Bonus Report. 5 Countries & 3 Continents of Teacher Tips from Judith Bell. Kary Vannice & Winton Churchill. Barefoot Consultants

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1 Bonus Report 5 Countries & 3 Continents of Teacher Tips from Judith Bell By Kary Vannice & Winton Churchill Barefoot Consultants

2 NOTICE: You DO NOT Have the Right to Reprint or Resell this Report! You Also MAY NOT Give Away, Sell, or Share the Content Herein If you obtained this report from anywhere other than you have a pirated copy. Please help stop Internet crime by reporting this to: mailto:support@barefootconsultants.com 2014 Copyright Barefoot Consultants, Inc. All Rights Reserved Kari Vannice 1/5/14 8:27 AM Deleted: 2 This resource guide contains proprietary content and must not be duplicated or distributed without permission. No portion of this material may be shared or reproduced in any manner under any circumstance whatsoever without advanced written permission from Barefoot Consultants, Inc. No portion of this material is intended to offer legal, personal or financial advice. The information contained herein cannot replace or substitute for the services of trained professionals in any field, including but not limited to, financial or legal matters. Under no circumstances, including but not limited to negligence, will Winton R Churchill, Churchill Method, Inc., Barefoot Consultants, Inc., or any of its representatives or contractors be liable for the implementation of the materials, information, or success strategies communicated through this seminar, these materials, or any services provided following the seminar, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Winton R Churchill, Churchill Method, Inc., Barefoot Consultants, Inc., and any of its representatives or contractors hereby disclaim any warranties, express or implied, including the warranties of merchantability or of fitness for a particular purpose. This material, and all content, is provided AS IS. Results from the implementation of these materials may vary. You alone are responsible and accountable for your decisions, actions, and results. By using these materials, you agree to hold Winton R Churchill, Churchill Method, Inc., Barefoot Consultants, Inc., and any of its representatives or contractors, harmless for any such decisions, actions, or results based upon these materials, regardless of the time or circumstances involved. For permissions requests, contact: Barefoot Consultants, Inc. 500 N Michigan Ave Ste 300 ChicagoIL60611 ChicagoIL6061 This interview was conducted by: Winton Churchill Winton Churchill is the President and Founder of Barefoot Consultants, Inc. a company that specializes in helping people learn how to earn as they travel and work abroad. In 2007, he moved to Huatulco, Mexico and began teaching others how to put their skills on the global market. He has developed a series of popular training programs that teach his program members various ways to tap their existing career and life experience to begin working online. His is also the best selling author of Marketing for Complex Sales Cycles (Morgan James Publishing). Prior to the founding of his own firm, Winton has been involved in a variety of senior sales, marketing and management roles for Apple Computer, Oracle Corporation, Spinnaker, Contact Software (ACT!) & Sun Microsystems. His opinions are frequently quoted in a variety of publications and leading websites including InternationalLiving.com, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Marketing Sherpa, Inc. Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management and a number of industry related business, Internet and software related publications. Page 2

3 This is and interview conducted by Winton with Judith B. a seasoned veteran ESL teacher. Judith taught on 3 continents and in 5 different countries! She shares her valuable tips for teaching around the globe. As you read, look for this tip icon and pay special attention to the insider, expert tip! Winton: Hi, this is Winton Churchill with the Barefoot Consultants. Today, we re talking with Judith Bell. Judith: Hi. Winton: We re going to talk about some of her experiences of teaching English as a second language abroad. She has taught in quite a variety of areas. If you could, begin by telling us where you re from. Judith: I m from Scotland, but my mother is English, so I have an English accent. It confuses people. ESL - A Way to See the World Winton: Could you tell us a little bit about why you decided to teach English as a second language? What appealed to you about that? Judith: To be honest, when I first started doing it, it was for the traveling opportunities. Once I began teaching and actually found out what it involved, I discovered that I enjoyed the job as much as if not more than the traveling opportunities. I had just finished university when I started, and the initial motivation was to see the world. Winton: You have taught in Greece, Ecuador, Russia, and Singapore. You ve covered quite a few different locations. You ve been quite a few places around the world. Can you tell me a little bit about what you had in your background that set you up for doing this kind of thing? Page 3

