Foreign Language House

Foreign Language House is a website with a newsletter I subscribe to. I hardly use it, but they have interesting stuff around the holidays and sometimes send cool holiday freebies (or cheaply priced items) that you can download and print. If nothing else, you should subscribe so you see what they have. It might inspire you to borrow and improve an idea for your own classroom!

Subscribe at: http://foreignlanguagehouse.com/

How to find students!?

Alright, this post is for all of you who provide private lessons. How the HECK do you find private students?

I have tried social networks, this has been a huge fail for me in Brazil.

After a year of banging my head against the wall, phone calls have been becoming much more common and it looks like I am going to have a full load of teaching this semester. These are the things that I have found that have been working best for me.

1) I printed a ton of COLORFUL business cards. These business cards I ALWAYS have with me and I try to leave a few at every place I go after talking with the owner or manager of the establishment.

2) Keeping a really good profile at the school I teach with. I had one student through the school who insisted I take her on as a private student (even though I charge the same thing as the school basically....) and I refused based on etiquette. I told her that unfortunately, I would not be able to do that for her, as she found my services through the school and that I thought it was rather underhanded, especially since she was looking for conversation practice alone, and I would charge exactly what the school charges and the same hours as the school. A few weeks later she gave my information to two individuals who now are doing private lessons with me. She respected my honesty and respect for my employer and rewarded me with new clients. She's the owner of the largest car-parts distributor in the state and has a million connections. This will definitely help my business to grow.

3) Keeping a really good public profile. I don't go out to the clubs on a regular basis nor do I frequent bars. This is a result of how the first time I went out and got fly like a G-6 in Ji-Paraná, I ran into one of my students and was so incredibly ashamed, I didn't know what to say when I saw her in class the following week.

Has anyone taught online? I have heard of some websites that provide this as an opportunity (and let me tell you, it would be nice to be able to just teach from my computer). I would love any advice on these options if you guys know anything!

Independent Spanish Learning Resources?

Hola! I have this innate reaction to kids that even though they may move or grow up, I will never stop being their Spanish teacher. Once my student, always my student. With that said, I have two students who moved back to Sweden with their family last year. I happen to know their mom from salsa dancing, and she messaged me to tell me that her oldest child feels that he is learning no Spanish at school. He is not given vocabulary lists or homework. She bought him Rosetta Stone, but he doesn't like it. She doesn't know how to help him! 


I have shared my elementary website, www.fcspanish.com, with them for now, but considering this kid is now in 7th grade, he will soon outgrow what my K-5 sixteen-lesson-a-year curriculum can provide. Do you know of any resources I can share with him that can help him advance his Spanish independently? I was thinking of sharing the BBC Languages page with them, but it is rather disorganized and not user-friendly. I'm not really sure if anything exists that he can work his own way through without getting super bored or missing the interactive piece that is so necessary.


Heck, I may end up creating a custom curriculum for this kid and skyping him for free. I can't give up on a kid who sees the value in being multilingual (he speaks at least German and English already) and who wants to learn Spanish!! 


Any ideas would be appreciated. :)

American Teaching English in Brazil

Hello! Although you all know me, I thought that I would spend this first post talking about exactly WHAT IT IS that I am doing in relation to Language Teaching.

Upon arriving in Brazil with my Master's degree from Vanderbilt in Latin American Studies in hand, prepared to work on vigorous educational policy reform, I decided to take it easy and relax and teach English instead (which would also provide me with the stellar opportunity to END MY LONG DISTANCE MARRIAGE and make finally live in the same house, together, after almost two years of only visits every other month or so.)

Little did I know that I was opening Pandora's box and would absolutely fall in love with teaching.

I've now changed my career goals bastante and am totally excited about teaching English and am constantly looking for new ways to continue to etch out my own place in the local market, which already has about 5 private language schools, along with mandatory English instruction from the primary through college-prep education. English is a requirement here in Brazil, as all college entrance exams have an English (or sometimes Spanish) section, so for the youth, it is of utmost importance to have control of a foreign language, and most choose English, because, well you know.

