Day 4 - 5th April - JOB HUNTING AND THE CV

First thing in the morning, we talked about what we had done that week. Not all of the people had had a good week until then, but some of them had gone to the cinema, as the “Cinema party” had taken place at the beginning of the week, so everybody could go to the cinema for only 2.90 euros.  

After this initial conversation to warm up a bit, we reviewed when yet, still, just and already can be used. 

As a summary: 

YET	QUESTIONS AND  NEGATIVE SENTENCES  It usually goes at the end of the sentence. (Commonly used with the present perfect).	We expect something to happen or have happened.	Questions → translated as “ya”  Negative → translated as “todavía” or “aún”	Example:  Has she finished yet?  You haven’t met her yet.
STILL	It usually goes in the middle of the sentence, before the verb.	To talk about a situation or an action, that’s continuing, often for a longer time than expected.	Translated as “todavía” or “aún”.	Example:  Are you still married?  I’m still living with my parents.
JUST	It’s usually used with the present perfect. It comes between the auxiliary verb (have) and the past participle.	It means “a short time ago”	It’s the word that let us translate the sentence as “acabar de”.	Example:  I’ve just called (Acabo de llamar).
ALREADY	Mostly in AFFIRMATIVE.  It usually goes in the middle or the end of the sentence, just before or after the verb.  (Commonly used with present perfect).	To talk about things that have happened, often earlier than expected.	Translated as “ya”.	Example:  He’s already done it. / He’s done it already.  Have you two already met?

After we practiced the use of these words with some written exercises, we put them into practice with a speaking activity. For that purpose, we asked our partners about the things that they wanted to achieve when they were children, and if they had already achieved them or not. 

Then, we saw some job hunting webpages in English. We also learnt some vocabulary that could be useful when looking for a job, for instance: Recruitment, application form, Résumé, CV, cover letter; and the categories and job titles that we could find in those kinds of webs. We also looked for a job offer of a position that could fit with us and looked up all the words we didn’t know already. Then we put them in common. 

As nowadays it’s very difficult to find a job, we highlighted that it’s important to stand out from others. We watched a video of a 24-years-old guy that made a rap with his CV in a video. This guy mentioned his skills on it, so we thought about 10 of our skills that could be an asset for a company. 

The next step for job hunting was to learn some tips about how to write a CV in English, for example: clear structure, it shouldn’t be longer than 2 pages, we have to adapt the CV to the position we want to apply,… 

We had to write our CV in English as homework. Some of the webpages we can check are:

       Tips:    Irishjobs  ;  Monster

       Samples:    CV library  ;  Irishjobs

Finally, we watched the first episode of the US sitcom “The office”, trying to understand as much as we could and answering a couple of questions about it.