10 Tips to Ace Your Job Interview

The start of the New Year is always prime time for employers to look for and hire new talent.

So how can you be best prepared?

View the list below for some helpful tips:

    1. Do your research. Visit the website of the company you’re interviewing with and understand their history, management, and overall business. Be sure to research any of their recent announcements so you’re up to speed.
    2. Your attire. Always dress business professional, unless specifically told otherwise. Be clean, well-groomed and scent-free.
    3. Your questions. Consider who it is you’ll be speaking to and prepare questions in advance on a single sheet of paper. Your questions should reflect your interest in and research of the employer and its markets and competitors.

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Protests Spark at U.S. Colleges Over Micro-Aggressions

In recent months there have protests at college campuses across the nation calling attention to a previously little-known term: “micro-aggressions,” commonly defined as routine verbal and non-verbal slights and harassment (often based on race and gender but also including age, sexual orientation and disability) that is typically unintentional but nonetheless hurtful.

Calls for colleges and universities to implement training at these schools for faculty to spot and recognize these forms of micro-aggressions have been gaining more and more attention.  Training would help others recognize and avoid these biases that come in form of Caucasian students telling a black person “you don’t really act black,” or asking a Hispanic-American about immigration-related matters.
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Michigan Now Requires ACTFL Tests for Teacher Credentialing

Language Testing International (LTI) is pleased to announce that Michigan is now the 26th state requiring ACTFL tests for Teacher Credentialing.  We have moved steadily forward, adding OPIc and ProFluent+ to many states that have previously only accepted the OPI. Additionally, we are continually adding new states to our growing list overall.

The addition of Michigan means that the state will now require OPI or OPIc to meet the oral proficiency requirement for World Language Educators. More, importantly, it is one of 16 (of those 26) states that requires our tests for ALL languages.

Now that we are past the mid-point of states that require ACTFL tests, we will continue the effort and seek to land the 27th state and beyond in the coming year.

Talking Toys: Helping or Hurting Young Language Learners?

A new and very interesting study in JAMA Pediatrics discovered that toys marketed as language promoters don’t prove to be so in most cases. In fact, the study found that these toys in fact, hindered the language learning process in young children.

Professor Anna Sosa, of Northern Arizona University, led the study and provided participating families three different types of toys: books, traditional toys like stacking blocks and a shape sorter, and electronic toys.

“We had a talking farm — animal names and things,” Sosa says of the electronic toys. “We had a baby cellphone. And we had a baby laptop. So you actually open the cover and start pushing buttons, and it tells you things.”
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