IAmA English as a Foreign Language teacher and language student - I speak Spanish, Japanese, French and German - I've lived and worked in many countries, currently Mexico, and I'm preparing to move to China soon

Did you find that after learning a second language it was easier to learn your 3rd and 4th?

Definitely. Once you get the underlying structure of what makes a language, it's much easier to learn more.

You may have this intuition anyway if you have a very good grasp of your first language.

What language do you think in?

English. Occasionally I catch myself thinking a bit in Spanish.

I’m currently in my 2nd year teaching in South Korea. I’m most likely going to end up marrying a Korean man and staying here (if it were possible for us to live in the UK I would love it but yeah... that’s not going to happen). What advice do you have to keep teaching well? I never want to get sick of my job.

To keep teaching well? Steal as many ideas of everyone else as possible!

There are so many different approaches and styles to teaching and each student and class is totally different so the most important thing is to be aware of a lot of different ways to teach the same thing. The strange thing about teaching is that often, you can go a long time without being exposed to another teacher's class. It's just you and the students for months on end and you can fall into the trap of thinking that your way of doing it is the only way.

There are loads of different kinds of teaching jobs, too. If you feel yourself burning out, it's probably time for a change but this doesn't necessarily mean leaving teaching altogether.

Why not possible for you to love in UK?

If you have a non-EU spouse, it's very difficult and expensive to get them a visa. Most couples have to separate for 6 months. It's barbaric.

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This is another major factor. With the UK, however they stipulate that you have to show that you've been earning the equivalent of £18,600/year in the UK for 6 months prior. This isn't a lot of money but it means that if you don't have a job in the UK, you need to go back for 6 months to satisfy the requirement before inviting your spouse over.

Can you speak any of your languages in the accent of another language? Also what are some good quips in some of your languages?

Spanish is the only language that I've reached that level of fluency in.

It's strange with accents. When I'd spent a lot of time in Colombia, I had people in Spain think that I was Colombian, but then when I told my Colombian friends, they thought it was ridiculous. More recently, I was asked by an Argentinian if I was Mexican, which my Mexican wife thought was very funny. I guess I speak well enough that people think that it might be my first language but that I'm definitely foreign.

Quips, I don't know. I remember thinking that the joke name Jean Coultamaire was very funny in French because it means "I sodomise your mother".

Do foreign speakers pursuing English instruction want to learn to speak English as spoken in the UK, or as in America?

US English is definitely more popular but I've found work because of being British since some people are into that.

In my opinion, it's all a bit silly. It's the same language at the end of the day and you've got to be pretty good anyway before the differences become apparent. I try to mention where differences exist between regional varieties anyway because it's interesting and useful.

Hello, thank you for doing this AMA.

What’s the best way to start learning a new language? Repetition or learning few basic sentences at the start instead of single words like “car”?

There are a lot of ways to go about it. If it's the first time you've done it, just get a textbook and work through it. Whoever put the textbook together has thought a lot about the best way to present the language.

I'm going to study Chinese by trying to learn the basic grammar things first (past, present, future, conditionals, relative clauses) and then learn a load of vocabulary. This worked well for me with Japanese.

This approach doesn't work so well for people who don't have a lot of experience with language learning, though.

I learnt mandarin from scratch (as my degree) so I thought I'd chip in with a helpful hint about Chinese.

As a starter, learn to make and distinguish tones from each other. Then learn possessives, which open the road up to relative clauses and adverbs.

I tell you this because Chinese verbs don't conjugate at all. There is a sense of 'completion' (look up "le" (了) particle) but it can be used in any of the tenses you mentioned above. Far more important is word order and sentence structure.

It's a super rewarding language and fascinating as a linguist. I hope you enjoy learning it!

Thanks

So funny story: Chinese doesn't have tenses

I know but you need to know how to express these ideas, even if there's no inflection.

Do you ever plan to have a job back in the UK or do you see this as something you can do indefinitely ?

