“Bridging the gap between the classroom and the real world”

Using authentic texts in the Languages Classroom

Wei Qu and Kathy Purvis

1 Introduction

This paper is part of the research for a PhD thesis on the use of authentic texts in the Languages classroom. It is based on the collaboration of the researcher working with a non-native speaker Chinese teacher and her class of 10 Year 11/12 continuers students at a large metropolitan government high school in Adelaide. The data was collected over a period of eleven weeks and includes student feedback in response to the authentic texts used.

The first part of this paper looks at aspects of what constitutes an authentic text and the reasons for using authentic texts in second language teaching. The second part describes the specific authentic texts that were chosen for this unit of work and how they were adapted. The following sections describe the teaching and learning process of how the texts were used in the classroom and analyse students’ work and feedback to two surveys about their experiences of engaging with these authentic resources.

2 Authentic texts and authentic texts use in second language classroom

Nunan (1988) claims that authentic materials “reflect the outside world” and “have been produced for purposes other than to teach language” (p. 99). Little, Devitt and Singleton (1988) suggest authentic texts are “substitutes for the community of native speakers within which ‘naturalistic’ language acquisition occurs”. In other words, a text in general is considered as textually authentic if it is written or spoken for real-life communication rather than being composed for teaching purposes.

The use of authentic resources in the language classroom has become common in recent decades. Little, Devitt and Singleton (1988) claim that authentic texts should occupy an essential role in language learning. The purpose of using authentic texts, oral or written, in the language class is to enhance students’ understanding of meaning and communication in the target language. Authentic texts which provide social purpose, linguistic items, cultural understanding and authentic natural language help students “bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world”(Guariento & Morley 2001). In the second language classroom it is important that the authentic texts should be appropriate to learners’ second language proficiency, social needs and their previous knowledge and experiences, as well as “to the realities of communication in the target language community” (Little, Devitt & Singleton 1988).

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Lee (1995, p. 325) believes that “textually authentic materials are not inherently learner authentic”. Learner authenticity involves learners being able to positively perceive and respond to the materials appropriately (Lee 1995). Authentic texts may play an unauthentic role when texts are too difficult and students perceive and respond to the materials as merely assessment tasks and cannot respond to the communicative purpose of the text. As a result, authentic texts may prevent learners from interacting with the text in a meaningful way, frustrate and demotivate learners in language learning (Guariento & Morley 2001). In order to eliminate this possibility, authentic texts need to be carefully chosen or modified for language teaching in accordance with learners’ language proficiency. In adapting the resources, teachers need to ensure the following aspects are maintained. (Liddicoat et al. 2003, p. 67):

Authenticity of purpose:

the resource needs to be intrinsically of interest or there needs to be an extrinsic purpose (as in the case of maps, menus, etc.) if it is to engage learners

Authenticity of task:

Learners need to respond to the resource in an authentic way, thus what they are asked to do with a resource is at least as important as its origin

Authenticity of conditions:

The conditions for intercultural language use need to reflect the conditions for use of the resource in the ‘real world’.

3 Choice of authentic texts

Three different kinds of texts were created and collected for the unit of work. They included a set of letters from a group of students in China, a job advertisement from a local business owner and a variety of short job advertisements taken from the windows of businesses in Adelaide’s China Town.

3.1 The letters

The Chinese students who wrote these letters were from a boarding school in a country town which is the researcher’s hometown. They wrote the letters in January 2013, five months before they took university enrolment exams. They volunteered to write the letters talking about their hopes and plans for the future. They were aware that their letters would be read by Australian students about their own age and were asked to write simple Chinese. They were given no other direction about how to write their letters or what to say. Since students’ access to computers and the internet at that school was strictly controlled and these students hardly used Email, the letters were written by hand, and a student scanned all the letters and sent them to the researcher when he returned home for Chinese New Year.

