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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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 Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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| As far as $$ expectations for the ME; every job posting I've ever read for SA, Abu Dhabi or Dubai was at least 3k/ month. I'll have CELTA and three years experience by then. Why would i get horribly less than that? I'm not trying to be defensive, just looking for answers... |
I don't think you'd get hired for less than that. I just think that it would be a lucky stroke to get hired at all with only a CELTA and three years.
I have a lot of friends who swear by the middle east as a place to live, work, and save money.
All have MAs. Several have PhDs, or are in process of completing them.
All had prior, verifiable university experience, post MA.
CELTA plus three years will get you in, in most places. In Latin America, where economies don't attract the most qualified, it would probably get you into the really good jobs.
But...most of the middle east pays a lot, compared to most places. Which means the higher end of our profession applies for these jobs. Unless you're highly qualified, it's harder to get in.
Best,
Justin |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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PS- I do know one guy with cert only who's working in Saudi now, but his savings aren't quite what you're looking for. (Pretty darn good, even so, though. Tells me that 10-15K US isn't too hard. But he's on a boring alcohol free complex in the desert and hasn't seen a woman in months. He emails. A lot.)
Best,
Justin |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Justin Trullinger wrote: |
PS- I do know one guy with cert only who's working in Saudi now, but his savings aren't quite what you're looking for. (Pretty darn good, even so, though. Tells me that 10-15K US isn't too hard. But he's on a boring alcohol free complex in the desert and hasn't seen a woman in months. He emails. A lot.)
Best,
Justin |
no point having alcohol if there's no women around....
but isnt that what Bahrain is for? |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Justin Trullinger wrote: |
| Quote: |
| As far as $$ expectations for the ME; every job posting I've ever read for SA, Abu Dhabi or Dubai was at least 3k/ month. I'll have CELTA and three years experience by then. Why would i get horribly less than that? I'm not trying to be defensive, just looking for answers... |
I don't think you'd get hired for less than that. I just think that it would be a lucky stroke to get hired at all with only a CELTA and three years.
I have a lot of friends who swear by the middle east as a place to live, work, and save money.
All have MAs. Several have PhDs, or are in process of completing them.
All had prior, verifiable university experience, post MA.
CELTA plus three years will get you in, in most places. In Latin America, where economies don't attract the most qualified, it would probably get you into the really good jobs.
But...most of the middle east pays a lot, compared to most places. Which means the higher end of our profession applies for these jobs. Unless you're highly qualified, it's harder to get in.
Best,
Justin |
as far as getting hired at all, I do have a cousin who worked in Dubai and said she could give me contacts. But there seems to be plenty of job openings around the start of the school year; there can't be SO many teachers with the flexibility to go on the drop of the hat, or who had been planning to go specifically there at that exact time...my degree is in International Relations with a focus on the ME; would that matter? haha |
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santi84
Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 1317
Location: under da sea
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
well, I've taken a year of Italian in class (less than 120 hours) and I'm nearly at a conversational level already, and i started at zero. I've taken french in grade school and junior high and even now, before really starting to study it, i can read french fairly well, if not yet speak it. After a year, will i be able to write a novel in French? No, but the point is, for government work, to cut off the training time to get fluent. That said i've read that if you take someone who speaks english, no prior knowledge of X western Euro language and immerse him in that culture for a year, at the end of a year he'll be functionally fluent....and i'm starting way ahead of zero. Plus since i've plowed through Italian grammar (structurally similar) I wont have to waste time learning concepts. |
I don't mean to be a drag, but I think you should really take a closer look at the difficulty of the French language. I do not have a CELTA (university BA focused on TESL and a TESL Canada Level II professional certification), but I think you are seriously underestimating the difficulty of learning a language, especially one such as French. Yes, French is easier to read for someone who knows English (since many words have been borrowed between the languages), and knowing etre, avoir, etc. makes the structure more clear - but speaking French is no minimal task, and extremely difficult [for example, a simple word such as "monster" - "le monstre" (sounds like "l-mohn-s-t")]. However, French and English are very different in their structure, the ease of an English-speaker reading French lies more with various conquests and media than anything else.
Having studied French at the university level (and being a Canadian, from B.C. (who read food labels), married to a French guy, and has spent a lot of time in French-only Quebec community), I've got to say that it is a lot more difficult than knowing a European language (which can be anything from English, French, to Hungarian!) and immersing oneself for one year. |
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naturegirl321
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 9041
Location: home sweet home
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Justin Trullinger wrote: |
CELTA plus three years will get you in, in most places. In Latin America, where economies don't attract the most qualified, it would probably get you into the really good jobs.