I've recently married a Mexican woman and, while it would be possible to go back to the UK, the immigration laws and visa process make it a very expensive, difficult and overall unattractive option if I want to be with my wife, which I do.

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I'm not ruling it out completely. When I did work in the UK, it was fairly easy to find work outside of teaching so it could be feasible. Overall, I can have a much higher standard of living abroad so it's not something that appeals to me at the moment.

Do you see yourself teaching or doing other jobs as you stay abroad/ is teaching a viable job long term?

The plan is to end up in Mexico and unfortunately, the pay for English teachers is atrocious here so there's no real career ladder to climb. Outside of Mexico, it's definitely a legitimate long-term career. I have a Masters degree already and there are ample opportunities, hence the move to China.

If I come back to Mexico, I'll have to start my own business to have a comfortable standard of living but this will be related to language learning, ideally online.

Thanks, I’m assuming your wife is going to China as well. What work will she be doing there ? Thanks for taking the time to answer

She will be coming with me. Her visa doesn't allow her to work so that's not part of the plan. If she can find a job that will sponsor her, then that would be a bonus.

We're working on a YouTube channel, which is just past the threshold to be monetized. She's going to concentrate on that. Fortunately, there's no pressure on her to earn money while we're over there but if it works out then it's another (maybe very small) source of income. More importantly, it should allow us a means of promoting any future business venture when we come back to Mexico.

Do you have an eventual goal? Where in China? Edit: is/in

I'll be in a city called Jiaxing, right next to Shanghai.

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The plan is to save some money over there and then come back to Mexico in a couple of years' time and start a business of some kind.

I spent 4 years teaching in China. One of the best experiences of my life. I highly recommend it.

My only advice, staaaaaay away from recruiters. They are all scum and they aren’t trying to help you. They are probably pocketing over 50% of your salary.

Thanks for the advice. I've already got my job offer as it happens. It was through a recruiter but he was an American guy who seemed pretty trustworthy. I was contacted by a lot who seemed anything but.

At the end of the day, he's got to make a living but I'm happy with the offer I received. It's at an international school so I get the impression it's not as predatory as in the training centres.

How much are you making of you don’t mind me asking? I went through the same thing. The Chinese recruiter pays foreigners to convince you to take offers. So you’re more comfortable. I went through ChinaESL and a woman named Rebecca. If anyone ever goes to Beijing. DO NOT, consider them.

It's just over 20k per month after tax with 3.5k housing allowance and 12k flight reimbursement. Considering it's a smaller city, that seemed to be what my research told me to expect based on my experience and qualifications.

What do you think?

Hello and thank you for your insight.

I was offered a freelance English teaching gig recently and really enjoy the work! I’m interested in making this my main line of work.

However, if that is the case I figured it might be best to just move to Japan.(I’m Japanese American)

Do you think it’s possible to make a living, or perhaps, be well-off doing 英会話 in Tokyo?

I’ve had part time 英会話 jobs and I am good at making conversation.

Thanks!

Teaching's great. It's by far the most fun job I've had.

I think that it's supposed to be very difficult to become well-off working in eikaiwas. It could be a good starting point but it's not a career. I've never worked in one, though so maybe I'm wrong.

英会話 are shit compared to ALT jobs. ALTs make 24万 instead of 27-30万, but you get 2 months vacation and the work days are 6 hours instead of 8-9 hours.

I made 33 万 on JET.

Very cool. I’m also a language guy. I speak Spanish, conversational Mandarin, beginners Arabic and German, and am hoping to start with Russian or French soon.

That said, I get teased a lot by my friends that my language skills will be useless when translation software surpasses me. What do you think when people say this? Personally, I don’t think it’s entirely realistic but it’s important to consider.

Language learning is a good goal in it's own right. It's fun and interesting but you already know that.

Translation software is already absolutely amazing. It's nowhere near being good enough to supplant a competent language user, though. I think that with international business requiring interpersonal relationships, it'll be impossible to gain the same amount of trust with somebody else with some clunky translation machine as an intermediary.

