Job Discussion Forums

Guinea Pig · Joined: 11 Jan 2010 Posts: 4 Location: Prague

If anyone on this site is currently teaching English in Sweden I would love to hear from you. I want to find out what opportunities are available and any important information that I should know about teaching Swedish students.

I did have a quick search on the internet but did not come up with much.

Many Thanks!

Sashadroogie · Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 10:17 pm Post subject:

Have never taught in Sweden, but taught lots of Swedish CAE and FCE students. Great surface speaking skills, but can have problems with more abstract subjects that call for less common vocabulary. Truly shocking inability to spell. Atrocious. Not much in the way of grammatical terminology either, so be prepared to explain if you need to. (Not much need, though.)

Best speakers, worst spellers of English in Europe.

GF · Joined: 08 Jun 2003 Posts: 238 Location: Tallinn

I have found Spanish students to be infinitely worse.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 8:01 pm Post subject:

Perhaps, but Spanish students of English are usually not that stellar at speaking either, so their poor spelling seems to match. With Swedes, it is surprising. To me at least.

robitusson · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 74

Any other info on teaching in Sweden? They seem to be pretty good at it. Someone must be doing a damn good job! Smile

jonniboy · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 12:06 pm Post subject:

The excellent English seems to be because they grow up speaking it and watch lots of kiddies programmes in English from an early age.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Same here in the Netherlands. They do study English as a mandatory subject for some years at school as well.

Most ESL here is essentially the same language courses we teach in countries where English is the L1: formal/academic/professional speaking and writing, study skills, intercultural communications for academia and professions.

Basically takes high-level quals to get into these fields, plus huge luck and contacts to find one of the (rare) openings.

GF · Joined: 08 Jun 2003 Posts: 238 Location: Tallinn

I spent some time in a Swedish high school as part of a teacher exchange program about 5 years ago and their English-language education is quite good. I was very impressed.

robitusson · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 74

Not much prospect of language school work then?

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Dragonsheart · Joined: 23 Mar 2009 Posts: 21 Location: Melbourne Australia

No pretty much nothing at all unfortunately.

I'm With Stupid · Joined: 03 Sep 2010 Posts: 432

Berlitz has schools in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, so there is obviously a market for it in Scandinavia. But I'm guessing it's much smaller than most other countries, and probably not getting any bigger. And these aren't exactly easy countries to live in when work is a bit short.

Here's the Swedish website.