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3.2 The job advertisements

Two different types of authentic job advertisements were provided to the students. The authentic job advertisements were collected in different ways. Photos of five short advertisements were taken in Adelaide’s China Town by the researcher. A complete job advertisement, to which students replied by writing an application letter and CV , was sourced from a Russian/Asian food stall in Adelaide Central Market owned by a Chinese person who is the researcher’s friend. All these advertisements were written by native Chinese speakers looking for Chinese employees in Adelaide, an English speaking environment in which both writers and readers communicate in English as a second language as well as Chinese. Some English words were written in the advertisements. It is the authentic language of Chinese speakers living and working in Australia and is slightly different from the Chinese language used in China.

Each of the short advertisements was less than 30 words. Since these advertisements were put up in the windows of restaurants, contact details and work place were not mentioned, which was different from the formal job advertisement. The students read these five short advertisements without any adaptation or vocabulary list. In the real world language users use different words to express the same meaning. From these authentic short advertisements, the students were able to learn different expressions from those in the textbook. They had learned expressions such as 招聘 (employ), 广告 (advertisement), 有意者请电 (if you are interested, please call) and so on in their textbook. However, the word 招聘 appears in only one advertisement while the other four advertisements used 诚 聘 (sincerely employ) and 招 (employ). Because these advertisements were put up on the windows of the restaurants, the language used is less formal than that in newspaper and internet advertisements.

The complete advertisement was originally used to look for new employees on the website adelaidebbs. It was adapted by changing some of the criteria and also by adding an introduction to the stall and a photo of the stall and the stall owner

4 Teaching and Learning with authentic texts.

The authentic texts described above were designed to complement a unit of work for Term 1 which had already been planned by the teacher. The unit of work was based on the themes, Education and Aspirations and The World of Work.

The first summative assessment task was a one on one discussion with the teacher about future plans and career options. The letters about future career options and aspirations from final year students at a Chinese High School provided by the researcher were the first set of authentic texts to be used as part of the preparation for this task. As these texts became available after the unit of work had been planned it was decided to use them as one of a series of formative activities which scaffolded students’ learning and prepared them for the task.

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Students’ first task was to read two texts from the textbook on which the unit of work was based, Hanyu for Intermediate Students Stage 3, Chapter 6. Scarino and Liddicoat (2009, p. 63)talk about the ‘constrained nature of resources’ such as those presented in textbooks and how ‘information is usually presented in a way which strips away the complexity, variability and subtlety of culture and represents speakers of target language as homogeneous’. From a teacher’s perspective there are some advantages of using these kinds of materials. The two texts from the textbook were a useful introduction to students because they were written purposely to expose students to relevant vocabulary and grammatical structures that they might need to talk about their own careers and future hopes and aspirations at a level commensurate with their language ability.

After students had learnt the vocabulary and practised some relevant grammatical structures they were then each given one letter from a Chinese student. The letters had been originally written by hand and it was clear that in order for the students to be able to read them they would have to be typed. At first students were only going to get the typed version but then we decided that they should receive the authentic hand written letter as well as the typed version. The language used in the letters was still too difficult for the students so a vocabulary list was also provided for each letter. From the teacher’s perspective, giving students these letters was like taking a step into the unknown. How would the students respond to a text which was much more difficult than any text they had read in the past? If the Year 11 students in the class struggled with the text would they think about not continuing with the language in the following year?

Students were given help to translate the letters and in this process individual discussions were had with students about the content of the letters and their reactions to what they were reading. Taken as a whole set, these letters did express the “complexity, variability and subtlety” (Scarino & Liddicoat 2009) of these Chinese young people’s thoughts and aspirations and in retrospect more time could have been devoted to their study. However, asking students to read all of them would have been to impose a huge linguistic burden on them.

Students were then asked to send an email in English to reply to the letter they had received. We might have not done this task because it was not something that would help the students improve their Chinese skills. We did it because the Chinese students wanted to receive an English letter back in reply to help them with their study of English. When we read the English letters the students sent to their Chinese counterparts, we realized to our surprise how much the students had ‘really drawn connections between themselves and others’ (Scarino & Liddicoat 2009, p. 63). Their replies were personal; they answered all the questions that they were asked as well as providing information about their own future and how it might be similar or different to that of their Chinese students. They also wished their students every success in the future. As this letter was not assessed as part of the course there was no external motivation for the students to write a detailed letter. They wrote them because they genuinely wanted to communicate with the person who had written to them.

