| Petite Ambassadors is happy to
extend their offering to help our educational partners
enhance and accentuate their new or existing foreign
language program. In an increasingly diverse economy,
educators are realizing that students who master
and excel in foreign languages have more earning
power in Corporate America than those who do not. |
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| The Old vs. New Paradigms |
| Typically, most children
were not introduced to foreign languages until they
were in high school or around 14 years old. This
has been the practice in American education for
decades. Now, however, there is a shift in the old
paradigm due to overwhelming research in the areas
of language and brain development. Research is showing
over and over again that the younger a child is
when he is exposed to a foreign language, the easier
it is for that child to master the language. If
one really wants a child to master a foreign language,
instruction and conversation has to start prior
to age 12, and preferably before the child turns
6 years of age. Children who are exposed to multiple
languages from infancy excel at the languages they
were exposed to as babies and show an increased
proclivity for learning other languages as they
mature. |
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| Realities of the Education Economy |
| In an ideal world, every
educational institution would have unlimited, qualified
resources for teaching as many languages as they
have students, but clearly that is not the case.
Finding qualified, effective foreign language teachers
is difficult and expensive. |
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| Petite Ambassadors Solution: |
| Petite Ambassadors Language
Enhancement Services will help your school or daycare
provide quality language instruction at an affordable
price. We will come to your school or daycare and
customize a program that will meet your students’
needs. By sharing the resource of a full-time language
instructor with several other schools or early learning
centers in the area, we make the cost of providing
top-quality language instruction affordable for
everyone. |
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| Qualifications: |
| The credentials and background
of our instructors vary from instructor to instructor,
but all are thoroughly screened and rigorously tested
prior to being hired into our organization. Our
instructors are native speakers of the languages
they teach. We insist on this for several reasons.
First, native speakers provide the students with
an authentic accent so it increases their ability
to understand the language when it is spoken by
the people who actually speak that language. Additionally,
the children also pick up this accent which increases
the likelihood that they will be understood by people
who speak that language. Second, native speakers
can teach students how to express ideas in the language.
Each nationality expresses ideas in their own way.
Idioms naturally abound in language and a true test
of one’s ability to communicate in another
language is his ability to use and understand idioms
in everyday communication. Usually this is something
that a non-native speaker is poor at teaching. Third,
native speakers can teach culture in a way that
a non-native speaker can, as they have lived the
culture and traditions of their respective country.
Nuances in business and social situations are often
not understood by non-natives, and therefore can
not be taught effectively by non-natives. Finally,
native speakers allow a natural flexibility in the
teaching curriculum so that we can customize each
class and interaction to the skill level of each
student, enabling our students to progress at a
quicker rate. |
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| Hiring Process |
| We follow a strict hiring
practice for each candidate who would like to teach
for Petite Ambassadors. The following outlines our
selection and assessment process. |
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- Each candidate supplies us
with a resume and references
- Each candidate is then required
to take a series of Personality and Cognitive tests.
The Personality Tests are used to find individuals
who fit into a “Successful Teachers” profile
and the Cognitive Test is used to ensure that each
person we hire at Petite Ambassadors is a master at
critical and strategic thinking.
- If a candidate falls within
an acceptable range of scores, he will then undergo
3 interviews using a behavioral interviewing protocol
to confirm or negate the results garnered from the
Personality Tests.
- Once the interviews have been
conducted, the results from all the data we have collected
on a candidate is then integrated and discussed among
the staff.
- If the candidate is selected
to continue on in our process, all screenings are
then done to ensure that the candidate does not have
a criminal history or has a drug abuse problem.
- Next the candidate’s
references are checked.
- Finally, all candidates must
demonstrate their ability to teach by holding several
classes for our students.
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| Once a candidate has made
it through all of these hurdles, and all (including
our own students) approve, only then is an offer
extended to the candidate. This is a complex and
expensive process, but we are committed to providing
our Education Partners with only finest and most
qualified individuals who are not only exceptional
teachers but exemplary ambassadors of the culture
they represent. |
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| Curriculum: |
| Our instructors use many
methods to teach students language in a fun, interactive
environment. Over the course of a 14 week semester,
students will be exposed to over 800 vocabulary
words and various grammatical structures that will
get them speaking from the first day of class. Our
immersion techniques have been successful with many
of our private clients and have been proven to work
in a classroom environment. Using a multi-sensory
immersion approach, language and conversation becomes
real to the student and what they learn can easily
be integrated into their everyday lives because
we teach them about the activities and things that
they enjoy most. |
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No, I am
not interested in giving my students a competitive
edge, please do not contact me. |
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