Guest Writer Number 2- Laurent

Many thanks to Laurent for being the second guest writer on TEFLtastic. After much racking of brains, apparently, he has managed to come up with an absolutely unique take on both TEFL teaching and being in Japan. Enjoy…

Guest writer number 2- Laurent

 Being a non English (or British, or American, or… you get the picture) English teacher might sound pretty ironic. At least that’s what I thought when I first decided to become one - my main motivation was that the job entitled a ticket into a country I’d always wanted to live in, Japan. I soon realised however that it wasn’t such an amusing and ironic possibility - turns out the head of my CELTA course was Italian.
Becoming an English teacher if it’s not your mother tongue is actually a pretty interesting experience for a whole heaps of reasons - personally because I find languages to be deeply fascinating but also because it’s a challenge unlike any other. And let’s face it, it’s also a pretty good dinner party story.
I’m a French-Italian national, and as I’ve just said I’m now a CELTA qualified English teacher in Japan. Well teacher might be a long shot, if you consider the general opinion and concensus on teaching in Eikawas (English conversation schools in Japan), but I consider myself a teacher no matter what others may think and what I’m faced with daily at work.
Since being invited by Alex to do a spot of guest writing on his blog, I’ve been raking my brain as to what to offer - I’ve not got anywhere near enough experience to really talk about teaching in any way I think, and then it hit me. A top ten of course!
 
Ten reasons why you should teach English if you’re not English (or from a Commonwealth/English speaking country)
- It’s more fun than teaching your own mother tongue
- It makes you think about languages in a whole new way
- You’re more likely to understand what a learner of English is going through than someone whose mother tongue is English
- You already know a lot more grammar than most English people when you go to do your CELTA
- That last point doesn’t mean you remember it any better than them, or how to use it for that matter
- You can easily spot words of foreign origin and thus liven up a dull grammar/vocab session with some well placed anecdotes (or depending on how you choose to look at it, waste 10 minutes or more)
- Depending on which country you’re teaching in you can actually get by a lot more easily than if you were English
- Depending on which country you’re teaching in you can pretend to not understand anything (ie. not having the right ticket on public transport) in more than one language (always handy if say English speakers are thought to be annoying in your host country - hey pronto I’m [insert nationality] not English/American/etc!)
- You’ll soon start to re-learn/remember a lot more about your language and its inner grammatical workings
- Ok I’m short of one, it’s really a top nine. A free croissant to whoever can come up with a good tenth point
 
Tips on being a non English English teacher in Japan
 
- Be prepared to lie about your nationality/origins/upbringing etc… this may depend on your employer and their attitude towards teachers’ nationalities, but by and large Japanese people will think they’re getting ripped off if they pay for an English lesson from a non English national (to varying degrees, but if you’re say French that’s very likely to not go down so well with most of them)
- You can always make some side money teaching your own mother tongue (that’s if unlike me you remember how its grammar works!)
- Learn to Englicise your name - ie. Laurent becomes Lawrence (a good one, what with Lawrence of Arabia being something a lot of Japanese people seem to know)
- Be prepared to answer questions when the receptionists/school managers tell the students your non Englicised name, and you follow it with your Englicised one
- Remember you’re English not [insert nationality here]
- Find out where your embassy is online and go and register with them asap (if like me you’re employed by a company who technically employs only English teachers, they won’t be of any help)
 
That’s about it, gambatte as they say out here!

http://www.lo-la.co.uk/

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 12:19 amand is filed under TEFL, TESOL, Teaching English in Asia, Teaching English in Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.