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Although the teacher and the researcher had not thought so much about writing a reply in English it was always intended that our students should reply in Chinese. In our discussions about the choice and use of authentic resources we were very much influenced by Mickan (2012). He indicates that “Texts set up opportunities for communication about content – for consent, for exploration of ideas and for contestation” (p.39). However, whereas students were given the freedom to reply in English as they wished, when they wrote their Chinese letter they were given some guiding questions by the teacher. These were the same questions which would form the basis of the conversation task which they would subsequently be asked to do, so in writing their Chinese reply they were also formulating and expressing in Chinese answers they would later need for the assessment task. It was pleasing to note that a number of students used phrases and words in their own letters they had learnt from their reading. What was of interest and some concern, though, was that their Chinese letters did not show the personal connection that had been so evident in their English letters. Was this due to the fact that were not given the freedom to write what they wanted and had to follow guidelines or was their ability to express their personal feelings limited by their Chinese language skills?

The second summative assessment task for this unit of work required students to write an application for a job described in an advertisement. The five job advertisements in Chinese photographed by the researcher were our first set of authentic materials. Again students first read a sample job advertisement in the textbook to familiarize them with the language and structures typical of job advertisements. The teacher then gave students these job advertisements to read. Again the Chinese in the advertisements was considered by the teacher to be quite difficult, especially as some of them were handwritten. With this in mind the teacher asked the students to see if they could identify just the job that was being advertised and not to worry about other information in the advertisements. This time no vocabulary or other support was provided. Again, surprisingly, from the teacher’s point of view, students went ahead themselves and read and translated all information contained in each advertisement. Once or twice they needed help to decipher a handwritten character but they showed genuine interest and a sense of achievement when they were able to work out what the advertisement was asking for.

With the second authentic text for this task, again the researcher was looking for a way to set up a task for students which enabled them to produce a response as authentic as possible in the context of writing a job application. Although the friend of the researcher who provided the job advertisement did not need any new employees, he agreed to read the applications students produced and choose the one he would employ.

The teacher had already chosen another job advertisement as the text for the assessment task, but decided to use the more authentic text. This text needed to be considerably modified. The expected reader of the ‘authentic’ advertisement would have been a Chinese native speaker who had already finished school and was in the work force. Our ‘job applicants’ were English speaking school students with perhaps no work experience except for their work experience placement through school.

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Also students needed to be able to write 250 characters in their response. With this in mind we added a number of personal qualities such as ‘interested in working as a waiter/waitress’, ‘hardworking, conscientious and polite’.

The teacher had decided that the response to the job application would be written under test conditions. Students were allowed to keep the job advertisement and read it at home, but the response was written in class. Students were allowed to submit one draft for correction, and then do their corrections in class, before completing their final writing of the assessment task again in class.

When the students were given the job advertisement they were told who had written it and the photos on the advertisement showed them the actual owner in this stall in the market. Some students recognized the stall when they looked at the picture. The teacher would have liked to discuss with students this very interesting authentic text written by a Chinese speaking person living outside China, containing English words as well as Chinese. She did not do this because it was part of a formal assessment task. Perhaps it would have been better to use this text for a formative task like the letters rather than a summative task.

4 Analysis of student writing and feedback in response to the use of authentic texts

This section of the paper looks at the results of two surveys carried out by the researcher. The first survey asked students to talk about what they learnt from the Chinese letter they received, their attitudes and personal reactions to the information it contained, and how they felt when replying to it. The second survey was implemented after students had written their job application.

Nine students completed the surveys. Because each student’s response is determined by their own background and cultural understandings it is necessary to know some details of each student’s background in order to fully understand the context of their replies, especially as in this class there are students of very different backgrounds. Student 1, Student 3 and Student 10 come from an English speaking background. Student 2, Student 6 and Student 7 were born in Australia and are of Malaysian background. These students speak some Chinese at home. Student 4’s parents are from Guangdong but he was born in Australian and has only a smattering of Cantonese language background. Student 8 and Student 9 have recently arrived from overseas. Student 8 is Korean and Student 9 is Cambodian.