I am trying to learn French right now do you have any advice?

Yes. Spaced-repetition software like Anki. Make your own list of all the words and structures that you don't know and study it every day for 10-20 minutes.

Most students don't like it because you have to create your own materials but that's kind of the whole point.

Wich is the best method can i use to learn english grammar? Do you have any webs to advice? Im native spanish speaker. Thanks

Anki is always my top tip for language learners. It's not a very user-friendly app and most of my students don't use it but if you use it well, you can improve very quickly.

You have to take control of your own studies. Make your own materials to study the aspects of the language that you don't know yet and learn to notice grammar. Often learners concentrate too much on vocabulary and as a result, neglect the surrounding grammar.

What have you found to be the best way to reach fluency in spanish? I'm American, so Mexican spanish is what I was taught in school, but taught ESL in Madrid so a lot of my newer spanish is Castilian. I've been home for almost a year now and I do think a lot in spanish, but I don't believe I've improved much. I'm definitely willing to put the time and patience in. Thanks!

Just speaking Spanish all the time, I guess.

Doing the YouTube videos in Spanish was a way to try to improve, too. I'm forced to focus on my errors in the editing in a way that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

What method(s) would you say is most effective in learning a language (apart from immersion)?

Immersion's great but if you don't really want to learn, you won't. Working in this industry, I've met a lot of people who have spent many years teaching in a foreign country and make very little effort to learn anything more than the most basic survival phrases.

I'd say that teaching and studying are quite different. The techniques that I'm going to use to learn Chinese definitely work because I used them in Japan, but I can't use them in the classroom because they're really boring.

You learn all of the basic grammar as quickly as possible. Most courses take a couple of years to go through it but I think you should do it in much less time, just so that you can recognise the structures when you encounter them and then you can refer back to your grammar guide.

Then you cram loads of vocabulary. Using apps like Anki is great. Every time you see a new word, put it into Anki. Make sure you clear your list every day and your vocabulary will explode.

Doing this, within a couple of months, you should be able to understand most things by reading. Listening will take a little longer depending on how much you focus on this. Any chance you get, try to produce the language. You're at a point where you have the basic knowledge and you need to just keep practicing it until you can produce it naturally.

In a classroom, it's totally different. Students will zone out if you don't tell them why they're learning something and you need to keep them motivated. Typically by teaching, you want the students to master the point at hand before moving onto the next step. Research shows that this isn't how we learn a language and often you need a lot of exposure to really proceduralise your knowlege. Nonetheless, if the student feels totally lost after a class because you're racing through all the grammar points in a couple of months, they're not going to have a great time.

Do you across many non-Caucasians who teach English all over the world like you?

Asking because I was considering TEFL but heard that employers and students prefer being taught English by a native English speaking white person, than, let's say a person of Indian origin.

Yes. Loads. Some people are racist I guess, which sucks, but it doesn't seem to be enough to stop many of the people I know from getting work.

When did you knew you wanted to teach English as a second language? Did you had other careers in mind?

Also as a side note. English is my second language I’ve been in the U.S. for ten years and I got here when I was 9 so you can imagine how scared I was jumping into regular classes in a language I didn’t know. But they were some teachers that knew Spanish and helped me learn it so what I’m trying to say is thank you for doing this type of work

I kind of fell into this career by accident. If you study languages in the UK at university, you have to spend a year living in a country where they speak the language. A lot of people take classes in the other country but I wanted to earn money so I applied to a few teaching jobs and ended up in Colombia.

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Once I knew that this was an option and I could work anywhere in the world, it was difficult to resist. I did go into working in international student recruitment at UK universities for a couple of years but I ended up getting bored and did a Masters in teaching English to make this my long-term career.

Wie lernen Sie so viele Sprachen? 外語を学ぶのは難しいですね。

Wenn man das Studieren genießen kann, wird alles nicht so schwierig.

