Dear Sir/Madam, I found your ad on http://www.tealit.com. I may have contacted you four years ago in connection with the closing down of Chinmin Institute of Technology's AFL Department. Since that time, I have been working at National United University. But next semester, NUU will be replacing me with an assistant professor. So I am again looking for another job. I wish to apply for a position at your school. I think I would be an asset to your English teaching program. With this email, I am including copies of my college teaching certificate from the Ministry of Education, my master's diploma, a recent photograph, my curriculum vitae, and three letters of recommendation. The second two letters of recommendation from David Tung, ex-dean of the AFLD department at Chinmin Institute of Technology, and Peter Hsia, now dean of the AFLD department at Minghsin University of Science and Technology, provide evidence, I think, of my desire and my ability to cooperate with my colleagues. If I am shortlisted, feel free to contact David Tung at , and my present dean, Tracy Cheng, here at the AFL department at National United University, at , for their opinions of my work. For the first ten years I was in Taiwan, I was working with lower-level, unmotivated students. For these students, I developed a number of innovative teaching activities. One involved paired dictation, where partners read a dialog, but at the same time write it down. Another was a multiple choice quiz in the form of a basketball/baseball relay. Members of a team stationed around the room mark a ball with the answers to questions posted on the wall, before throwing it to the team member at the front of the room, who competes to throw the ball into the right basket placed on top of the blackboard before it fills up. Whether I was successful in a lot of my work at Chinmin is debatable. but overall I think I did an excellent job of creating favorable attitudes to English and to school work among these students. I certainly seem to have gained their respect. Some even have jobs where English plays an important role in the work they do. At NUU, the students have been served better by the education system. They are more able learners. Still, they have been trained to be passive. Getting them to use English in small groups is a challenge. I have continued to use dictation, putting it on the web, at http://web.nuu.edu.tw/~greg/DictationExercises.html. The students listen to stories from http://www.storycorps.org, or other Internet sources, and re-create the text by filling in the blanks for homework. Using a question-answering web application I am now developing, they also write questions about the stories and choose answers, and the application tells them if their question is grammatical, and if the answer is correct. In class, where I follow a Cooperative Learning approach, they will do mini-Jigsaw Listening activities, although only a few groups, even in AFLD classes, will use primarily English, despite the activity being quite popular. Another thing I do in class is a popular whole-class fill-in-the-blank exercise projected on the board, where groups are assigned the blanks. Less popular is a competition between two groups forming one table. One champion from each group asks questions previously written on the board. The two groups of 3,4 members each at the table then vote on which champion won, this then determining the classwork score of the two groups (3 for the winner's group, 2 for the loser's group.) Collusion appears to play a major part in the determining of the winners. This activity, however, is very popular with my AFLD speech classes, debating some topic in groups, where they WILL use only English. For the 4 exams, which are of only minor importance for their grades compared to homework and classwork, groups will do similar Jigsaw Listening exercises, conducted by 2 sets of student examiners, who will record Chinese use, which lowers their score. At the same time as the Jigsaw activity, students will be matched with an opponent in a Tennis match, where they ask a question and answer their opponent's question. Grammar errors are 'Faults', for which they are allowed a second chance. Incorrectly answered questions are 'Unreturned' and correctly answered questions are 'Returned.' The player with the most points is the winner. I am hoping to re-create this in-class Tennis activity on the web using the question-answering application mentioned above. In class, I am the umpire, deciding the status of the question. As you can see, I have been developing my own curriculum. I don't use textbooks in class (although I am willing to use one if it is required.) Textbooks have acted as a starting point from which the curriculum has developed. For example, the topics and much of the material of my Business English classes comes from Longman's Market Leader. The problems of most of my Chinmin students were a lack of confidence, stress and other forms of discomfort, and a lack of adventurousness. These were the result of unenjoyable experiences in school learning English, the lack of contact with users of the language, and disappointment with their experiments with the language. At NUU, most students had more confidence and felt less stress, but (with the possible exception of the Chinese as a Foreign Language students) were still unwilling to use English with me and with each other. But I am not giving up and I am not slowing down. With the next step in my career, I want to change this situation, by developing my teaching repertoire and helping my students grow as learners of English. I am confident the future is bright. If your school is also of such a view, I would enjoy working with you, developing confident, relaxed, adventurous and superior speakers of the English language. Finally, my legal working status: My contract with NUU ends on July 31, on which date my ARC becomes invalid. I am going to Japan on July 20, and returning to Taiwan on July 31, on a short-term visitor's visa. I am available from that date. I am including a copy of the first page of my passport. Yours sincerely, Greg Matheson, Contract Lecturer, Language Center National United University 1, Lienda, Miaoli 36003, Taiwan, R.O.C (E-mail: drbean@freeshell.org) RESUME CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Gregory John Matheson Address: Language Center National United University 1, Lienda, Miaoli 36003, Taiwan, R.O.C Telephone: 037-381290 Email: drbean@freeshell.org, greg@nuu.edu.tw Homepage: http://drbean.freeshell.org PERSONAL INFORMATION Date of Birth: January 29, 1949 Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia Citizenship: Australian Alien Resident Certificate: KC00125148 Registered Lecturer (JiangShi): 056372 Sex: Male SUMMARY STATEMENT A dedicated, experienced, effective EFL teacher EDUCATION Troy State University, Seoul, Korea (Troy, Alabama, USA) MS in Educational Leadership 1993-1995 University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia PhD Program. (I did not submit a dissertation and don't have PhD.) 1970-1972 University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales BA (Psychology) 1966-1969 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Berlitz & Talk-In, Kansai, Japan English Conversation Teacher (1981-1985) The Korea Times, Seoul, Korea Copy Editor (1986-1996) Hyundai, Samsung, Kolon, and others, Seoul, Korea Part-time Business English Teacher (1987-1996) Soonchunhyang University, Asan, Korea Listening, Composition and Conversation (1997-1998) Chinmin Institute of Technology, Toufen, Taiwan Composition, Conversation, Business English (1999-2008) National United University, Miaoli, Taiwan Intercultural communication, Pop culture, Media, Composition, Conversation, Business English (2008-2012) PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS Korea TESOL (1986-1998) Seoul Chapter President (1992-1996) Participation in Tom Farrell's PhD Research (1995) A qualitative study on the reflections of 4 EFL teachers in Korea Indiana University of Pennsylvania, http://tesl-ej.org/ej14/a1.html Korea TESOL Teacher Development & Education SIG Co-founder/co-leader (1997-1998) With Barbara Wright Taipei Perl Mongers Member (2004-to date) Open-source perl programmers' organization PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS Language Skills Japanese, Advanced Korean, Intermediate Chinese, Basic Computer Skills Perl language, intermediate Haskell language, basic Linux system administration Web programming Web, mail server administration Natural Language Processing Certificate March - May, 2012 Jurafsky & Manning (Stanford) Grade 84.3 Testing Skills GRE scores (1992) Analytical 710 Quantitative 780 Verbal 780 CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Korea TESOL National Conference, Fall 1996 Swapshops (with Troy Ottwell, Andrew Todd) First Pan-Asian Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, January 1997 * Swapshops (with Troy Ottwell, Andrew Todd) * Teacher Knowledge Pusan KOTESOL Regional Conference, May 1997 Teaching metaphors INTERESTS Jogging, 6 kms in 1 hour Pushups, 35 Cycling, Taichung-Toufen, 8 hours, August 2004