4.1 Students’ reflection on the content of the letters

Students answered two questions in the survey about their reactions to the content of the letters.

1. What have you learnt from the letter about Chinese students’ thoughts about the future?

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2. What differences and or similarities are there between the way you think about the future as a young Australian person and the way the Chinese student thinks in your letter?

Many of the students’ responses were, in the opinion of the teacher, surprisingly detailed and insightful in their reflections on what they had learnt. One of the Australian students S1 wrote:

“I thought the cultural exchange of thoughts was helpful in broadening our perspectives of how the Chinese see the world and our future.”

He then continued to comment:

“The student used phrases that we would almost never use in English, such as ‘我要用我微薄 的力量去关系我爱的和爱我的人，去回报 社会。’ (I want to use my small ability to look after the people who love me and whom I love and to give something back to society.) I don’t think this student thought very highly of herself. She seemed confident in her future but didn’t think her life was worth much. I thought this is quite opposite to much of Australians who quite like themselves.”

What this student has picked up on is the tendency of Chinese people to be much more modest about themselves and their abilities compared with Australians. This example and other responses present how the students are developing more subtle and fine grained intercultural understandings through their interactions with authentic texts.

In answer to the questions as to what she has learnt, one of the Malaysian background students S6, wrote:

“I have learned that Chinese students really take much consideration about their future and that their parents may or may not have influences on the career path that they choose to take – my student said that her parents hoped for her to study medicine but just like a lot of us, she wanted to get into something she was interested in doing which for her was an occupant that involved economics….They also have a clear image on the kind of family they want; in my student’s case, marrying a husband that loves her along with a beautiful baby…Young Chinese students also take into consideration their parents which shows that they have much respect for them.”

It is interesting to note that in this reply the student is seeing herself as an Australian when she refers to herself: ‘just like a lot of us’

In another answer she clearly draws connections between herself as a person with Malaysian background and her Chinese student when she says:

“My student said that she’d like to help out her parents in any way – for example buy her dad a car because she knows he has a love and passion for. I don’t know whether it is because I come from a Malaysian background but I do

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find myself wondering about my parents after I have settled with a job and family and what I could do to help them out – I think there is this Asian custom to look after parents when they reach old age whereas there are such places like nursing homes here in Australia.”

Through her interaction with her authentic text this student is able to explore her own cultural place as someone whose understanding of the world is influenced by both her Malaysian heritage and her experience of growing up in Australia.

The learning about the hopes, aspirations and attitudes of Chinese young people and the intercultural understandings that are exemplified by the responses of the two students above could only have come from their interaction with the authentic letters. This becomes even more evident when these letters are compared with the equivalent section in the textbook which talks about students’ future ambitions, which the class read before they were given the authentic letters. This text contains none of the richness of the personal stories the students were able to read (see appendix).

4.2 Students’ reflection on language learning from authentic textsApart from what they learnt about their Chinese students from the letters, these students also indicated that these letters provided a direct insight into Chinese language use by native speakers. Different students mentioned the language use from different perspectives. Even though the letters they read were “a lot harder” (S5) because the Chinese students used “complicated words” (S5), the majority of the students (7 of 9) found that they learned “real”, “generally used” and “updated language” not found in textbooks. S2 wrote that “textbooks only show a piece of time that’s not up-to-date and doesn’t give people the colloquial words or grammar”. This view was supported by S7 who noted that “The way Chinese is being presented is changing time to time”. In addition, students believe that they could read real Chinese as S5 stated that “we get to learn how Chinese people really write” and S6 wrote that “it was good to have been exposed to authentic text because not everyone speaks or writes like how text is presented in the Chinese textbooks”. S1, S3 and S10 all said that they learned how Chinese people use Chinese language.

