You might be one of the expat wives who want to study English or local language while living abroad.
Possible bottlenecks for them are…
- You want your teacher to speak your mother language
- It’s difficult to go to school with a set schedule
- School is expensive…
If you are one of them, I’d recommend Conversation Exchange just as I did in “Conversation Exchange For Expat Wives“.
I’ve just experienced my second conversation exchange here in Chicago and found out one possible nugget for the matching of future language teachers and ambitious expat wives.
I met another American girl this time and she was just another great person!
She studied Japanese for 2 years in the past but now struggling with keeping her Japanese because she has had no Japanese friend these days.
That’s one reason why she is using Conversation Exchange; another reason is that she needs to conduct 20 hours of practical training for her TEFL(Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification.
TESOL, TEFL, TESL…?
There are several different acronyms like TEFL out there.
This U of T article explains as below.
TEFL, TESL and TESOL are all certifications for teaching English to non-native English speakers. All of these certifications offer the same level of qualification to teach English. The one that’s best for you depends on who – and where – you plan to teach.
TESOL – Teaching English to Speakers of another Language
TEFL – Teaching English as a Foreign Language
TESL – Teaching English as a Second Language
As the quoted article says, “A TEFL certification provides the skills needed to teach English abroad in countries where students do not speak English as their first language, such as China, Japan or Brazil” and thus is meant for people like expat with the limited ability of English.
Win-Win relationship
The girl I met this time was rather specifically looking for Japanese speakers who want to study English both for her Japanese study purpose and her TEFL practice qualification.
It was such a good matchup of “a Japanese who wants to study English” and “an American who wants to study Japanese and teach English” via Conversation Exchange!
Needless to say, no relationship will go well if you have the intention only to “take advantage of” others.
The first thing you want to do is always “give” not to “take”.
Matching App?
Don’t be discouraged to know that this type of good matching doesn’t happen all the time.
I did conversation exchange quite a lot when I lived in Toronto, and am positively surprised with 2 meetups here in Chicago going this great.
While they use Tinder or other apps to match up people to date making use of all the cutting-edge technologies and algorithms, what I and many others want is the same type of matching app for language learners and teachers!
Shall we develop one and disrupt educational space together…?
Go JVs!
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