How do you keep all the vocab separate? I’m a native English speaker learning French and Portuguese with a background in some Spanish, and I mess them up all the time.

I don't know. I mess up sometimes, mostly when I'm speaking a language I haven't spoken in a while.

What do you think of laoshu505000? Do you ever do anything like that?

It's the first time that I've heard of him. I'll give it a look later.

Where in Germany did you live and work?

I lived in Berlin in 2010. I wasn't actually teaching English there. There was a program funded by the EU to allow students to do work experience in another country and I ended up in a hotel there over the summer.

Fair enough, Erasmus?

Something similar but Erasmus was just for studying. I honestly can't remember what the name of the program was, though.

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No one brags about being an ESL teacher, let's be honest

Haha. Good point!

こんにちは。元気ですか？ I haven’t been studying Japanese for long but I’ve been thinking of studying and teaching abroad in Japan. Do you have any other career goals? How was your time in Japan?

元気です

Japan was good. I had a good time but ultimately it became obvious that it wasn't where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I was there for 2 years and that was enough.

Japanese is really hard and I spent a lot of time over those 2 years studying it. Once you're not in Japan anymore, it's pretty useless. It's very difficult to reach the kind of level where you would be able to use it to work in a Japanese company. I was reading novels in Japanese and I had no problem communicating but I definitely wasn't ready to be hired as a professional Japanese speaker and I know very few people who reached that point.

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Overall, if you really want to go to Japan then go for it but if you're going to spend a couple of years studying hard to learn a skill, ultimately I don't feel that Japanese is the best option if you're not going to live there forever.

How was the visa application process?

For where?

Sorry to China, are they strict etc?

I don't know how strict they are but I've had to spend hundreds of dollars getting documents legalised so far, which has been stressful.

My daughter (currently 17) has talked about doing this straight out of school. Do you think that's achievable, or would she need either qualifications or more life experience to land a TESO job?

It's definitely doable. Tell her to go for it. At that age you don't really know what you want and it's the kind of experience that will help you make your mind up, even if you don't end up doing anything to do with teaching.

Hi, thank you for doing this AMA.

I'm an American college student who just started learning Japanese in prep for spending the spring 2020 semester in Kyoto. Japanese will be my 3rd language, but the first one I've self-taught. Do you have any tips for self-instruction, specifically as an English speaker learning Japanese? And to what degree should I be fluent before I immerse myself?

Get Skritter and study for 1 hour a day.

Immerse yourself ASAP. The guy I know who learned to speak the best (I had him beaten on kanji and grammar) would literally just strike up conversations with everyone he met, restaurants, in the street, etc. It didn't matter that he could barely say anything, he was unstoppable.

His speaking was incredible after a year.

Are you teaching for a private company, or is a government program? I was waitlisted twice for the JET program (Japanese government sponsored program) and most alums I have spoken with said it was a wonderful experience, but had horror stories of friends who went with private companies where it became more of a sales job rather than a teaching position. Have you had similar experiences?

I was in JET. The money and benefits were great and I was lucky enough to be in a city.

The downside is that you're not really a teacher. It depends a lot on the school and who you're paired up with but often you just read from the textbook and it can be pretty soul-destroying. There's an awful lot of just sitting at a desk with nothing to do. For instance, we still had to go to work over the 6-week summer holidays but there was literally nothing to do. We just had to sit in a room and look busy.

What would be your advice on getting into this type of work?

It's pretty easy to get into if you're a native speaker and you have a degree. You can get a cheap teaching certification online and you're good to go.

If it's just an excuse to travel for a year or so, you may as well just do the minimum because the better qualifications are well over US$1000. That being said, you should do your own research into the English language before starting because you need to be prepared for students' questions, which simply being a native speaker doesn't qualify you for.

Have you thought about the type of business you want to open when you come back to Mexico? You mentioned online language learning but don't these platforms already exist? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?