4 An Experienced Teacher Recommends Certification Judith: My first degree was in English language and literature. I went on to do a fairly basic TESOL course. I would actually recommend that other people do a more intensive course, because it does prepare you better. I would advise something that involves some practical teaching experience before you start. Winton: I think that s good advice. We ve heard that from some of our other folks that just taking the test is like getting your driver s license. It doesn t necessarily mean you re ready to get on the road. Judith: You can get a little bit of a shock when you go into your first classroom. Winton: Oh, really? Judith: Yes. It went fine in the end, but it was a little bit nerve wracking to begin with. Winton: If you had it to do over again, you would take that approach of taking the more rigorous tests and training? Judith: I think I would take a more in- depth course. In the end, it didn t really affect the jobs that I got because I had the English degree. You re in a foreign country as you re also learning to teach. It would have made the initial start a little bit smoother. First Stop - Poland Winton: What was the first country that you went to? Judith: The first country that I went to was Poland. Winton: What were you thinking about when you went there? What were your considerations? Did you want to learn more about the culture or just want to see that part of the world? Judith: I wanted to learn about the culture, because I didn t know all that much about Poland. I wanted to see the country, and I wanted to learn the language. Page 4

5 Ask Other Teachers Winton: Did you research any other options when you were looking at Poland? Did you know from the beginning that was the one you wanted, or did you look around and look for other options? Judith: Well, I talked to people who had done it before, and Poland was recommended at the time as being a very nice place to work. I was considering between Poland and South Korea. Winton: So you looked at both of them and did one of the things that we hear a lot from people that are working abroad. You asked other people that are working abroad to see what the best places to go are, so you settled on Poland. Judith: I settled on Poland because, like I said, I talked to people who had traveled and who had done some teaching abroad before. I also spoke to the owner of the school, and he made a good impression. Winton: That brings up my next question. What were you looking for in a teaching opportunity? Were you looking to learn the ropes? Did you see a certain style? Were you going for salary? What were your factors? Judith: I certainly wasn t going for salary, or I would have gone to Korea. I don't know. I was quite young at the time, to be honest. I was looking for a school that I felt that I could get along with my employers and I wouldn t have a difficult time stranded in a foreign country with a rather difficult boss. That was one consideration, but I was pretty much playing it by gut instinct, which may or may not work for other people. Winton: Right. At different times in our life, it can work and sometimes not so much. You mentioned that you really got on well with the administrator of the school. Did you do a live interview with him? Did you visit first? Judith: That would have been quite difficult for these jobs unless they re in a very nearby country. I spoke to him over the phone. Do You Have to Know the Native Language? Winton: Did you speak much of the local language when you went? Judith: I didn t speak any. Winton: Wow, what was that like? Page 5

6 Judith: There were a few people who spoke a little bit of English in the town that I was posted to. The son of the owner of the school, who was the one I spoke to, spoke very good English actually. There were one or two other people who spoke a little bit who helped to show me around, but it was quite disorientating. Winton: Did you learn a little bit of the language while you were there? Judith: I learned Polish while I was there, yes. Winton: Wow, very good. Learn the Basics Judith: I would recommend, especially for your first job teaching abroad, learn at least the basics in the local language because it makes it smoother. You can go to the shop and asking for something is a little bit easier. Winton: At least if you can say good morning and good afternoon, and please and thank you if you only learn four phrases those will get you pretty far and the rest you can do with hand signals until you pick up the rest of the stuff. Judith: Pretty much, yes. Hand signals, a dictionary and a phrase book, yes. Winton: Was there anything on that first job that you wish you would have known before you moved into the country? Judith: Not especially, no. Winton: You were just pretty open for the experience? Judith: Yeah. It was a nice school. It was mostly adult students which made it a bit easier than rushing into teaching teenagers. No problems with the country. In fact, it actually went quite smoothly. Winton: What kind of school was it? Were you teaching them business English? Judith: It was pretty much general English. Quite a number of my students didn t know any English at all. Several of the rest were complete beginners when I started there, but they improved very quickly a lot quicker than I did with the Polish! Page 6