“It has been a great insight into how Chinese students our age write.” (S1)

“It helps me understand how Chinese people think and in turn how they write.” (S3)

“It was also good to get a feel for how real letters in Chinese are written, not only in their context, but in the setting out and opening/ending of the letter.” (S10)

Therefore, the view that authentic texts “bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world”(Guariento & Morley 2001) and helped them to learn Chinese language use was supported by the students’ feedback. The students learned about young Chinese people’s thoughts and were exposed to real Chinese language use through reading these Chinese students’ letters connecting their textbook knowledge with an enriched understanding of language use in the real world.

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Chinese textbooks are easier to understand because the texts in them are written for second language learners. Chinese language in authentic texts is much more difficult and complicated in vocabulary and structure. Since the students read different letters they received the teacher’s and the researcher’s individual help in terms of their needs while reading and replying to the letters to Chinese students. Five students in their survey pointed out that the vocabulary lists provided by the researcher helped them to read and reply to their Chinese pen pals. S6, S7 and S9 did not received a vocabulary list as they could communicate with the researcher in Chinese and the teacher and researcher supposed that they could understand their letters with the general word list of new characters found in all letters provided to all students. However, these three students wrote that they, too, needed vocabulary support.

The view that vocabulary is an important support to students’ Chinese reading authentic texts was sustained by the second survey which was a reflection on their second task of job application. The majority (8 of 10) of the students considered that the vocabulary list was very helpful. One of the questions of the second survey was designed to ascertain how much the vocabulary helped them to read the text. The students could choose from level 1 (not very useful) to 7 (very helpful). One student selected 5.5; another one selected 4 and the remaining eight selected 6. Hence the vocabulary is a necessary support for language learners to understand authentic texts.

4.3 Students’ reaction to the authentic task of writing a job application for a real job advertisement

Guariento and Morley (2001) argue that an authentic communicative purpose is considered as more significant aspect than participants in terms of text authenticity. Interestingly when student were given this task, not all students considered the task as a real application. This is a combined Year 11 and 12 class and the students’ purposes for studying Chinese are various. All four Year 12 students took this writing task as a writing task for assessment not as a real application for a job. S2 gave three reasons “did not want to work”, “not an appealing job” and “time frame inconvenient”. Also, he said that he would not apply for this job in real life as he was not interested in this job. S4 gave the reason that he “knew that the letter wouldn’t be truly treated like an application”. Only Year 12 student, S1 completed the task with the purpose of both conveying information to a potential employer and completing a writing task because “It was important to address it as if in real life”. The Year 11 students are not under the same pressure of marks and tertiary entrance scores as the Year 12’s. Only one student thought he was just completing a school assessment task rather than writing a ‘real’ application letter conveying information to a potential boss. S6 wrote that “It made writing the letter more realistic” because “the stall is real” and “they were informed that their letters would be submitted to the boss”, whose picture was on the job advertisement. From the above analysis, it may be inferred that a task could appear authentic to some students while appearing unauthentic to others, depending on the context and purpose of their study.

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5 ConclusionFrom a busy second language teacher’s perspective, using authentic texts in the classroom is time consuming, because it is not always easy to find appropriate authentic texts and risky, because it is not always possible to predict how students will react to the texts. Even more challenging than locating and modifying texts was the process of finding ways in which the students could themselves respond in an authentic manner to what they had read.

Having said that, however, the feedback from the students shows unequivocally how much their own learning has been enriched by the experience. All students commented on how difficult the texts were, but all enjoyed the challenge of reading ‘real’ Chinese written by real and identifiable Chinese people. All students engaged personally with the writer of their letter and through this engagement gained a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their own world and the world of young Chinese people. These intercultural insights could not have been obtained through reading the texts in the textbook. There is no doubt that, if well chosen and suitably adapted, engagement with authentic texts does indeed “bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world”.

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Reference Chang, P, Mackerras, A & Yu,H-C 1999, Hanyu for Intermediate Students. Course Book Stage 3, Addison Wesley Longman, Melbourne.

