Job Discussion Forums

[mathiasdf]

Hi.

I've been teaching English for the past 3 months or so and I've seen some ads around offering Financial English and Legal English.

My question is this: What's the going rate for such lessons and how much does it require from the teacher?

I have no financial background but I've enough free time to go through a dozen esp textbooks. If that's all it takes, of course, and if it is indeed worth the time and effort.

[redsoxfan]

I'd imagine that not too many TEFL teachers have a ton of expertise in finance or law because if they had, they probably wouldn't be teaching English. By all means, teach yourself. It might be a matter of staying one lesson ahead of your students--learning some particular points and then teaching them. I don't think most students would expect you to be an absolute expert, and they would surely excuse you if from time to time you simply admitted that you would need to look up an answer for them. Still, they would expect that you have some decent working knowledge of the content area that you're teaching.

As far as money, I have no idea. Maybe a bit more than regular privates at first, but I personally wouldn't feel comfortable throwing out big numbers til I had a certain degree of confidence in those subject areas. I met one guy from Warsaw who only teaches legal English and does quite well for himself.

[Kootvela]

If you work for a company, general English and legal English rates will be the same for you esp. if you have a standard work contract with a fixed salary on it, though the school gets more money for such courses. As a private teacher, I can set my rates individually and charge more for legal English.

It is not your task to teach the subject matter- the students should know the related terms from their working experience. Your job is to make them use proper English (grammar, pronunciation, appropriacy, etc) to put their vocabulary in meaningful sentences.

[scottie1113]

It's not as easy as that. I teach both financial and legal English through my school so I don't know how much you should charge if you're going to do it on your own. The financial one is easy, although few teachers want to attempt it, and the legal class is something nobody else wants to touch because it requires an incredible amount of preparation to do well.

I'm sometimes stunned by teachers just out of university who attempt to teach these classes and then are surprised when they're eaten alive by their students. It ain't just about English.

I'm fortunate because I have 25+ years of experience in sales and sales management and both come easy to me but they take a lot of work. Students in these classes tend to be advanced and can be quite demanding so you can't do a half a$$ed job and expect to satisfy them.

Can you explain capitalization, the difference between common and preferred stock, or revenue bonds? How good is your Latin? You'll need that for legal English. Do you understand depreciation and can you explain the difference between straight line and acelerated and the consequences of each when an asset is sold? Students in finance classes, who can be bankers, accountants and financial analysts, will ask about this.

The upside is that the students are bright and highly motivated and I get tremendous satisfaction from teaching them. Mind you, I'm neither a specialist in finance nor a lawyer, but that's not necessary to teach in either area. I'm an English teacher and I teach English related to those fields.

Example: this evening I was doing a class in contracts in my legal English lesson. We were discussing negotiating. We listened to a a recording where the term horse trading was used. I used a couple of personal examples and when I wrote quid pro quo on the whiteboard the lightbulb went on.

I use a book written to prepare lawyers to pass the exam for certification in using English plus a couple of web sites, and lots of others in my finance classes. If you're interested PM or email me and I'll give the the titles to the texts I use.

Hope this helps.

[simon_porter00]

Yes, legal English can range from one extreme to another. I teach several legal directors at different companies (the school had no qualms about selling my Law degree to them, even though i studied law 8 years ago and had absolutely no interest in persuing a career in law) and the students range from knowing absolutely everything in their field (which is great) to thse who wants to be able to write and understand legal prose and to translate Polish legal terms into English. Sometimes you simply have to admit defeat and email them the answer or prepare it for the next lesson, but you can really get your nuts chewed off if you go in unprepared. It;s definately more than teaching English.

[mathiasdf]

I actually have one student for financial English and I've had a few lessons so far. It's true that having an idea of, as was the case recently, financial ratios is not necessarily the same as being able to discuss their implications.

Spending a lot of time preparing for lessons is something I wouldn't have much of a problem with, less so getting a degree in Law or Finance. So it's a relief to know that not everyone in the field has a degree and work experience.

As for teaching privately or through a company it does of course make a difference in terms of money, but I am curious as to what sort of range to expect.