7 Next Stop Greece Winton: From Poland, what was your next teaching assignment? Judith: I could have stayed in Poland, and I was offered the job permanently then, and then again a couple of years later, but at that point I was still wanting to travel. The next job was just teaching at the summer school in England just to save some money up, because I d arranged for the next long-term job to be in Greece. Winton: Tell me about what that was like. Where did you teach in Greece? Judith: I taught in the North of Greece in a town called Zante, which is quite close to both the Turkish and the Bulgarian borders. It s quite a small town but not too far from Thessaloniki, which is the other major town in Greece, and you could go away for weekends. Classroom Management Winton: Tell me a little bit about that assignment. Who were you teaching in that assignment? Winton: Oh, really? How did you deal with that? Judith: Well, again, it was a private school. This time it was for children who were taking extra English lessons after school, presumably because their parents thought that was useful to them and would give them an advantage. Not all of them wanted to have extra English lessons after their normal schooling, so some of the classes were quite boisterous. Judith: Just general classroom management. I had got some experience by then. The summer school that I had just completed was teaching teenagers, so at that point I had learned how to manage a class and keep children reasonably entertained. Keeping them busy, basically. Be Firm Judith: If they tried to cause problems and a few of them did just basically not putting up with it. You don t need to be nasty. You just need to not be nervous. Winton: Oh, interesting. Just be firm with the situation and not allow things to go on. Page 7

8 Winton: How long were you in Greece? Judith: That contract was a three-year. Judith: It does help if you do that. I m not saying that you need to be a particularly strict teacher or come across as threatening or frightening or anything, but just don t look nervous. It s is not a huge problem if you re teaching adults, because they ll be sympathetic and they re highly unlikely to try and cause trouble. But with teenagers or young children, it helps to have some classroom management experience before you start. Next Stop - Asia Winton: Tell me a little bit about your next assignment and how you got that. Judith: The next assignment was in Singapore. This was a summer school. Singapore is an English-speaking country, but the summer school was catering to children from well-off families from nearby countries. We had classes from Hong Kong, Vietnam, and quite a few from Malaysia. How to Deal with a Mixed Age Class Winton: What was that assignment like in terms of the age group you were teaching and that sort of thing? Judith: I tended to have extremely mixed classes in that school. You d sometimes have a class that consisted of a few 10-year-olds right up to possibly even 17 or 18. One of the challenges with that was finding activities that would be entertaining to both older teenagers and to these quite young children. Winton: How did you solve that? Do you remember any particular activity that you may have used in that? Judith: I found that inventive activities went down well. I think it might have been a cultural thing, because they weren t activities I had particularly tried elsewhere, just inventing all kinds of different and often ridiculous things to do with various objects, like a broken mug or a paper clip as a competition. Page 8

9 Games like that tend to work very well, because teenagers would get into it. If you mixed up the ages so you didn t have 10-year-olds against 17-year-olds, if you just made it a bit fairer and had mixed groups, they did get very enthusiastic about it and very competitive. Obviously, there was a point that they were learning the language at the same time. Using Music in the Classroom Judith: At certain points, not in that school in particular, but at other points I found that when you have mixed classes of perhaps adults and teenagers or children and teenagers that games usually work pretty well, unless they re exceptionally childish. What also works well is anything that s based around music. Winton: That s the universal language, I guess music in terms of connecting with people. That s very good. Judith: It tends to work. You need to be careful of what sort of music you pick, depending on the class. I usually just give them the choice or have a system whereby a student contributes a CD with a song on it. Winton: How would you use that in your teaching? Judith: There are a lot of different ways that you can use a song, but the simplest one is to simply print out the lyrics and blank out some of the words depending on the level, depending on how difficult they are to hear and get the class to fill in the blanks while they listen to the song. Winton: That really improves their listening capability then. Judith: It s good for listening. You can use it to introduce grammar. Most classes, even adult classes, tend to enjoy that kind of activity because most people enjoy music. I m sort of stating the obvious there. Winton: It wouldn t be obvious to me that that s what you use in a teaching environment, and that s very interesting. You were in Singapore for one summer then? Judith: It was a summer school. The contract was for six weeks. Page 9

