The hazards and misfortunes of being a language trainer

There are few things I find more frustrating, upsetting, enervating and infuriating than the English language training sector and the people involved. I shall elaborate, but this is really just a small part of the overall picture:

There is an awful paradox at the heart of it all that needs somehow to be killed off. If you look at people of other professions coming into contact with large groups of customers on a daily basis, like accountants, doctors, lawyers and the like, they keep themselves to themselves and don't reveal their secrets to the world so readily. They also provide a "need-to-have" service, rather than a  "nice-to-have" service, such as artists, restaurateurs and gardeners. For that reason they can charge a lot of money for their services. Artists, restaurateurs and gardeners too, but there are very few of the latter who actually can afford the kind of gated properties of the former. In fact, they are liable to be the clients of the latter. And far fewer in number, which is why most artists don't make a huge amount of sales.

Language training falls in a middle category. For some it is a "nice-to-have", for others a "need-to-have", where half are learning languages to better carry out their job, and the other half so they can hold conversations with strangers on hotel terraces; and herein lies the problem. The managers and owners of language schools are able to get the best of both worlds by charging clients in the "need-to-have" category a lot of money for the services of their trainers/teachers, yet pay their personnel the same kind of fees from the "nice-to-have" category. It is a trick of the trade, and a very prevalent one. Furthermore, a sizeable minority of the teachers are gap-year students, or freshly diploma'd twenty-somethings who can barely recognise the difference between a preposition and their elbow. The rest, who are trying to make a career out of it are terrorised by their employer by making competitors out of your colleagues (ever wondered why many are reluctant to share?) and making every day in the school seem like it's your last one. But the most despicable part of their little ruse is how many hoops they make you jump through for such a paltry salary. Take a look at some of the jobs on offer on the TEFL websites. Here's one I found today:

[Name removed] is a leader in the provision of educational travel programmes. Accredited by the British Council, we've been teaching English to international students for 20 years. Our aim is to provide students with a fun, friendly and safe environment in which to develop their communication skills in English.

We are looking for talented and committed EFL teachers to work on a non-residential basis at our centre based at [name removed].

This is a 1 week post, teaching up to 20 hours.


So far, so good.

Then:

Essential:
- CELTA, Trinity TESOL, PGCE in English or an MFL, or equivalent
-Bachelor Degree

Desirable:
- Experience of teaching students of university age
-An undergraduate degree

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A NON RESIDENTIAL POSITION AND WE ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE ACCOMMODATION.

So, you're thinking it's going to reward you for the fact you have a degree and you need to pay for your own accommodation? Wait for it...

From £12.50 per teaching hour.

I say, what?

From £12.50 per teaching hour.

I did read that right?

Yep, you definitely did.

That's virtually nothing. I got more per hour for mowing lawns, and that was back in the mid-nineties.

So, let's say you're doing the maximum 20 hours for the week. That works out at £250 for the week. Then let's add in your accommodation. You're in a well-to-do provincial city in the late summer. Kids are back at school but it's still warm. You're looking at £25-£40 per night, for a youth hostel or a cheap hotel. So that's between £170 and £280 for the week. In the youth hostel category, you come out with £80 profit, leaving you with just over £10 per day for food. In the cheap hotel category, you're £30 out of pocket even before you've bought a muesli bar for your evening meal. And you still have to factor in that you need to travel there. Oh yes, and UK tax. And that's not for preparing lessons, correcting and marking work and doing the admin. It says "From £12.50 per teaching hour".

This repeats itself over and over again in varying forms of ruthless cheapskatery and devious mind-trickery as to leave most people with the idea that you should be grateful for actually having something to bloody well do, and you're actually such an ungrateful little weasel for demanding a higher salary. You are supposed to understand that you are doing a humanitarian act, and asking for more money will lead to demands from the others, which in the end if all the teachers did it would lead the school to bankruptcy.

Utter rubbish.

Imagine you've got a class of 8 students. Their parents have paid a package of £500 to £900 for the week, including all meals and basic accommodation in the residence halls of the campus. That's about £4000 to £7200 per class. That means the people on the course are from families that are not poor. Indeed, they're likely to be the lawyers and doctors of the future. The school has overheads, so let's take away 60%. That still leaves £1600 to £2880 per group. And they can't pay proper salaries to their teachers?

There are many standard replies to that question, including the old cliché about profit margins and the like. But what I find most baffling is that these schools really do find the personnel for their courses. There really are people who wish to fill the gaps. And these are the pedagogical versions of interns, that new breed of modern crypto-slave that will do anything for the promise of a job in the future. Except in this business, there is no guarantee of success or riches beyond the current hourly rate afforded by language schools across the world.

I think it is really high time serious language trainers got together and separated themselves from the amateurish schools willing to employ bookish recent graduates looking for a jobby (job + hobby) from the more serious ones who look after their staff and treat them more like the career-minded human beings they are trying to become.

Career-wise, I live in a bubble of contentedness, and I am thankfully not in this predicament that the vast majority of my fellow language trainers find themselves in. But when I look through the job ads just to see what else I could be doing, I despair for the predicament of those wanting to join me in this noble yet poorly-rewarded of professions. It is a very well-oiled ladder, and that's how the schools like it.

Finally, a short note about the people who do my job. They are extraordinarily proud people, preferring to let someone else organise the lessons, set up the course locations, find the clients, level-test them, propose times and hours for their course, and ask them for post-course feedback. The teacher is only willing to involve him/herself in the bare minimum of extra activity, and you have to ask why. That is because it is not their job. They are paid to teach and give advice, mark work and guide students to their target. Correcting tests, preparing lessons and writing course records go largely unpaid. Many would say that out of every hour spent in the classroom, about 25 to 40 minutes is spent doing the accompanying admin. And in the class, the energy spent giving the lesson in comparison to the monetary rewards has a real effect on morale, psyche and sense of self-worth.

