Job Discussion Forums

[RebelGirl26]

Hi - total newbie here!

I intend to start a CELTA training course in November, and will hopefully start looking for a job abroad in December/January. I have a couple of questions/concerns.

How did you pick which country you went to for your first job, and did you speak the language already? I only speak basic French and a few words of Spanish, which is not likely to help me if I go to an Asian country for example.

Was it easy to find classes to learn the native language? Or did you pick up the local language on your own (books/CDs etc.)?


Thanks!

[Glenski]

I had worked in Japan with a different type of job before I decided to teach there. I liked it a lot, went back for a 3-week vacation and wrote about it for a year on an online travel column. Kept my interest in the country in other ways, too.

I studied for a year at the university in night classes.

When I had a chance to come here again, this time as a teacher, I took it and have been here ever since.

[MELEE]

I did it kind of the opposite way you are going about it.
I spoke Spanish and was looking for a way to continue living in a Spanish speaking country when I stumbled upon an English teaching opportunity in Ecuador.

When I went to Japan, I chose the country because I was able to land a job that paid for my flight (this was in 1996). I didn't know a word of Japanese when I got on the plane. I had my LP Japanese phrase book in my pocket and by the time it had landed I knew numbers up to a million, greetings, days of the week, colors, a smattering of adjectives and other pleasentries (Chicago-Osaka is a LONG flight!) The school was quite impressed. The school also arranged for a Language Exchange, I taught one of their teachers Spanish (she already spoke English well) and she taught me Japanese.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

When I came to Japan, I spoke really quite a lot of French (which has been totally useless in this country) and more than a little German (which has been almost, but not quite as useless as French). Other than English (and Japanese of course), the most useful language in Japan is Spanish, with Portuguese following closely. I had taken Japanese for one year at university, but what I did was decide to come to Japan, then spend a year studying the language at a university for 8hours of classtime a week(which was brutally hard at the time, but in the end I really didn't know all that much Japanese because almost half of it is memorizing beginning kanji- we did the Genki Volume I in a single academic year- and it's not like I could actually understand Japanese people when I arrived) and also had regular labs and conversation partners etc plus another three hours of classtime a week on Japanese history.

It was really useful for me to have this base, because I ended up in a rural area where formal classes in Japanese were not available (but I guess having conversations with drunk businessmen is a kind of class... sort of ) so I studied on my own. It would have been a lot harder without the basics already set, but not impossible by a long shot- I know lots of people who did it that way, too.

Most people have next to no Japanese or no Japanese when they arrive, occasionally you meet people who majored in it in university.

I think Japanese is probably one of the easiest Asian languages for native English speakers- easily the easiest (North) East Asian Language because there are no pitches to worry about (Chinese pitches are very difficult for me) and it has easy vowels (Korean has difficult vowels, but is much easier to read than Japanese). The hard part is reading it, and of course writing it. I don't actually have much need to write it- emails from cellphones spit out the kanji as you write, so you just have to know which is the right one when you see it. Once you learn hiragana, katakana and a few hundred kanji then it gets a lot easier to read, but still I know the meaning of far more kanji than I know how to say so in my head I think of the English word when i see the kanji as often as I think of the Japanese word.

[zaylahis]

I studied Turkish for a year or so before going to Ayvalik and then Istanbul. My kids did not. A year later when my daughter and I tried to enrol in a turkish language course, my daughter scored better than me in the assessment course. My six year old, on the other hand, picked up his Turkish from watching cartoons..same way he learned to count in Arabic. My teenage son picked the language up from talking to taxi drivers!

[denise]

When I was looking into TEFL courses, I saw one that I liked in Prague, so I decided that I would stay there to look for a job. I studied basic greetings and whatnot before I arrived, but I really couldn't speak the language at all. There was a Czech teacher at my school who gave free Czech lessons to the foreign teachers, and I learned some basics and always had a laugh in class, but the classes (maybe 2 or 3 hours a week) really weren't enough. I was able to get by in restaurants and train stations and have the most basic of conversations, but that was all.

When I arrived in Japan, again I had studied greetings but didn't know a word beyond "hello," "please," or "thank you." I got a couple of self-study books, then when I found that I lacked the discipline to study on my own I got a tutor, and eventually I stopped with the lessons because... I don't really remember. As in Prague, I could get by but not do much more than that. Luckily there were loads of people to help translate.

I had no problem in Peru, but that was because I had studied Spanish off and on for several years. The whole "live in the country and you'll naturally learn the language" myth is, for me, just that... a myth. I find it too hard to dedicate my free time to studying after spending 8 hours per day in a teaching environment.

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[JZer]

[JZer]

Now, I am in Taiwan and am trying to learn Mandarin.

[naturegirl321]

I studied Spanish for years in school and uni, but never felt compelled to talk in class, now in Peru I'm always speaking Spanish.

In CHina, I picked up CHinese a bit, thanks to teaching kindergarten where the kids don't understand that you don't understand CHinese.

I think that I best learn when in a place where the language is spoken rather than in the classroom.

[naturegirl321]

[RebelGirl26]

Thanks everyone - it's helpful to hear what everyone else has done. I've been reading up on a few different countries to try to narrow down my focus.

[JZer]

Probably one of the best language environments would be in China if you can get a university job. You only need a B.A. to get a job in a Chinese university. With a ten hour a week work week, you could spend most of your day studying Mandarin. If you can reach an intermediate level, you might be able to take normal classes in a Chinese university and become near fluent. Of course that would probably take five years or more.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[JZer]

I would say that if you want to learn a language well, it is probably better to move to a country where most people don't speak English well. Since you will have more opportunities to speak the language if you want to.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

That's pretty much any country if you get out of the big cities and tourist areas (except possibly in western Europe).