10 Next Stop South America Winton: Then where was your next assignment? Judith: After the summer school, I came back to the U.K., the next job was to be in Ecuador and I wanted to save up some money for the flight and possibly expenses when I got there before the first paycheck. In Ecuador, Iwas in Quito. I was there for three years. Winton: How did you pick Quito? Was that just one of your places you wanted to go basically? Judith: I was actually thinking of Peru when I started this, but South America was pretty much top of the list of places that I very much wanted to see and learn about. Winton: What appealed to you about Ecuador? Judith: It was partly the job, it was partly the reputation of the school, and it was partly because when I started investigating what Ecuador was like it seemed to have pretty much everything that I had been looking at Peru for and it was smaller. Winton: You were there for three years. What kind of students were you teaching there? Judith: I had a mix of students. They varied in age. Probably the youngest was about 14, and I wouldn t have asked the oldest how old they were but probably retired. It was a mixture of adults and teenagers, but usually at different times because teenage class is in the afternoon and the adults in the evening when they finished work. Winton: How did you find the teaching there? Was it as rewarding as some of the other places you d been? Judith: Yes. I absolutely loved it, to be honest. How to Learn the Native Language Winton: Did you learn Spanish while you were there? Judith: I learned it while I was there. I did the same thing as I did with Poland. I arrived without knowing very much at all and picked up as I was there, but I did get Spanish lessons which improved it slightly. Page 10

11 I did language swaps with friends just to improve conversation, because most people are very unwilling to correct you when you re talking because it s rude. You don t correct your friends because it interrupts the conversation. So we had these arrangements whereby we chat in Spanish for half an hour or something and the other person would correct me every time I d make a mistake, and then we d swap so that we d talk in English and do the same thing, which I found very helpful, actually. Winton: That s a great suggestion. You can just give the other person permission to correct you. Judith: It s basically just a swap, and the advantage of it is the other person didn t need to be a teacher. Winton: You were there for three years? Judith: I was there for three years, yes. Next Stop - Russia Winton: Then what was your next port of call? Judith: I did take a short-term job in Moscow, but the plan was for it to be fairly short-term, basically just out of curiosity because I didn t know anything about Moscow or Russia and I wanted to see what it was like before I started moving on with my studies. So the next job was in Moscow, and that was teaching business English to professionals. Business English Winton: Very interesting. How did you find those students to teach? Presumably, those were adults. Judith: They were adults, so very professional, very demanding with regards to grammar, which was good for me but it wasn t too good for one or two of the other teachers. Winton: So the students really pushed you to give them the correct grammar and pronunciation? Page 11

12 Judith: I think pretty much all the students insisted on teachers that really knew the grammar inside out in Moscow. Winton: Which brings up a good point that some places that s more important, some places that s less important. That s good to know. Regional Differences Judith: Yes, I would have said in Ecuador while obviously they prefer teachers to know the basics of English grammar, they might not be quite so demanding of them all. It s more about being able to converse and learn practicalities of the language. Whereas the particular students I had in Moscow I think it was part of the Moscow culture. They did have very high standards when it came to grammar, and that was a problem for one of my colleagues. Winton: Interesting. Was that your most recent teaching abroad assignment? Judith: That was my most recent one, yes. Teacher Tips & Tricks Winton: Are there any other special tips or tricks that you used you can recommend to our readers? Judith: Anything that gets the students moving around, especially during the first couple of classes, especially if they don t know each other and they don t know you, people tend to be nervous and extremely self-conscious. One introductory tip, which works in every single country that I ve been in is to ask the students to write one or two fairly simple questions on little bits of paper. It could be anything from What is your favorite color? to What did you dream about when you were a child? Just whatever suits the level and suits the class. They each write a couple of questions on this little bit of paper, and everybody stands up and approaches another student to take turns to ask their questions, and they swap papers and go and talk to somebody else. You keep doing that for maybe five or ten minutes. It breaks the ice. It gets people talking to each other Page 12

