partners from the previous day’s class. Students compare their partners’ advice with the information they received from the career test and the paragraphs they completed for homework.

(5 min) As a follow-up activity, students share information about their partners with the rest of the class.