Guariento, W & Morley, J 2001, 'Text and task authenticity in the EFL classroom', ELT Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 347-353.

Lee, WY-c 1995, 'Authenticity revisited: Text authenticity and learner authenticity', ELT Journal, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 323-328.

Liddicoat, AJ, Papademetre, L, Scarino, A & Kohler, M 2003, Report on intercultural language learning, DEST, Canberra.

Little, D, Devitt, S & Singleton, DM 1988, Authentic texts in foreign language teaching: theory and practice, Authentik.

Mickan, P 2012, Language Curriculum Design and Socialisation, Multilingual Matters, UK.

Nunan, D 1988, The learner-centred curriculum, Cambridge University Press, NY.

Scarino, A & Liddicoat, AJ 2009, Teaching and learning laguage: A Guide, Australia, <http://www.tllg.unisa.edu.au/lib_guide/gllt.pdf>.

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Letter from Chinese students about future aspiration

亲爱的朋友：你好！我和你们一样都是一名高三的学生。不知道你们是不是和我们一样

学习很累。但同样在高三也很有乐趣，与同学们一起学习、玩闹，都很开心。高考给我们的压力很大，并且每个人都希望考入理想的大学，毕业后能找

到一份好工作。对于我来说，家里非常希望我能学医，可我内心比较害怕这个专业。我可能更多的会选择财经、管理之类的学科。如果考的分数并不是很高的话，我也会选择去当一名老师，因为我比较喜欢用自己的方式去管理学生，让他们去喜欢学习，而不是讨厌。还有一个原因就是老师的假期很多。我的梦想就是有很多钱，可以和家人、老公、孩子或是朋友一起去旅游，到每一个向往的地方游玩。同时用照片记录我们在一起的每一张笑脸、每一个美丽的时刻。我同很多女孩一样，都有一个公主梦，嫁一个爱我的帅气老公、有一个漂亮的宝贝、过着幸福的生活。因为我的爸爸很喜爱车，所以我希望以后有机会可以给他买一辆好车。同时也让爸爸妈妈做他们想做的事。我也像他们爱我一样爱着他们。

为了实现心中梦想，让我们努力吧。马丹宁

250823738Dear friend,I am a Year 12 student like you. I don’t know if you find studying very tiring like us. But at the same time, year 12 life is fun studying and having a good time with friends.Being in Year 12 brings a lot of pressure and everyone hopes to get into a university of their choice and find a good job after graduation. As for me, my family wants me to study medicine, but I am scared of going down this path. I perhaps will choose a course relating to finance and management. If I cannot get a very high score, I will choose to become a teacher because I’d like to use my way of managing students to make them enjoy study rather than hating it. Another reason for being a teacher is that teachers have many holidays. My dream is to become rich and travel with my family, husband, children or friends, to all the places I would like to go, taking photos to record being together with all the smiling faces and every beautiful moment. Like many other girls I have a dream of being like a princess, marrying a handsome husband who loves me, having a pretty baby and a happy life. My dad loves cars, so I hope I will have an opportunity to buy him a good car. At the same time, I want to give my parents the opportunity to give my parents the opportunity to be able to do whatever they want. I love them in the same way that they love me. Let’s strive to achieve our dream.

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Hanyu for Intermediate Students. Stage 3 Text on Future aspirations. 我最喜欢去旅行了！我跟着父母去过中国南方的广东省、云南省，我看过东北的大森林和雪山。我还在内蒙古的大草原上骑过马呢！I particularly like travelling. I have been to Guangdong province and Yunnan province in the South of China. I have seen big forests and snow covered mountains in the northeast of China. I have also ridden a horse on the prairie in Inner Mongolia. 我属猴，从小就好动，所以我对体育运动非常有兴趣。我以后想当羽毛球运动员。我除了想到体育学院学习以外，还希望能参加国家队。所以上体育课，锻炼身体对我来说非常重要。其他的课，能及格就行了！My star sign is monkey and I have been active since I was young, so I am very interested in sports. I want to be a badminton player in the future. Apart from wanting to study in a Sports College, I also hope to be a member of our national team. Therefore, PE lessons and physical exercise are very important for me. With the other subjects, as long as I pass I am happy.我这个人很幽默，对人非常有耐心，所以我的朋友很多。他们觉得我诚实、可靠，很喜欢跟我在一起。我们常常一起去爬山，去游泳，去跳舞。I am a humorous person and very patient, so I have many friends. They think I am honest and reliable and like my company. We often go to hiking, swimming and dancing.

