Career Management
Contents
Preliminary English Test and Career Management Learning Guide, IELTS 4.0
Rationale
PET is an exam for people who can use everyday written and spoken English at an intermediate level. It covers all four language skills — reading, writing, listening and speaking. Preparing for the exam is a popular way to develop and improve your language skills because it provides practical language practice in a variety of everyday work, study and leisure situations.
PET reflects the use of language in real life, such as understanding signs and announcements, and is accepted by many employers as proof of ability to use English in clerical, secretarial or managerial jobs. It is also widely accepted for use in jobs where spoken English is necessary such as tourism, retail, construction, manufacturing and engineering.
Is PET for you?
Can you use English to:
- deal with everyday events?
- read simple textbooks or magazine articles?
- write letters on familiar subjects?
- take notes in a meeting?
If this describes your skills now, or describes the level of skills you are working towards, then PET is the right exam for you.
Continue ...
Career management is defined by Ball (1997) [1] as:
1. Making career choices and decisions – the traditional
focus of careers interventions. The changed nature of work
means that individuals may now have to revisit this process
more frequently than in the past.
2. Managing the organizational career – concerns the
career management tasks of individuals within the workplace,
such as decision-making, life-stage transitions, dealing with
stress etc.
3. Managing 'boundaryless' careers – refers to skills
needed by workers whose employment is beyond the boundaries
of a single organisation, a workstyle common among, for example,
artists and designers.
4. Taking control of one's personal development – as
employers take less responsibility, employees need to take
control of their own development in order to maintain and
enhance their employability.
Now that the job-for-life covenant between employer and employee has been superseded by an insecure and uncertain job market, career management has become a necessary survival skill rather than being an activity pursued by Ivy League alumni or people born with a silver spoon in the mouth. Job security is now based on knowledge, skills and added-value rather than length of service or loyalty to an employer. Career management is nothing more than a small investment of time, money and energy to protect the major source of revenue—one's job.
See also
International English Language Testing System' ( IELTS, pronounced /'aijelts/ ) is a test of English language proficiency. It is jointly managed by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, British Council and IDP Education Australia . Candidates may choose either the Academic Module or the General Training Module:
The Academic Module is intended for those who wish to enrol in universities and other institutions of higher education . The General Training Module is intended for those planning to undertake non-academic training or to gain work experience, or for immigration purposes. IELTS is accepted by most Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand and South African academic institutions, by an increasing number of academic institutions in the USA, and by various professional organizations. It is also a requirement for migration to Australia and Canada.
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Individual Exams
These five exams are also known as the "Main Suite":
KET (Key English Test): elementary, IELTS 3.0
The test has three sections:
- Reading & Writing - 70 minutes
- Listening - 25 minutes
- Speaking - 8-10 minutes
- Vocabulary Test
- Grammar Test
PET (Preliminary English Test): intermediate, IELTS 4.0
The test has three sections:
- Reading and Writing - 90 minutes
- Listening - 30 minutes
- Speaking - an interview, 10 minutes
- Reading Test
- Writing part 1
- Writing part 3
FCE (First Certificate in English): upper intermediate, IELTS 5.5
The test has five sections:
- Reading - 75 minutes- free practice test! New
- Writing - 2 essays, 90 minutes - free practice test
- Use of English - 90 minutes - free practice test
- Listening - 40 minutes - free listening practice test
- Speaking - interview, normally with another candidate, 15 minute
- Reading test
- Use of English test
- Listening test
- Writing test
CAE (Certificate in Advanced English): advanced, IELTS 6.5
The test has five sections:
- Reading - 75 minutes
- Writing - 2 or 3 tasks , 120 minutes
- English in Use - 6 tasks with 80 questions - 90 minutes - free Use of English tests
- Listening - 45 minutes - Click here for a free listening practice test
- Speaking - interview, normally with another candidate, 15 minutes
- Listening
- English In Use 1
- English in Use 2
- Use of English in Use 4
CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English): very advanced, IELTS 7.5
The test has five sections:
- Reading - 60 minutes
- Composition - 2 tasks, 2 hours
- Use of English - 90 minutes
- Listening - 3 or 4 recordings, 40 minutes
- Interview - normally with another candidate, 15 minutes
- Grammar Test
- Vocabulary Test
- Dictionary Test
For further details, click on Exam English Logos
Today's Videos
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Teaching and Learning Resources
Speaking
Information
About the Paper
Activities
Skills Development
Speech Communication refers to the processes associated with the production and perception of sounds used in spoken language . A number of academic disciplines study speech and speech sounds, including acoustics , psychology , speech pathology , linguistics and computer science.
Tutorials
| Video | PowerPoints |
Writing
Information
Activities
Click on image for PowerPoint Tutorials
Tutorials
- How to start sentences in your essay
- Writing IELTS Essay
- IELTS exam letter writing (part 1 of 3)
- IELTS exam letter writing (part 2 of 3)
- IELTS exam letter writing (part 3 of 3)
- IELTS How to start sentences in your essay (Part 2 of 2)
- Fixing problems in your essay
Readings
Writing is the representation of language
in a textual medium through the use of signs or symbols. It is distinguished
from
illustration , such as cave
drawing and painting , and the recording of language via a non-textual medium
such as
magnetic
tape audio .
Writing began as a consequence of the burgeoning needs of accounting. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form (Robinson, 2003, p. 36)
Illustration of a scribe writing |
- Why write? - a history of writing and the alphabet from the British Library
- TechTact.org - A website for tactful technical writing
Grammar Practice - verb tenses, adjective comparison, adverbs, prepositions & conjunctions
- Present Simple Roland's every day routine / Your routine (with Question Prompts)
- Present Simple Hazuki's daily routine / Juan Carlos's likes and dislikes
- Present Continuous Your future plans (PC and "going to" questions with adverbials)
- Past Simple Narrative: Class Magical Mystery Tour (with question prompts)
- Past Simple Happenings: talking about the past (2) Your favourite decade.
