Land of opportunities
Years ago I did one of those TEFL courses, in the hope that I might one day get a string of English teaching jobs in various exotic locations. Student loans and credit card debt soon put paid to that idea as I was forced into getting a boring, but well-paid job in London in order to pay off all my bills. My English teaching course certificate started gathering dust and I would only ever use the skills I had acquired to give the odd one-hour lesson to friends of friends or colleagues from abroad. My dreams of spending a year teaching English in Tokyo, Seoul or somewhere even more unusual died along with my ambitions of being a rock star and wiring a best-selling novel…
However, it seems my qualifications are suddenly in demand all over again. OK, I’m not getting the chance to travel the world and use my skills, but I am managing to earn a few extra quid each week by giving lessons to some of the guys and girls who have moved into my area from various Eastern European countries. Most of them speak English pretty well already, but some of them want extra classes for their kids so they don’t fall behind at school, while others want to learn some very particular language skills.
I have one student from Poland who is currently working as a driver for a pizza chain, but wants to be a taxi driver. Unfortunately for him, he just can’t get his head round the London accent. His English is grammatically perfect, but what he needs help with is Cockney banter; how to talk about the football without things getting lost in translation, for example. It’s been a lot of fun teaching him, whether I’ve been using YouTube clips of TV shows and movies or taking him down my local pub to listen in as the regulars dissect the latest Arsenal performance. The problem is that I grew up in Surrey, and often I can’t understand a word they’re saying either!
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