Copy Editing QA Job Vacancy

April 21st, 2010
by Valentina Dodge


You
You’ll have an ELT teaching background, copy editing experience - previous knowledge of conversion from print to digital would be an advantage - an eye for detail and will be something of a perfectionist. You’ll need to be competent, confident and comfortable working in a Web environment as the work involves on-screen editing and online communication - we don’t work with proofs and we mostly talk to each other on Skype. The projects and number of hours can vary, so you’ll be expected to be flexible and happy to take on new projects at short notice. We have a dynamic and communicative English360 team that you’ll be required to co-ordinate with, so you’ll need to be comfortable communicating and being contactable online. As well as being an active team member, you’ll also need to be able to work independently and take the initiative when required.

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The job
The work is essentially copy editing and carrying out QA on ELT material that is published on the English360 platform. This involves ‘traditional-style’ copy editing (spelling, fonts, layout etc) as well as testing the interactive activities as a user (learner and teacher) to make sure that they work. Part of the editing process requires reporting any problems or issues promptly and clearly using the Web platforms that we have in place for this. You will also be required to document the work done and to keep the team up-to-date with project progress. Your role may also involve reporting on the quality and appropriateness of user-generated content. Liaising with the English360 team on all of the above is an integral part of the role. The work is freelance, with the number of hours dependent on the English360 workflow; however a minimum commitment of 25 hours per week is required initially. As the work can be done remotely, your location isn’t important – but a reliable, fast internet connection is.

Please send a copy of your CV and letter of application to jobs at english360 dot com  - Closing date 1st May 2010.

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Thoughts from the IATEFL ‘English in the Workplace’ symposium

April 16th, 2010
by Valentina Dodge


I was lucky enough to attend the ‘English for the Workplace’ Symposium at IATEFL. All the speakers were wonderful, but it was a comment from Dr Amna Mohamed Bedri that caught my attention most.
According to Dr Bedri, the goal of English for Special Purposes is this: For the learner to acquire higher competence in their field of ESP than an average native speaker.

It’s an interesting thought, and one that has big implications for how English for the workplace should be taught. When a teacher teaches  English for the workplace, he or she is always teaching English for Special Purposes as well - that is, he or she is teaching English for the Special Purpose of meeting the needs of that specific workplace. And the teacher will never know the needs of the workplace as well as the learners will!

For all that there are differences between workplaces, there are also cultural differences between the locations of different workplaces - Martina Mbayu’s insights, developed from her years of teaching English in Cameroon (where English is a minority language), were very different from Dr Bedri’s in Khartoum.

Harrogate Online

I was reminded of Nick Robinson’s excellent presentation on ESP from the previous day, where he explained good ESP practice as a collaboration between language specialists (i.e. teachers) and professional specialists (i.e. the learners). The teachers are (usually) not part of the same discourse community as their learners - Doctors and Lawyers, for example, have very specialised language systems that teachers don’t know. That’s why collaboration is so important.

At the Symposium, Dr Sofija Micic expanded on this idea. She presented on the development of a course in Medical English for Doctors training at Belgrade University, pointing out that Doctors needed to know technical, sub-technical, and layman’s terms for every type of medical condition - a far larger medical vocabulary than any average native speaker – or average teacher – would ever have!

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Martina Mbayu, Cleve Miller, Joseph Tomoh, and Dr Amna Bedri (Dr Sofija Micic not shown)

The question that all this raises for me is this:

If it is difficult for a skilled, intelligent, responsive teacher to teach English for the Workplace, is it even possible to create a coursebook specific enough to support them?

The answer, I think, is ‘no’. Coursebooks must by their nature be broad-ranging, and English for the workplace must by its nature be highly specific. However good the coursebook is, it will never be able to meet the exact needs of both a mining company in Sudan and a soft-drinks distributor in Cameroon!

All of this made me remember why I love working on English360. It’s the only tool I know where you can mix general coursebook material with very specific, specially made material. As Cleve Miller, the CEO of English360, explained in his presentation, you need a combination of both to meet the real, on-the-ground needs of learners, but just as importantly, you need both to meet the real, on-the-ground needs of workplaces. The workplaces are, after all, the ones who pay the bills!

If the best ESP teaching is a collaboration between teachers and learners, then maybe the best support for ESP is a kind of collaboration as well - a ‘collaboration’ between general, carefully structured, all-purpose coursebooks and specific, workplace-tailored content.

After all, just as learners know things that teachers don’t, so teachers know things that publishers don’t. And it’s wonderful to be part of a project that is setting that knowledge free at last.

Links:

Jeremy Day interviews Cleve Miller about ESP on the ‘Specific English’ blog:

Nick Robinson on Twitter:

Nick Robinson’s ESP podcast on PEO

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