Job Discussion Forums

[MotherF]

You might even find a university job teaching English AND French.

[EFLeducator]

[Guy Courchesne]

[MotherF]

La Salle is rapidly expanding around the country, we just got our first class of graduates from their prepa in Oaxaca this fall. They took English for 3 hours a day and French for one hour a day, most tested into our top two levels.

Many universities require their tourism students to take French as well as English. Most modern language majors have to take two languages English and their choice of other, most I've met tell me they did French. (And I've met quite a few since they tend to end up as high school English teachers and we do annual in-service training for such people.) My two colleagues who speak French are often asked to give classes.

Then there is translation (I'm jumping to the conclusion that you do French-English as your translation.) It would be attractive to a university to have a person capable of doing translation involving French. The institution where I work has a journal which the articles are Spanish, but the abstracts are published in English, Spanish and French. We currently outsource the French translation to our sister school UMAR which teaches French (to it's tourism students).

[Tretyakovskii]

I can easily imagine contexts in which being multi-lingual would be an asset, and make a person more marketable.

It may be that universities in Mexico are beginning to look outward, to a greater degree: ours offers classes in French, Portuguese, Italian, and Japanese. These are non credit courses, taught for the most part by part-timers, but there is ample student interest, and the trend seems established.

A corollary is that there is rising interest in not just learning English, but mastering it, with a growing number of students requesting higher level studies.

I suspect all of this is a result of a direct push from the highest levels of government to improve education in Mexico. Apparently a great deal of money has been made available to good, Mexican university students for study abroad, and the students seem to be looking everywhere for appropriate ways to take advantage of this. I had one yesterday tell me they were studying French, with the goal of taking a masters degree, at a French university, which conducts its courses in English for those with plans to pursue international careers.

I don't know where all this is leading, but it seems thoroughly positive to me.

[Iceman33]

[Tretyakovskii]

In our university, people used to get hired without Bachelor's of any kind (most of our teachers are Mexican Nationals): now, everybody is scrambling to get Master's degrees in teaching the English Language. The PhD push will come later, I'm sure- it's already hit other departments.

I think this pressure is coming from the highest levels of SEP, nationally.

[Prof.Gringo]

[Gregory.]

[Enchilada Potosina]

[the peanut gallery]

After reading the last two posts i felt like Gregory sold me an awesome vacation to Florida. Upon my arrival EP ruined everything with the reality that i had volunteered for a week of time share sales presentations.


I wonder what percentage of schools pay teachers for lesson planning hours outside of the classroom?

Fair compensation for fair work. Now THAT would be taking TEFL to a new level.

[EFLeducator]

[EFLeducator]

[Enchilada Potosina]

[MotherF]