But...most of the middle east pays a lot, compared to most places. Which means the higher end of our profession applies for these jobs. Unless you're highly qualified, it's harder to get in.
Best,
Justin |
In Peru, you probably could only make 700 usd a month at a uni job that will get you a visa. And about the ME, be prepared to fill out long applications and reference forms. |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| santi84 wrote: |
| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
well, I've taken a year of Italian in class (less than 120 hours) and I'm nearly at a conversational level already, and i started at zero. I've taken french in grade school and junior high and even now, before really starting to study it, i can read french fairly well, if not yet speak it. After a year, will i be able to write a novel in French? No, but the point is, for government work, to cut off the training time to get fluent. That said i've read that if you take someone who speaks english, no prior knowledge of X western Euro language and immerse him in that culture for a year, at the end of a year he'll be functionally fluent....and i'm starting way ahead of zero. Plus since i've plowed through Italian grammar (structurally similar) I wont have to waste time learning concepts. |
I don't mean to be a drag, but I think you should really take a closer look at the difficulty of the French language. I do not have a CELTA (university BA focused on TESL and a TESL Canada Level II professional certification), but I think you are seriously underestimating the difficulty of learning a language, especially one such as French. Yes, French is easier to read for someone who knows English (since many words have been borrowed between the languages), and knowing etre, avoir, etc. makes the structure more clear - but speaking French is no minimal task, and extremely difficult [for example, a simple word such as "monster" - "le monstre" (sounds like "l-mohn-s-t")]. However, French and English are very different in their structure, the ease of an English-speaker reading French lies more with various conquests and media than anything else.
Having studied French at the university level (and being a Canadian, from B.C. (who read food labels), married to a French guy, and has spent a lot of time in French-only Quebec community), I've got to say that it is a lot more difficult than knowing a European language (which can be anything from English, French, to Hungarian!) and immersing oneself for one year. |
well, i guess we'll see....to be honest, i'm not sure i see the point of telling me I CAN'T learn it in a year. For starters, as said, i'm not starting at zero, secondly the structure is known to me. (ie, knowing italian structure, i've noticed that what i've read in french, i've picked up very similar structural points). Third, wouldnt pronunciation be the first thing that even passive exposure-being canadian-gives to one? I picked up Russian pronunciation very quickly, and there's no way French is more difficult...(btw, i understood the le monstre pronunciation before) |
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santi84
Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 1317
Location: under da sea
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| Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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| If you can do it in one year, more power to you. I am not trying to discourage you from becoming fluent in French. I love French, it is an incredible language, but high school French (in Canada), reading product labels or national park signs, and perhaps some TVA or Radio-Canada is not lifelong exposure to a language and will not make a significant impact on speaking skills. That doesn't even take into consideration the strong difference between "France" French and "Quebecois" French. In my experience as a teacher, Quebecois ESL students still struggle with pronouncing English, despite their much-larger exposure to English throughout their lives. Good luck. |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 3:18 am Post subject: |
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| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
That said i've read that if you take someone who speaks english, no prior knowledge of X western Euro language and immerse him in that culture for a year, at the end of a year he'll be functionally fluent.
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The thing is that on a board like this, many people have graduate degrees in Applied Linguistics and TESOL, so we've studied second language acquisition. And basically, for most people (you can never say ALL), then this is just wrong. Sorry, but it is.
After a year you can expect to be able to 'function' in the language. That means you can use it to get the stuff you need to done: like shopping, maybe small talk at a bar, read enough to understand the headlines and gist of a newspaper article, take a cab from A to B. It doesn't mean fluent and it doesn't mean business level. And if you've ever been to Ottawa, then you'd know that in Ottawa, 'fluent' in English for French people and 'fluent' in French for English people are two entirely different things. I've seen people who are fluent in French turned down for jobs because they didn't have a Canadian French accent. The person was fluent in Parisian French (they weren't Canadian). That type of thing is like turning someone down for a job for speaking in a posh English accent instead of a Canadian English accent.