So next time you question the commitment and satisfaction of language teachers, remember there may be a hundred reasons behind it. Either the language schools need to stop their ludicrous race to the bottom with their course fees (a recent article in Swedish on public procurement of language services, this time translation and interpretation, found that low pricing had an adverse effect on overall quality and client satisfaction) or trainers need to refuse jobs that don't properly reward them for their efforts. I know already what is going to happen: all the time there are people willing to work simply for the work experience, who were legally minors less than 5 years before they do their dodgy TEFL qualifications, the rest will be exploited. And this particular formula is repeating itself in many other professional sectors.

Language training has many forms

It has been twenty years since I gave my first English lesson. I was only 14 and we lived in the mountains surrounding the proud city of Málaga. I enjoyed it so much, that I seriously considered it as a future occupation. I was also interested in the European Union and its political manoeuvrings and I did part of my university course on the subject, along with two languages: French and Russian. So as I am now giving language training at the European Institutions, I can say that I have made it - I have arrived at the top of my profession; the pinnacle of my career.

The one thing I have learned in these two decades in pedagogy, with an estimation of 400 students who have taken my courses, is that every one of them is an individual with different learning needs, different habits in the classroom and different knowledge of one or other aspect of the language. The one thing they do have in common is that they fit a proscribed language level. But they are not school pupils where everyone learns together from day one. That's where the similarities end. Where one student may be good at grammar and theory but bad at speaking and writing, another one may be good at listening and reading but bad at grammar and theory. And that is why no one method can ever be applied in the classroom.


A certain international company based in the US giving language training goes one step further: it provides its trainers with manuals so that they never need their imagination ever again. The trainer is not allowed to use explanations and certainly not allowed to explain using graphs, lists or charts which show how the grammar of this language might work. If this wasn't enough, it then provides certain phrases per page in the manual that the trainer should spoonfeed the student with, e.g. "the photocopier doesn't work". Well hello! How in the name of sanity is the student then supposed to relate the negative form if he/she is not shown how it works in the first place? The student can know far more about grammar if a wider explanation is given concerning that point than just a poor lonely memory phrase.


Furthermore, the trainers at this establishment are told they will be docked bonus money if they deviate from the methods, or if anomalies are found in the progress of their clients. In other words, clients will not learn too quickly or the company will lose money, nor will they learn nothing or they will find alternative places to learn. Another striking aspect about this multinational is that people still go there to "learn". And the company keeps growing. This shows something about our tastes... In their localities they are the most expensive usually, and they pay the least. In Brussels for example they pay a pro-rata wage which on paper seems adequate, if you're called to work for the full amount of time. The reality is most trainers there earn about 36% of the average trainer's salary, due to being allotted very few hours. There is also a clause in their contracts stipulating that they cannot work for a competitor during this time either, something that everyone else is permitted to do.


Anyway, back to the methods:
One thing that has made my blood boil over the years is this "approach" word. Every language school has an "approach"; a way of delivering lessons in their own little bundle. What these people fail to realise is that each individual needs to be shown in a different way depending on their own abilities. Children until about 8 or 9 are able to assimilate languages pretty simply because their brain is still whole. But after then, the two lobes become ever more separate and this is where the senior school makes a great difference and also where it has got the balance right. People respond much better to an academic way of learning simply because it provides the student with rules and exceptions, tables and charts of grammar and vocabulary. Language learners of any age respond far more quickly to this because they had been doing it in senior school, and that is the method they are acquainted with.

This is not saying that everyone is like this, but as this method has withstood the test of time, it has a majority of supporters. If this is combined with some of the more realistic contemporary forms of learning, a win-win situation can only come from it. Sticking to the target language works for those above beginner level, and has to work if participant and trainer do not have a common tongue. But where they do, it would be wrong not to speed things up with a gentle nudge in the right direction as long as it does not become overbearing. Trainers, especially polyglots, should under no circumstances show off their language skills by translating. However, they should use their knowledge to provide clear explanations as to why rules are different between languages, where words come from, spelling and pronunciation differences and similarities. By simply telling the student this is how it is and that's all they need to know, you are cutting off the tentpegs of language memory and assimilation. By giving them a reason or an explanation you are making sure they can digest subtle differences far more easily than simply spoonfeeding the student with information.

However, my main aim in this entry is to tell you the most important word in language learning. The word which, if properly administered, can increase learning speed. That word is why. By answering it, you are opening up whole avenues of easily memorised words, grammar rules and spellings. For without an explanation, students have nothing to grip onto, no attachment to their own language (because let's face it, we all translate when learning languages). By giving that attachment, you are teaching the student to think outside their own language without knowing it and to detach him/herself from the mother tongue discreetly, almost clandestinely, whilst making them feel like you are giving them an easy and comfortable ride towards a higher level of understanding.

Most trainers usually enter a language training establishment with visions of smiling, happy students. They do not realise how disillusioning the experience can become if methods are forcibly applied when the trainer's own methods have been successful already. Especially as they know that applicant needs money. They can say and do what they want because at the end they pay you. But I say, do not let anyone bully you into accepting their "methods". Trainers do not work comfortably when they are not happy with the regime. It is a recipe for failure and simply has no place in the classroom. Be yourself; inspire; judge the student before applying the methods; don't allow pedagogical bigotry to spoil your profession. If they do want you to apply their methods, just agree - go along with what they say, and when they're not looking or listening (which is most of the time) carry on doing what you have always done! Your own methods are the best, whatever anyone says, and that includes the language schools.