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Job advertisement

Taldy-Kurgan Fresh Eurasian Food招聘服务员:

这家店非常受欢迎，有很多顾客慕名而来。曾经有一位顾客两次早上从悉尼坐飞机来订 50 个 Piroshki，下午带回悉尼开派对用。

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本店成立于 2003 年，主要经营哈萨克斯坦小吃Piroshki,俄罗斯饺子，cabbage roll, borcht soup, 沙拉和各种咖啡。2008 年由现在的中国老板经营后店里增加了中国食物：混沌，肉丸和珍珠奶茶。

招聘服务员要求：1. 能够上早班，从 7：00 到下午 2：002.英语流利,并且会说汉语3.对服务员工作感兴趣4.工作努力、认真5. 对顾客热情、耐心、有礼貌6.时薪$16.007.有经验者优先有意者请把求职信与简历发送到

waulice@yahoo.com.cn

哈萨克斯坦 (ha sa ke si tan) Kazakhstan

肉丸 (rou wan)meatball

珍珠奶茶 (zhen zhu nai cha)bubble tea

慕名而来 (mu ming er lai) to come to a place on account of its reputation (idiom)曾经 (ceng jing)used to 订 (ding) order

派对(pai dui) party 优先(you xian) Priorityshí时xīn薪The shop was established in 2003. It mainly sells Kazakhstan Piroshki, Russian dumplings, cabbage rolls, borcht soup, salad and a variety of coffees. After the current owner took over the shop in 2008 he began to sell Chinese food, including dumplings, meatbalsl and bubble tea. This shop is very popular and many customers came here on account of its reputation. There was a customer who twice ordered 50 piroshki. He flew from Sydney in the morning to collect them and returned to Sydney in the afternoon.The criteria

1. Be able to work the morning shift from 7am to 2pm2. Speak fluent English and be able to speak Chinese3. Be interested in a waiting job4. Work hard and conscientiously5. Be enthusiastic, patient and polite to the customers6. $16 hourly rate7. Experienced applicants will be given priority

Interested applicants please send your application letter and CV to

waulice@yahoo.com.cn

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The English translation of S1 and S6’s application letters Dear Sir：您好！My name is S1. I am a Year 11 student at Unley High School this year. I study Chinese at school. Apart from Chinese, I also study chemistry, music and English. I will study maths and research project next semester. In Chinese class, the teacher gave us your job advertisement. After reading your criteria, I think I can work there.I started to learn Chinese in 2010. In my opinion, my Chinese is reasonable. In addition, English is my first language. I am able to work from 7am to 2pm on Saturday. I am interested in a job as waiter. I am patient, polite and work hard and conscientiously.I did work experience in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for one week last year. At the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra they told me that I am hard working and work conscientiously……….(a sentence unclear)….Although I don’t have experience, I would like to learn. I would appreciate if I had the opportunity to work in your shop.

S102/05/2013

Dear Sir: 您好 ！My name is S6. I am 16 years old. I am in Year 10 at Unley High School in

Adelaide. After reading your job advertisement last Thursday I am interested in a job as waiter and I think I can work here.I was born and have studied in Adelaide. I go to school between 8:30 and 3:15 from Monday to Friday, but I am able to work at other times and work during the whole school holiday. I am patient, work hard and conscientiously. I grew up here, so my English is fluent. I can communicate in simple Chinese as I have studied Chinese for four years. I have worked in Dominos since 2011, so I have experience of counting the money and serving customers.I hope I have theopportunity to work in your shop and I am thankful that you read my application letter!

S602/05/2013

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