Somewhere the Canadian government made a list of languages that were graded into difficulty levels (not a list of easiest to hardest, but three headings 'not too hard', 'pretty hard', and 'wince at the thought'. There were five levels, maybe, I can't really remember). German is in the hardest level (or second to hardest). It's a western European language. In fact, not only is it in the same language family as English, but it's on the same branch and there are only two languages between the two. It goes English, Frisian, Dutch, German. (BTW, Italian and French are on different branches of the Romance family- they are really, significantly different. So they are similar in the same way that say, English and Swedish are similar- both Germanic languages, but from different branches). That said, language branches form a continuum. The language that you study when you study a language at a university will be the internationally accepted version (so when I studied French in Ontario, grade 13 is when we really started to actually have a clue of the language, but we studied franco-Ontarian and Quebequois French, then I hit university and we had to learn Parisian- different accent, lots of different words, even the greetings can be different), the version used in the capital where the power is. There are local varieties that are very different and if you drive through France and over into Italy and then head south, especially if you are skip big cities, then you'll see that the way people speak sort of gradually changes from something very like the language of Paris into something very like the language of Rome. It isn't Parisian French, Parisian French Parisian French. ll Border ll Roman Italian. Roman Italian. Roman Italian. The same goes for the Germanic languages going from Germany through to the Netherlands. The issue is that learning a variety very far removed from the national capital / internationally accepted version will come off like having worked very very hard to learn the variety of Newfie English spoekn in only a single hamlet of Newfoundland, and not able to actually understand or speak the variety of English really anywhere else. It's basically not all that useful, which is why internationally accepted varieties exist- they serve to unite a tribe within their nation separate from others and provides a unified front to something that, other than the power base may not be unified. This is particularly true of a nation like Italy that was not a unified nation until very recently (it's about the same age as Canada). It has a history of thousands of years, as tiny little city states and kingdoms that were separate- that's why if you study art history you'll see a great difference between northern and southern styles of art. Same goes with even the way they eat food and what food they eat.
'Fluent' means the opinions of the native users of the target language as well as the person using it. I'm not considered fluent in French in Canada, but after studying it up to second year of university for FSL (French as a Second Language) majors and living in Ottawa, I can easily, easily live my life in French. |
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coledavis
Joined: 21 Jun 2003
Posts: 1838
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| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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Re: CELTA, Trinity and other courses.
The named courses are recognised by most employers (Trinity more for ones specialising in younger children). Also, as they are regulated, you are more likely to find yourself on a higher quality training course. So you are giving yourself a bit more of an edge by having one of these. |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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| GambateBingBangBOOM wrote: |
| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
That said i've read that if you take someone who speaks english, no prior knowledge of X western Euro language and immerse him in that culture for a year, at the end of a year he'll be functionally fluent.
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The thing is that on a board like this, many people have graduate degrees in Applied Linguistics and TESOL, so we've studied second language acquisition. And basically, for most people (you can never say ALL), then this is just wrong. Sorry, but it is.
After a year you can expect to be able to 'function' in the language. That means you can use it to get the stuff you need to done: like shopping, maybe small talk at a bar, read enough to understand the headlines and gist of a newspaper article, take a cab from A to B. It doesn't mean fluent and it doesn't mean business level. And if you've ever been to Ottawa, then you'd know that in Ottawa, 'fluent' in English for French people and 'fluent' in French for English people are two entirely different things. I've seen people who are fluent in French turned down for jobs because they didn't have a Canadian French accent. The person was fluent in Parisian French (they weren't Canadian). That type of thing is like turning someone down for a job for speaking in a posh English accent instead of a Canadian English accent.