- Mixed Tenses Role Play: assuming the role of another person. Class conversation.
- Past Simple narrative of a journey constructed through question prompts
- Adverbs of manner and frequency practised through discussion of likes and dislikes
- Adverbs of degree and reason practiced through discussion of likes and dislikes
- Connectors AND BUT OR SO BECAUSE practiced through joining sentence pairs and gap fill
- Adjective comparison practiced through letter-writing: gap fill | letters written by competitors
- Comparison of adjectives and adverbs through short texts with question prompts | competing neighbors
- The Past Simple and The Present Perfect - differentiated, explained and practiced through adverbials
- Present Perfect accounts - 'what I've achieved in my life so far': guessing the celebrity & the balloon game
- Present Perfect v Past Simple: question making with indefinite or definite time reference. Parts 3 & 1 of verb
- Present Perfect and the prepositions 'for' and 'since'
- The use of 'something', 'somebody', 'somewhere', 'nowhere', 'everybody' (rather than 'All people')
- Mixed English Verb Tense practice through gap fill suitable for the intermediate level.
- English Verb Tense practice through sentence pairs - choose the most likely tense for the adverbial
- English Verb Tense practice through sentence construction using word prompts including adverbials
Listening
Information
Activities
Click on image for Power Point Tutorials
Tutorials
- IELTS LESSON - Passing a message - WWW.IELTSEXAMS.NET
- www.expressteach.com IELTS Academic Listening
- Listening Quizzes
Readings
Active listening is an intent to " listen for meaning", in which the listener checks with the speaker to see that a statement has been correctly heard and understood. The goal of active listening is to improve mutual understanding .
- Active Listening International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict: Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado
- Empathic listening skills How to listen so others will feel heard
- Exercise 4 - Active Listening , Cent er for Rural Studies, University of Vermont, Montpelier
- What is active listening?
- Active listening: A communication tool
- Homepage of the International Listening Association
- Guidelines for Active Listening and Reflection
Reading
Information
Activities
Click on image for Power Point Tutorials
Tutorials
Hunting
Whales
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Nature
Sounds
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Timber
or Trees?
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Tuna
Dolphins
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Volcanoes
by the Sea
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Fight
Pollution
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the
bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done,
click the "NEXT" button.
Readings
Reading is the cognitive process of deriving meaning from written or printed text.
A detail from Madonna des Kanonikus Georg van der Paele by Jan van Eyck . |
It
is a means of language
acquisition , of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Effective readers use decoding skills
(to translate printed text into the sounds of language),
use morpheme , semantics , syntax and context cues to identify the meaning of unknown
words, activate prior knowledge Other types of reading may not be text-based, such as music notation or pictograms. By analogy, in computer science , reading is acquiring of data from some sort of computer storage. Although reading print text is now an important way for the general population to access information, this has not always been the case. With some exceptions , only a small percentage of the population in many countries were considered literate before the Industrial Revolution . |
- Alliteracy
- Dyslexia
- Eye movement in language reading
- Eye movement in music reading
- Fixation
- Great Books
- Haskins Laboratories
- International Reading Association
- Literacy
- Mockingbird
- Phonics
- Photoreading
- Radio Reading Service such as 2RPH
- Readability test
- Reading skills acquisition
- Regression
- Skimming
- Slow reading
- Speed reading
- Subvocalization
- Time Reading Program , a book club sponsored by Time from 1961 - 1966
- Vision span
- Word Guessing
- References
- Haskins Laboratories: the science of the spoken and written word
- Lehrl, S., & Fischer, B. (1990) Measuring of reading rate
- Paper on word recognition at Microsoft typography site
- Sight Words Exercises
- Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project
- A better way to learn sight words
- Free reading grade level tests and the MWIA, a test to determine dyslexia
- Children of the Code: The History and Science of Learning to Read and Comprehend
- Childrensbookradio: Popular Podcast and Directory of Children's Literature
- International Reading Association
- Reading Rockets: Reading Comprehension and Language Arts Teaching Strategies
- Guide to Effective Instruction in Reading
Click on image for PowerPoint Tutorials
Career Management Workshop
Essential Texts
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Cambridge Preliminary English Test Extra Student's Book with Answers and CD-ROM View
full components listing for Cambridge Preliminary English
Test Extra Four authentic PET papers from Cambridge ESOL with extra guidance and exam tips, plus CD-ROM. Cambridge Exams Extra is a new series providing authentic past papers from Cambridge ESOL, plus a wealth of extra material for use in the classroom or for self-study. This title contains four complete PET past papers from Cambridge ESOL, a useful exam overview and helpful guidance on tackling each part of each paper. The accompanying CD-ROM contains the same four papers that appear in the book, giving students the option of trying out the PET in electronic format. Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
Recommended Texts
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Cambridge
Grammar for PET Book with Answers and Audio CD Cambridge Grammar for PET provides complete coverage of the grammar needed for the Cambridge PET exam, and develops listening skills at the same time. It includes the full range of PET exam tasks from the Reading, Writing and Listening papers, and contains helpful grammar explanations and a grammar glossary. Louise
Hashemi Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
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Activating 1001 Academic Words for IELTS - Book & CD-Rom Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
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101 Helpful Hints for IELTS - Academic Module - Book & Cassette Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
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101 Helpful Hints for IELTS - General Training Module - Book & Cassette Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
Resources
Click on image for PowerPoint Tutorials