I have been lucky as I have been able to continue using my Spanish in the few Spanish classes that I do have, however, I regret to inform you that my Spanish which was at the advanced level, is now Portanhol, due to my constant immersion in Portuguese.

I have found that my favorite lessons are the the most difficult ones (the Three Conditionals and the Perfect Tenses) and LOVE working with pre-college or college level students. I have found that the wealthy business owning women tend to be more of a distraction than the 13 year olds who throw spitballs at the girls that they like and their brothers.

I have also been providing translation services (Portuguese-->English only) to professors and students at one of the local colleges and have successfully translated 2 complete thesis about genotoxicity (wow did I learn a lot about Amazonian fruits!) and have translated numerous abstracts (abstracts are required to be in Portuguese and a foreign language in order to be publishable in Brazil.). To my surprise, one of my clients spoke with the president of the university about me starting up an English course there (since they are lacking one) and after a presentation, I was approved to be able to utilize a classroom free of charge as a test run for a "College Level English Course" to prepare students for international conferences, understanding advanced texts in English and participating in international research collaborations. My propaganda starts in February and needless to say, I am terrified that it is going to bomb, but I am so excited if it takes off! If I can manage 7 students in each of the 3 time slots, I will be able to triple my monthly income. A huge plus.

So, in 2012, my plan is to cut my ties with the language school I was working at in order to free up my time for lesson planning for my MWF classes at the college and for my T/TH private lessons that I will be still keeping up with since they pay so well. I'm also considering trying out a "Coffee Hour" at one of the local cafes here. The whole "socializing at the local cafe" has not taken off here in the interior, but there are numerous establishments that are on the brink of bankruptcy due to the lack of clientele. My plan is to suggest to one of these places some type of collaboration where I can utilize the space for an hour or two on a Thursday or Friday evening for advanced English conversation. I'll probably make some form of punch cards for people to buy more than one session at a time (with a small discount) and provide the coffee shop owner a small percentage of the fees that I charge in addition to allowing him to keep all the profits from the coffee sales. I think that this might take off if I advertise correctly IN the language schools and promote it as "professional development" for their staff and "travel preparation" for those who travel abroad and want a refresher.

As far as language resources, I am in love with using TED.com videos as homework. I assign a different video for each of my students (usually about 5 mins long) as homework and the next week they do a class presentation on the topic that they were assigned. This works their comprehension and presentation skills like crazy! I also utilize VOA News for reading comprehension, new vocabulary and occasionally as listening comprehension for homework. I LOVE to take 30 minutes every other week to work on short dictations using funny stories from Yahoo's Odd News. I read the text in chunks and have each student write what they think they are hearing. After I am done reading, I read it through one more time without pausing, but still kinda slow, and then I let them collaborate in groups to fix their errors. After about 10 minutes, I let each group choose someone to write their version of the text on the board. The results help them to see how MUCH they are understanding and laugh together at their errors. Last semester I used a story about a guy who tried to smuggle a bunch of animals in his pants (snakes, monkeys, etc...) through the airport. Imagine the insanity! Lastly, I like to spend a part of the class EVERY class, on conversation. I bring a list of questions to ask the students or I have them prepare a list of questions that have to do with a certain topic. Friendship, World Peace, Happiness, (the New Age philosopher in me LOVES this part) and I try to get them using their language skills to express their ideas and opinions. At first it is always really hard, but they usually let loose after about 5 minutes. I found that this page from The Internet TESL Journal has TONS of questions related to various topics for when I am in a pinch.

I think that this website is an AWESOME idea and I am looking forward to participating and hearing from all of you. What are your favorite things to teach? What are your frustrations? What sites do you like to use? Let's start inviting our friends to participate and make this site exciting for all!

Feel free to check out my personal blog at www.adventuresintheamazonjpr.blogspot.com!

Abraços!

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