Somewhere the Canadian government made a list of languages that were graded into difficulty levels (not a list of easiest to hardest, but three headings 'not too hard', 'pretty hard', and 'wince at the thought'. There were five levels, maybe, I can't really remember). German is in the hardest level (or second to hardest). It's a western European language. In fact, not only is it in the same language family as English, but it's on the same branch and there are only two languages between the two. It goes English, Frisian, Dutch, German. (BTW, Italian and French are on different branches of the Romance family- they are really, significantly different. So they are similar in the same way that say, English and Swedish are similar- both Germanic languages, but from different branches). That said, language branches form a continuum. The language that you study when you study a language at a university will be the internationally accepted version (so when I studied French in Ontario, grade 13 is when we really started to actually have a clue of the language, but we studied franco-Ontarian and Quebequois French, then I hit university and we had to learn Parisian- different accent, lots of different words, even the greetings can be different), the version used in the capital where the power is. There are local varieties that are very different and if you drive through France and over into Italy and then head south, especially if you are skip big cities, then you'll see that the way people speak sort of gradually changes from something very like the language of Paris into something very like the language of Rome. It isn't Parisian French, Parisian French Parisian French. ll Border ll Roman Italian. Roman Italian. Roman Italian. The same goes for the Germanic languages going from Germany through to the Netherlands. The issue is that learning a variety very far removed from the national capital / internationally accepted version will come off like having worked very very hard to learn the variety of Newfie English spoekn in only a single hamlet of Newfoundland, and not able to actually understand or speak the variety of English really anywhere else. It's basically not all that useful, which is why internationally accepted varieties exist- they serve to unite a tribe within their nation separate from others and provides a unified front to something that, other than the power base may not be unified. This is particularly true of a nation like Italy that was not a unified nation until very recently (it's about the same age as Canada). It has a history of thousands of years, as tiny little city states and kingdoms that were separate- that's why if you study art history you'll see a great difference between northern and southern styles of art. Same goes with even the way they eat food and what food they eat.
'Fluent' means the opinions of the native users of the target language as well as the person using it. I'm not considered fluent in French in Canada, but after studying it up to second year of university for FSL (French as a Second Language) majors and living in Ottawa, I can easily, easily live my life in French. |
all the things you mentioned about after a year, being able to function etc, I can do right now, in French (it'd be child like speaking, but i could get by), easily in Italian, after a year of just school studying, and probably even in Russian, same year of school studying. Whoever came up with those benchmarks is either wrong or I'm an exception...either way. (those benchmarks you mentioned are mostly solitary. ie, not much interpersonal conversing. I could fake my way through a french convo, hold up decently in Italian, might be lost in Russian)
from my own personal experience, I just cant see how I wouldnt be proficient given a year in any of the three places. I'll be in France and the french parts of Switzerland for 14 months; accent and dialect differences aside, I'm confident that I'd have a good enough grasp by then to, say, run for office in Canada. Will i be "fluent"? I dont know.....a Russian girl i know moved to canada three years ago, no classes, no instruction, learned english in 3 years by watching movies, to the level of taking university classes. I ask myself, why couldnt I do that, minus a year for actually being instructed in it?
about the dialect differences you quoted...if i read correctly, you are saying to learn the internationally accepted, presumably big city dialects...? Well, if i'm living in Paris and then Moscow.... |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
all the things you mentioned about after a year, being able to function etc, I can do right now, in French (it'd be child like speaking, but i could get by), |
And if the person speaking to to you did not also speak like a child? Communication is a two-way street, and you'd be assuming that they would speak to you in the way at the level that you were speaking to them. Not the case.
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easily in Italian, after a year of just school studying, and probably even in Russian, same year of school studying. |
Yeah ok. I guess all those people who major in French or Italian or Russian at university must just be stupid, then.
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| Whoever came up with those benchmarks is either wrong or I'm an exception...either way. |
Ok... the people with doctorates in linguistics who have spent their lives studying this type of thing know less about it than you. They must just be stupid, too.
There are tonnes of people who go overseas thinking that they are the exception and it won't happen to them. Then they find out that they aren't only when it does.
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(those benchmarks you mentioned are mostly solitary. ie, not much interpersonal conversing. I could fake my way through a french convo, hold up decently in Italian, might be lost in Russian) |
Then please respond to this post entirely in French. You may want to think about going to Quebec city for a week or two and seeing what it's like before assuming you can learn French in a year. I think it's likely that if you've had conversations in French, that the other person was being as accommodating as possible, speaking very slowly and using words that are in both languages. Living your life in another language and what happens in a language classroom are two entirely different things.
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from my own personal experience, I just cant see how I wouldnt be proficient given a year in any of the three places. |
Have you ever even actually lived in a non-English speaking area? Please explain EXACTLY how you intend to become proficient in one year. What steps will you take? (Osmosis isn't going to do it). And keep in mind that you will be teaching English during this time, so most of your waking hours most of the time will be entirely in English. If you've never lived in a non-English speaking area, then the reason you can't see how you wouldn't be proficient is because you basically have no way to judge it. There are people in Toronto who've been there over half their lives and don't speak English all that well / well enough to get by.
