Job Discussion Forums

[mdk]

I am a 61 year old American who spent the last winter teaching at a great big english language school in Moscow after I got my TEFL.

Long story, short - after 7 months of a 9 month contract we were both happy to go our separate ways and I am wondering if it is always going to be like this if I continue teaching overseas.

Is it all teaching rich people who don't want to study, but would rather complain that the teacher isn't good enough? Either that or is it all teaching tired and bored teenagers who don't want to be there in the first place? Or business people who are told they have to learn the language toot sweet - or else? I mean, I can teach people English, I just can't get them ready to understand the words to "Hotel California" by the third lesson.

And what's with this no use of L1? It's like trying to swim with your hands tied. I wasn't taught Russian or Spanish that way and I am fluent enough in each. Do all the schools overseas follow this model of instruction? (Note: Please do not feed me any rants pro or con about teaching in L1. I've had all I can stand on the subject and I know what I believe already. Just, is that the way they teach ESL everywhere?

In a few months my Social Security will kick in. That with my investments would enable me to live OK in Moscow, Spain or most of Latin America. I am currently getting tired of living back in the US and when I've paid off some credit cards and rebuilt my grubstake I would like to go overseas again and padddle my own canoe.

I see myself sitting in a park - maybe that nice one in Leon next to the statue of St. Francis - with a sign that says, "English lessons - 10 euros or a plate of Bacalao"

Maybe Leon, Maybe Santiago, Maybe St. Petersburg, but you get the general idea. Is anybody else doing stuff like that? Can you tell me about it?

Finally, I am an RN and meseems I could teach English Medical Terminology around some medical school. Is anybody doing that?

Thanks all,

mdk

[denise]

All the schools that I've taught in have basically been English-only, at least for the native speaker teachers. The local teachers often taught the lower levels, and I honestly don't know how much, if any, of the L1 was used. Unless you are being strictly monitored (like, supervisors listening in the hallways, which I have heard of in certain schools), you could slip in a quick vocabulary word or instruction in Russian if the students simply aren't getting it in English.

Have you thought about university jobs? (Many require an MA. ) In a more academic environment, you might see more motivated students. And if not, maybe being in that environment will be a good change for you from the private language school environment.

Good luck,
d

[Sonnet]

[spiral78]

I don't know where you're located in the States, but you may find that there are more niches for English in the medical professions Stateside. There are lots of programs for professional immigrants and health care is one of the biggest fields.
You would find, teaching immigrants, that motivation levels are incredibly high - they can very often be the best students on the planet, because they seriously need the language in real time.

It's not sunny Spain (where you likely can't work legally in any case) but you could build a portfolio of experience in this branch of the field, which may be useful in translation overseas somewhere as well.

[naturegirl321]

Maybe it's a culture thing. Here in Peru, I teach at a private uni and private secondary school. My students complain about everything. However in China, they complained if they didn't get homework and always asked for more.

[ls650]

Both in Indo and in Mexico, the bored teens haven't stay bored in my classes for long. I realize that this will sound obnoxious of me, but frankly, it sounds like you may need to do a bit more to liven up your classes.

[mdk]

Yeah, you're probably right. These kids had just gone through a full regular day at school and then I would pick them up for a two (2) hour class starting at 4 PM - with a whole 15 minute break. (That's the way the geniuses at the great big pukka sahib English school dictated their affairs)

Probably if had only had the wit to dance the can-can in yellow cross gaiters while I expostulated pedagogically about the finer points of the third conditional, then I would have been a decent TEFL guy instead of the poor broken sham you see before you today. (It is to bitterly laugh!)

Third conditional! (Slooowly, I turn!) What a ridiculous and pedantic way to teach somebody how to speak the language of Shakespeare and Faulkner! And all the rest of that silly twaddle which is the received pedagogical wisdom of the approved masters of Cambridge!

You want to know what I think? When the redundancies came around, they dreamed up this ridiculous and tortured version of grammar and sent their unemployable english teachers overseas to inflict it on the unsuspecting foreigners to keep from having a revolution of the unemployed back in sunny olde England.

