Career orientation at English throughout four years

Paper

Most secondary schools put a lot of emphasis on career orientation, as it is important for their students to realize what they are good at by the age of 18 or 19, when they have to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives. A great majority of students tend to evade the subject of career decision making until the last month, but at our school there are a lot of gifted students who already know what they want to do from day one. Our job is therefore simplified – we just need to guide them through different activities that help them realize whether the profession that they dream about is really their dream job. Not relying solely on our school counsellor and/or psychology teacher, we try to include career orientation at different subjects. The aim of this article is to present how we do it at English throughout four years. Starting with personality questionnaires in the first grade and then moving on to presentations of their desired professions, inviting their parents and/or siblings to present their profession in class, having discussions in class about the choice they are about to make, etc. In reality, career orientation is something that we live with at almost every subject at our school, and English is no exception.