13 in the language and moving around without feeling that all eyes are on them when they answer a question because everybody s doing the same thing at the same time. Winton: Right, that s very good. You get them familiar with each other, because a big barrier to learning a lot of times is you re worried about others. Judith: You tend to have a couple of things. You ve got, first of all, that if the people are feeling a little bit self-conscious, and it doesn t matter how old they are or how confident they are, but people do tend to feel a bit selfconscious in a whole group of strangers. quite difficult. The other thing is people are often very self-conscious about speaking in a foreign language. It varies from culture to culture, but some people are very nervous about making mistakes and it reduces communication and makes it Cultural Differences Winton: Of the places that you taught, for example, where would you say that they were most uptight about that sort of thing and the place where they were the least uptight about that sort of thing? Judith: It s quite difficult to say because the age groups I had varied and so did their level of English. I think possibly, for me, the classes that were maybe the most self-conscious were the Polish ones, but they were all professional adults and they all already knew each other in various ways. It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody else s business. They possibly were very embarrassed about not being experts in English in front of each other. They were also more or less at beginner level, whereas the other classes I had were different ages, different levels. I couldn t really make a comparison between countries on that. From what I ve heard from other teachers, I think Southeast Asia tends to be the place where students are the most self-conscious and uncomfortable about making mistakes in front of others, but that s just secondhand information. Teaching Resources Winton: There s a wide variety of things that I ve heard from other folks that we ve interviewed in this course. Some people say that you get there and all the materials are there and the resources to do the teaching and other places they go that you have to build your own. How did that work for you? Page 13

14 Judith: In Greece, they provided everything. You just worked through the course book and you might add one or two activities of your own, but basically your lesson plan was looking at what was in the next unit. In Ecuador, they did have their own books, but they weren t really sufficient so I ended up creating most of my own materials to go along with the basic outline of the course. The summer school in Singapore I think actually created everything. They did have a library, but I think all these schools have libraries of various books that you can use and activities if you want. You have to create your own lessons from what you can find and from what you ve gathered about your students. It was the same with the summer school in England, and in Poland they had their own course books and you just followed them. Resource Materials Winton: Are there any resource materials or sources of materials that you would recommend to new teachers that might be thinking about doing this sort of thing? Judith: Well, there is a lot of material online. One site that I remember as being quite useful because teachers from all over the world contribute lesson plans, game ideas and so on, is Dave s ESL Café, which you might have heard of. I don't know if it s still going. Winton: Yes, it is. It s very popular, and in our training materials we quote them in a number of different places and recommend them as a resource. That is probably the most popular resource out there. Judith: If somebody s stuck for some ideas, you can just put in teaching present perfect or present perfect games and ESL or TEFL at the end of the search. That should bring up a lot of materials by now. Take Your Own Language Course Page 14

15 Winton: Given all the experience you had, in looking back is there anything you wish you knew before you started the process that you know now or any thoughts you would impart to people just beginning this journey? Judith: I think it s a very good idea to learn some of the language first even if it s just, as you said, the basics. It could make settling in quite a lot smoother and obviously makes making friends and so on easier when you can actually understand what people are saying to you. Winton: That makes a lot of sense. Judith: Taking maybe a fortnight s evening classes beforehand wouldn t change your overall experience, but it would make the first few days maybe a bit easier and a bit less confusing. Winton: Yeah, you re not talking about a year s worth of language. Judith: Well, you could but I don t think that s necessary because you tend to learn the language faster in the country, but learning something learning more than I did before you go is probably quite useful. Winton: That s great advice. Judith, I d really like to thank you for all the good insights. It sounds like you struck out on your own and had a lot of fun and a lot of interesting times along the way. Judith: Yeah, it was very good. Winton: Very neat. Thank you very much for all your good insight. Judith: Thank you. Best Wishes for Turning Your English Skills into a Paycheck, KaryVannice Kary Vannice Page 15