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I'll be in France and the French parts of Switzerland for 14 months; accent and dialect differences aside, I'm confident that I'd have a good enough grasp by then to, say, run for office in Canada. |
You need to talk to French people if you work for the federal government. Your French has to be good. For example, Stephen Harper has been studying for years now, and is obviously not fluent (though in all honesty, it's really pretty good).
I'm not sure why you feel you need to go to Europe to learn French. You'd be learning a different variety of it. So if you learned it, you would return and sound like a foreigner, and possibly even have difficulty understanding some people in Quebec (lots of people from France do). Why don't you just go to Quebec City, the heart of Canadian French, the kind you actually need in Canada? It'd like Schwarzenegger going to London to learn English in order to work in the US government and coming back complaining of a problem 'under the bonnet of his lorry, innit'.
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| Will i be "fluent"? I dont know.....a Russian girl i know moved to canada three years ago, no classes, no instruction, learned english in 3 years by watching movies, to the level of taking university classes. I ask myself, why couldnt I do that, minus a year for actually being instructed in it? |
Maybe because she glossed over studying English for eight years in Russia (grades 4 -11 foreign language is mandatory, most Russians study only English in that time, some may also study French or Spanish, too). It should be obvious that you aren't going to learn a language to beyond EAP level by watching TV, especially when it involves a different script.
You've obviously decided that this is what you're going to do, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:20 am Post subject: |
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| GambateBingBangBOOM wrote: |
| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
all the things you mentioned about after a year, being able to function etc, I can do right now, in French (it'd be child like speaking, but i could get by), |
And if the person speaking to to you did not also speak like a child? Communication is a two-way street, and you'd be assuming that they would speak to you in the way at the level that you were speaking to them. Not the case.
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easily in Italian, after a year of just school studying, and probably even in Russian, same year of school studying. |
Yeah ok. I guess all those people who major in French or Italian or Russian at university must just be stupid, then.
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| Whoever came up with those benchmarks is either wrong or I'm an exception...either way. |
Ok... the people with doctorates in linguistics who have spent their lives studying this type of thing know less about it than you. They must just be stupid, too.
There are tonnes of people who go overseas thinking that they are the exception and it won't happen to them. Then they find out that they aren't only when it does.
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(those benchmarks you mentioned are mostly solitary. ie, not much interpersonal conversing. I could fake my way through a french convo, hold up decently in Italian, might be lost in Russian) |
Then please respond to this post entirely in French. You may want to think about going to Quebec city for a week or two and seeing what it's like before assuming you can learn French in a year. I think it's likely that if you've had conversations in French, that the other person was being as accommodating as possible, speaking very slowly and using words that are in both languages. Living your life in another language and what happens in a language classroom are two entirely different things.
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from my own personal experience, I just cant see how I wouldnt be proficient given a year in any of the three places. |
Have you ever even actually lived in a non-English speaking area? Please explain EXACTLY how you intend to become proficient in one year. What steps will you take? (Osmosis isn't going to do it). And keep in mind that you will be teaching English during this time, so most of your waking hours most of the time will be entirely in English. If you've never lived in a non-English speaking area, then the reason you can't see how you wouldn't be proficient is because you basically have no way to judge it. There are people in Toronto who've been there over half their lives and don't speak English all that well / well enough to get by.
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I'll be in France and the French parts of Switzerland for 14 months; accent and dialect differences aside, I'm confident that I'd have a good enough grasp by then to, say, run for office in Canada. |
You need to talk to French people if you work for the federal government. Your French has to be good. For example, Stephen Harper has been studying for years now, and is obviously not fluent (though in all honesty, it's really pretty good).
I'm not sure why you feel you need to go to Europe to learn French. You'd be learning a different variety of it. So if you learned it, you would return and sound like a foreigner, and possibly even have difficulty understanding some people in Quebec (lots of people from France do). Why don't you just go to Quebec City, the heart of Canadian French, the kind you actually need in Canada? It'd like Schwarzenegger going to London to learn English in order to work in the US government and coming back complaining of a problem 'under the bonnet of his lorry, innit'.
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| Will i be "fluent"? I dont know.....a Russian girl i know moved to canada three years ago, no classes, no instruction, learned english in 3 years by watching movies, to the level of taking university classes. I ask myself, why couldnt I do that, minus a year for actually being instructed in it? |
Maybe because she glossed over studying English for eight years in Russia (grades 4 -11 foreign language is mandatory, most Russians study only English in that time, some may also study French or Spanish, too). It should be obvious that you aren't going to learn a language to beyond EAP level by watching TV, especially when it involves a different script.