They do exist and surely many more will appear soon.
I've been studying web development and I've already designed a few online activities to help learners with specific grammar points. The plan is to build on this to create a complete online curriculum. From there, if anybody wants to book classes, they can.

I've already been dabbling in this by creating my own Facebook page and posting teaching videos and there's no shortage of demand. I think the key is to sell your personality as well as your expertise.

En que parte de Mexico vives?

Querétaro

is it true that the older you get the more difficult it is to learn a new language? my mother is 50 y/o and she is trying to learn English, her native language is Spanish, but she thinks is hard to learn it because she is old...

Very complicated topic. I actually wrote an article about this with my take on it.

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I'm looking forward to learning Mandarin because I've not had much exposure to tonal languages. It seems interesting and I'm sure I'll fuck up plenty of times.

I always say mechero for some reason and the guy in the Oxxo never knows what I'm on about. Somehow, that word's stuck very deep in my brain from my time in Spain.

Est-ce que vous pense latin est un langue cet je devrait sais? Aussi, comment est mon francais? J’ai prendre un anee de francais, alors je suis nouveu a la langue. :) Merci Beacoup!

Que je devrais savoir... J'ai pris un an de francais.

I don't see why you'd study Latin other then because it's interesting. It seems like a lot of work for very long ttle benefit.

Where do you file your tax return ? :)

México. I'm resident here but it's not like the US. It's all done through my job.

My wife has done English teaching twice through different volunteer programs in China.

She REALLY wants to go back and do a long term paid teaching position in China, and she'd like for me to go with her.

She has a degree in child development, currently either in children's education, and has 1 year of teaching in China under her belt. I have a physiology degree. What kind of job opportunities/pay rates do you think would be realistic for her? For me? Do you have any recommendations for places to look for paid positions? She has an opportunity from a previous volunteer position, though I'm not sure if it is competitive.

I'm a bit wary of going, as teaching isn't a passion of mine. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about what is realistic to expect so I can make the best decision. Any help would be appreciated.

Even if you hate it, you'll probably be able to save loads of money between the two of you in China. You only live once so why not go to China for a year and try something different?

You'll need to get some sort of teaching qualification but these can be found online for next to nothing. Just have a look through tefl.com or Dave's ESL cafe at the job listings to get an idea about what's available.

I speak English Spanish and starting in Japanese any advices?

Download Skritter and just work your way through textbooks as fast as possible so that you can string a sentence together, then practice.

As somebody who is studying TESOL at University, are there any tips you can offer when someone is moving to a new country? I'm currently looking at South Korea, Qatar and Spain (I speak a little Spanish) all as options but I havent decided which one I'm going to pick yet.

I've never taught in any of those so I can't really comment. I know that salaries are low in Spain. South Korea seems like the best all-round option in terms of salary/lifestyle etc.

If you're doing TESOL at uni and this is your long-term plan, I'm sure you'll get chance to work in all of them. My advice, earn money before moving to a fun country with low salaries.

Im interested in teaching english ASL and would love to know which platforms you use and if they enable comfortable lifestyle is all the places you lived, i understand standard of living is subjective to area and person. Im considering moving to thailand and would like this TEFL certification to work in the mean time while I find my footing. Platforms like online teaching (ie wechat etc..)or in person, and if online which company do you prefer to work with as native english speaker?

I love Thailand but as far as I understand, it suffers from the same issues as Mexico in that it's a great country but the salaries for teachers make life less enjoyable than it could be.

If you're teaching online then you can top up your salary considerably. PM me if you want some more info.

Hi! I’m interested in doing this one day, thanks for doing an AMA! My question may sound a bit naive lol, I’d LOVE to do TEFL but it seems like 80% of the jobs/teaching courses are based in China... like they really really need people out there.

I’ve never been but China just terrifies me. Are you apprehensive about going? How do you cope going somewhere so alien?

I’m from the UK and in our student employment fairs teaching English in China is always there.

Thanks!

