More About the Job's Responsibilities

Volunteers will assist two or more current residential English teachers at their prospective schools and teach English to a classroom size of 40-45 students. Each class period will be 90 minutes in duration. Volunteers will work with half of the class while the resident English teacher will work with the other half. After 45 minutes, volunteers and teachers exchange groups and teach the other half of the class for the next 45 minutes. In addition, volunteers are responsible for the development of extracurricular activities such as after-school English clubs, art projects, science, and sports clubs. Volunteers will work 25 hours a week in the classroom, with the focus on improving the students' listening and speaking skills, and they will prepare lesson plans and activities that encourage language production such as dialogues, games, pronunciation activities, debates, role-playing, and conversation groups. Volunteers can expect to work 10 additional hours a week collaborating with Chilean EFL teachers for the planning and the development of extracurricular activities.

Important Aspects to Consider

• Classroom work is focuses on helping Chilean students develop their listening and speaking skills. To achieve this objective, certain needs must be met, such as having a separate area or room which allows for more personalized attention (a specially designated room for English-language activities) as well as a smaller group of students.
• Volunteers can suggest oral presentations based on classroom lessons as long as the subject matter of these lessons coincides with the students´ level of fluency.
• For the oral presentations, subject matter can range from the students' daily routine to the lives of famous people, etc. It is recommended that audiovisual resources be used for some presentations, if and when applicable.
• Presentations should go from the general to the specific. Furthermore, it is important that they be supported and enhanced by additional material such as photocopies, videos, audio recordings, Data Shows, etc.
• Oral presentations should not last more than 20 minutes given that the activities after the presentation can follow different formats (debates, discussions where students give their opinions, etc.). When designing activities based on any given oral presentation, ideally the teacher and the volunteer should work together to establish a common objective, such as vocabulary development for listening and writing skills.
• It is vital that volunteers maintain good communication with the English teacher in charge of the class and that they coordinate closely on all activities. This will ensure the success of the volunteers' work.
• Volunteers can suggest teaching methods and/or activities to be implemented inside the classroom. In this way, the English teacher and the volunteer will complement one another and thus achieve their goals in a more efficient manner.
• The use of the English language in itself is the key factor for improved learning. This means that English grammar is imbedded in the texts – both in oral and written form – which are presented to the students. The language used by volunteers must be put into a context which allows the Chilean students to comprehend its meaning in the most effective way.
• Full-Time volunteers work with half the class while the English teacher does so with the other half.  The volunteer concentrates on communication-oriented activities such as dialogues, role-playing, songs, games, conversation groups, debates, projects, etc. After 45 minutes, the groups interchange. This way, both the volunteer and the teacher have more space and time for their respective students. In effect, the students have more opportunities to participate actively in class, practicing their spoken English and repeating the volunteers' pronunciation and intonation.