You've obviously decided that this is what you're going to do, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. |
again, I'm not sure why this has become a referendum on my ability to learn a language, but anyways.....
like i said, most of the things you mentioned were me dictating to someone a cab ride, a dinner order etc, where presumably the job is to get my point across. That's what i'm responding to. What i'm also saying is that to answer what someone might say to me, if i went RIGHT NOW to either Paris, Rome or Moscow, i could fake my way thru French, get by decently in Italian, might be bewildered in Russian. Not sure why you should disbelieve me; what do i have to gain by lying or exaggerating?
i obviously dont know about people you know majoring, I just know that I can, say, watch Italian movies, or today i watched an Italian soccer game, and I can follow along well. I couldnt be a UN translator, but I'd be fine in Rome.
maybe i will be one of the people who finds out his sh#t does, afterall, stink. My point is, why do you care?
my french is nowhere near good enough to respond entirely in french. I never claimed it to be.
in'm going to cannes for july, taking a learning vacay at a school there, 15 hr/week, then in Paris i'm taking classes, 20hr/week, at the sorbonne, same with Moscow at MGU. Beyond that, read newspapers, books, watch TV, movies etc...
granted, i'm judging my ability against people i know who have osmosised it within three years, like the girl i mentioned. If i'm actually working at it....
...because i want to go to Paris/ Europe. I'll hit Quebec if needed later on.
what sense is it supposed to make? |
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santi84
Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 1317
Location: under da sea
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| Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
again, I'm not sure why this has become a referendum on my ability to learn a language, but anyways.....
maybe i will be one of the people who finds out his sh#t does, afterall, stink. My point is, why do you care?
granted, i'm judging my ability against people i know who have osmosised it within three years, like the girl i mentioned. If i'm actually working at it....
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Nobody on this website would ever try to discourage someone from learning another language. After all, we are language teachers and many have spent several years of academic study concentrating on language acquisition.
Your original question was:
"Is it worth taking CELTA over Oxford or shorter courses?"
Yes. One major reason is because you will need some solid training in language acquisition. If you are going to teach students a second language, you will need to use knowledge from established theory and research.
I suppose what GambateBingBangBOOM and I are trying to say is that you have some false/misguided notions of how language acquisiton occurs, and that will have a negative impact on your ability to be a teacher. For a lot of us, it is still about the students. |
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Hot2GlobeTrot
Joined: 01 Sep 2009
Posts: 82
Location: Calgary, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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| santi84 wrote: |
| Hot2GlobeTrot wrote: |
again, I'm not sure why this has become a referendum on my ability to learn a language, but anyways.....
maybe i will be one of the people who finds out his sh#t does, afterall, stink. My point is, why do you care?
granted, i'm judging my ability against people i know who have osmosised it within three years, like the girl i mentioned. If i'm actually working at it....
|
Nobody on this website would ever try to discourage someone from learning another language. After all, we are language teachers and many have spent several years of academic study concentrating on language acquisition.
Your original question was:
"Is it worth taking CELTA over Oxford or shorter courses?"
Yes. One major reason is because you will need some solid training in language acquisition. If you are going to teach students a second language, you will need to use knowledge from established theory and research.
I suppose what GambateBingBangBOOM and I are trying to say is that you have some false/misguided notions of how language acquisiton occurs, and that will have a negative impact on your ability to be a teacher. For a lot of us, it is still about the students. |
fine, obviously as of now i dont know how to teach a language and to be in class i need to get certified for that. For private tutoring, at the start of which i'll have CELTA anyway, i dont imagine you sit there running grammar exercises. I'd imagine it's more of a cultural exchange, with a foundation of grammar as needed.
that said, I'm starting work as a tutor next week, part of which i was hired on to do some ESL tutoring...so we'll see.
as far as arguing about language acquisition, i wasnt debating theoretical points. I was pointing out what I have so far acquired, and how it seems to be beyond what the theoretical suggests, as laid out in the above. Some of the posts seemed to say that, no, in fact, what i think I am capable of right now in X language is wrong, which is of course absurd to suggest based on about 10 message board postings.
if-if-i'm one of the people who can easily acquire languages, I agree that it hinders my ability to teach it, and thus I would need training. And therefore i ask the questions.... |
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