Not really. I've moved abroad plenty of times so it's not something that daunts me, other than the logistics of getting there, visas and that sort of thing.

I'm sure there will be challenges and things that I don't like but it's all part of the experience. My wife will be with me and the money's going to allow me to advance towards our goals so even if I don't end up liking it much overall, I'll be in a better position afterwards.

スペイン語に喋る時に日本語のアクセントあるかどうか？

日本語の勉強を始める時にもうスペイン語が話せたんだ。アクセントといったら、イギリスなのだと思う。

Hi! I've been helping my sister and my mother learn English recently, and I was wondering if I could ask some advice. So far, the main problem is the vocabulary. Without a decent base, I can't start explaining new words without resorting to our native (Russian), and I always believed that if you learn new words through the language instead of translation, it sticks better. So, any tips you can give in regards to learning and teaching basic vocabulary? Thanks.

A lot of people say that you should never use the native language and a lot of people disagree.

I'm one of the people that disagrees. I think that if something is a near-direct translation, just translate it but be aware that often this isn't the case.

As much as possible, try to anticipate the difficult words and have plenty of alternative examples ready to give the learner a better feel for how the word is used, even if you are also providing a translation.

I know that it's not exactly your situation, but maybe you know, how difficult is it to get a job as an English teacher in foreign countries as a non-native? My father is Anglophone Canadian, but I grew up speaking mostly Polish and very little English, so I can't consider myself a native English speaker. Getting a TESOL certificate and teaching English in other parts of the world would be a dream come true for me, but I'm afraid that on the job market I won't be able to compete with teachers from Anglophone families. Do you have any co-workers for whom English isn't the first language?

It's an unfortunate and really unfair fact that native-speakers are paid more and get much better jobs in the industry. Obviously, I take full advantage of this by being a native-speaker teacher.

There are doubtless many incredible non-native teachers that are looked over in favour of someone who doesn't really know what they're doing but has the right passport. It's not right but that's what the students want.

I definitely wouldn't be doing this job if I were a non-native speaker.

I'm currently learning 日本語. Can you point out some tips for learning Kanji?

The Skritter app is a godsend. I set myself a challenge of a minimum of 1 hour a day and I learned a lot of kanji very quickly. It's bloody expensive but well worth it.

Any tips for Eastern Europeans who want to get an American/English accent?

Also, how important would you say it’s your accent when you apply for a TEFL job taking in consideration one has gotten a bachelor degree from an UK university?

Thanks!

Why would you want an English/American accent? As long as your intonation is clear and everyone understands you, why bother? I just think that it's an awful lot of practice for very little benefit.

Chinese schools told me that they are very strict with accents. I mentioned to someone else in this thread that I wouldn't bother working as a non-native teacher. You're (unjustly) at a disadvantage in terms of salaries and working conditions.

Did you use any online resources besides Anki?

I've used many. Skritter and Memrise for vocabulary. Wordreference and Linguee are also great.

Obviously, there are loads of things on YouTube.

I'm interested in learning more about your experiences in Mexico. I've been thinking of trying to get a remote job so I can stay in countries in Latin America and improve my Spanish. I would also like to try my hand at teaching for additional income. I'm someone who would prefer to not have to drive everywhere to get to everything in my daily life. Is that feasible in Mexico or other Latin American nations? Thanks!

If you've got a remote job, it would be difficult to justify teaching as a source of income. Considering US$7.50 is what you'd get in a language school for an hour's work, why not just work an extra hour online?

Mexico's definitely built for cars but I get by ok without one. Ubers are very cheap (US$2 normally) so I just take them a lot.

So after living in a those countries, what made you decide on the Mexican wife?

Edit: Hey downvoters, I'm not trying to be a sarcastic asshole, there are significant cultural differences between countries. Obviously this guy must have had other relationships with girls in different countries, so I'm just wondering if those cultural differences played any part in finding love.

The love of my life happens to be a Mexican woman.