Ooops! Pardon me. If people want to pay good money to be taught - for example - that there is an actual semantic difference in usage between "Going to do something" and "will do something" which couldn't be stuck in a flea's ear and still rattle - I say if there is such an iota of truth in it, then good bless their innocent little hearts. I just can't delude myself into thinking that spending 2 hours of an evening running through that beetle-tracking nonsense with them is of any conceivable help to them or consitutes my idea of what "teaching English" entails. Perhaps your opinion difers. Peace be upon you. As I have said earlier, my models are the teachers who taught me Russian and Spanish (not the TEFL-teacher types with their 4 weeks of tuition). They simply did not work in that ridiculous, nit-picking and peurile fashion and I turned out OK in my fluency and grammatical knowledge of both languages. At least I can buy potatoes without being wracked up while my poor brain tries to remember whether I am using the proper form of a past participle or some such inane nonsense.

Perhaps (when and if I decide to do it again) I will just sit on a bench with a sign saying "Real American English lessons taught here. Will work for a bowl of Solyanka or two piroshki"

[naturegirl321]

Listen, sometimes you just get stuck with horrible, spoilt students. There's a school policy where I work, that says that if the girls get a B on anything it has to be regraded and regraded until they get an A.
When I say they complain about everything, I mean everything. I tell them to open their books and they whinge, can't we just sleep? And this is a secondary school.

Just shrug it off and look for a school where the students want to learn.

[Stephen Jones]

[mdk]

I am a good language teacher - despite your caulking and patronizing insults. The question in this thread was whether all the ESL schools were as pedantically feckless and mercenary as the one I have left. It was not an invitation for you to wipe your feet on me.

Go your way, Mister. If people will pay you to inflict your tuition on them, then good for you. I understand that there actually is a subset of humanity which finds such methods useful - or at least believe them to be so. What a big wide world it is after all.


I will thank you for this one thing, however. You have certainly reminded me of why I want to teach as far away from people of your ilk as it is humanly possible to go. Yes, private lessons are definitely going to be my cup of tea.

[phis]

Got to side with Stephen on this one. The OP posted a question which was bound to invite responses that may or may not agree with his view of things. I think Stephen tried to be quite balanced in his response.

To add my opinion: Flexibility and compromise is the key in this type of work. The OP rubbishes anything and anyone not in accordance with his rather restricted view of what constitutes good language teaching. I think the OP has to take the award for passing out 'gratuitious insults' (his own words) in a field in which he evidently doesn't have much experience.

[mdk]

Well Phis, you're entitled to your opinion just like old Steve back there and God bless you for your kind and informed input.

May I just ask that we take it as read that you two have lots and lots of little pals who are liable to chime in and tell us all what ESL wizards you all are. It would be nice if your team would just put a sock in it and leave this thread for people who may or may not have a comment in line with the original thread's question - even if they don't exist in such rarefied forms of perfection as your august and learned selves. Is too much to ask that you guys go find your own corner?

Perhaps you two could start your own thread. You could call it the incredibly knowledgeable ESL mavens and that way, those who wanted to benefit from your great font of knowledge could go on over there and partake of it in the pure form.

[phis]

Point proven! What an idiot!

[denise]

[mdk]

Idiot, eh?

This "Idiot" took up teaching ESL as a second career so that I wouldn't have to survive exclusively on an ESL teacher's salary. Please don't call me an idiot again mister. I'm going to cry all the way to the bank.

I teach ESL after having retired from a full first career. Had I been enough of an imbecile to try living off an ESL teacher's salary, I might have become the sort of self-important, embittered drone who thinks esoteric points of grammar have enough meaning in the real world to insult strangers over - the sort of poor deluded drudge who thinks that it is somehow possible (hey presto!) to make a student learn a language by his own drudge arts.

Socrates used to tell people he was the smartest man in Athens because he at least knew that he did not know everything. I (idiot that I may be) at least know that the teacher can only present the material clearly and the student is the one who learns it. All the rest of you peoples' act is just smoke and mirrors designed to impress the rubes. Caper and smirk all you like, gentlemen. Wake me up when we come to the part where you magically make conversational English appear in the student's head.

I think I am approaching a better understanding of ESL. Let's call it MDK's first corollary, "People who are forced to subsist on an ESL teacher's salary probably can't teach it effectively."