How to Prepare for Instructor Positions at Universities: A Personal Story

Dedicated to the soon-to-be graduates of METU FLE who are torn between the joy of graduation and the stressful process of finding a good job.

As followers of this blog, my name might ring a bell for some of you since it is on many posts here. If it doesn’t, I’m Furkan and I’ve been working at Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus for about two months now.

First of all, like almost all the writers of this blog, I should say “Be proud of yourselves for being a METU student/graduate.” It does make a difference and you feel it better when you go out of the magic ball that we call campus.

I cannot say my preparation process was very organized but I can say that it didn’t happen overnight, or in a month as some people would claim. As you know, there are mainly three things that you need to focus on:

1. Theoretical and practical ELT knowledge, i.e. mainstream approaches, theories etc. and current trends and issues (we might also include classroom management here)


2. A valid and preferably high language exam score


3. An ALES score.

For the ELT knowledge part, what I did was basically scan a comprehensive reference book, such as Harmer’s famous the Practice of English Language Teaching, and identify the parts that I needed to revise or study again if necessary. Then I studied those in more detail and from other resources. (We published a post about must-read ELT books and articles. It also answers many questions about job applications and interviews. Check it out here.)

Other than books and articles, another way of keeping yourself updated is attending conferences where you get to meet teachers and other professionals with great ideas or famous ELT authors like Jeremy Harmer, Jim Scrivener, Ken Wilson among many others.

What I found most useful was the discussions we had in Practice Teaching and School Experience courses. As some of you might know, we used to read articles every week and write a reflection about them. Then we used to discuss them in class, which I think helped me a lot to start seeing them as real life issues rather than abstract concepts made up by some researcher in the US. I’m being very sincere and probably speaking for all her students when I say we should give all the credit in the world to our teacher Yasemin Hoca for putting so much effort into designing the course and making course packs full of carefully selected articles. And of course for the constant feedback and support she provided all the way through.

I don’t think there’s any need to talk about language exams so I’m moving on with the ALES exam. Only after I started working did I realize that I wasted way too much time studying for ALES. It can be a determining factor especially at the first stage of applications but as far as I observed, what employers really look for is a qualified candidate who speaks English well and who is aware of ELT issues. This is of course my personal opinion and it depends on the institution you are applying to. The best thing to do to study for ALES in my opinion is to first analyze the types of questions especially if you’re not familiar with them. You might then want to do timed practice tests as much as possible. If you can do some math, that’s great but if not I wouldn’t advise you to spend a lot of time on it. You can use that time to focus on other aspects of the process like writing a cover letter, a CV etc.

I did not include this item on the list but you might also want to keep some essential documents handy (CV, cover letter etc.) so that you don’t start from scratch for every application. They will probably need to be different for each application but you can always adapt and reuse them as long as they are your own work.

One final note: Don’t be shy about pointing out your accomplishments when you’re applying for a job. At first it seems a little pretentious to brag about what you’ve done but if that’s what they want to hear, you have to give it to them. And don’t worry about being inexperienced because there are many universities looking for teachers with no experience. Bilkent and METU NCC are just two of them.

Good luck to all of you!