‘They’re working more and more with the American military. When members of the American military go there and work on projects, they want to be able to have one-on-one conversations.’

Read more about their exploits here.

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A bit OTT if you ask me

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Read the full story…

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In this article from our guest authors series, Luke Fisher discusses the life of the TEFL teacher in the South American nation of Argentina:

There are a wide variety of TEFL courses in Argentina offered in cities throughout the country. Completing a TEFL course in Argentina leads to TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina. This is a truly wonderful and unique country which offers great opportunities for travel and teaching. In terms of initial costs for TEFL certification, Argentina is one of the best deals going in South America due to the financial crash of 2003.

Argentina is a country of stunning natural beauty. Due to the waves of immigration throughout the 20th Century, Argentina is truly cosmopolitan. It has beautiful big cities and huge expanses of untamed wilderness. It is a place where the visitor, particularly if they have a lively interest in soccer, can blend seamlessly with the surroundings and friendly people. The local language is of course Spanish, but there are some native South American dialects still in use. The population of this vast country is thirty-seven million, and the religion is predominately Roman Catholic. In a country where US television and baseball is enormously popular, there is considerable enthusiasm for learning English and as a result a plethora of TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina are available. Those actively looking for TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina will find a good variety of opportunities throughout the country, and be rewarded by the experience of teaching some of the most enthusiastic and fun-loving students in the world.

Completing a TEFL course in Argentina with TEFL certification is sufficient to teach in state and private schools. Generally, employers for TEFL jobs do not require a degree, PGCE or previous teaching experience. Within language institutes you can expect to find yourself teaching those who work in tourism or business. Also businesses and companies provide TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina for English language training purposes for their employees. A good TEFL course in Argentina will provide components within the course for teaching business English and in some cases specialized courses dealing only with business English teaching leading to CTBE: Certificate in Teaching Business English.

Argentina has a needs driven market when it comes to English language learning and as a result you will find highly motivated students. TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina have to be paid for and this is generally at a cost to the student of English. Students, school managers, companies and businesses will expect a respectable, well-turned out, professional teacher. An important thing to note is that Latin languages are inflected and students will naturally have a high awareness of grammar. Teachers teaching English in Argentina will need to prepare well for their classes in order to provide rich and structured lessons and a solid learning environment. Argentinean students are amongst the most warmly spoken of by experienced TEFL teachers. Expect fun, great enthusiasm, but do not be too surprised if class sizes are low should there be a major sporting event being broadcast.

Buenos Aires is a great location for TEFL courses in Argentina and TEFL jobs leading to teaching English in Argentina. The capital city boasts cafe lined grand avenues and cobbled back-streets in a style as that of Europe, a buzzing night life and many places of interest. It is not too difficult to escape the somewhat unusually easy paced life of the city for the quieter suburbs and natural expanses that surround Buenos Aires. Cordoba is the education centre of the country with seven universities in total. As an academic town it is alive with interesting people and events and there is plenty to do on a budget. Mendoza in contrast, with giant sycamore lined streets, feels like a desert – as you will notice from the high temperatures – but it is a desert made green by the work of plantation owners.

A little preparation prior to setting off for your TEFL course in Argentina or TEFL job teaching English in Argentina will pay dividends. Think of not just of Argentina, but the whole continent of South America, as you may well end up traveling around quite a bit once you hit this part of the world. It is a good idea to contact Latin American embassies in your country of origin for the locations that interest you. Enquire about TEFL courses, TEFL jobs teaching English and visas, and see what you get back. You will find that you will have compiled a useful set of information which will help in the long run. Information will vary from country of origin to country of origin, Latin American embassy to Latin American embassy.

In many cases TEFL jobs teaching English in Argentina are acquired on-the-spot. Hence you will need a letter of introduction, in Spanish, your resume or CV translated accordingly, plus a translation of your transcripts and certificates. The best option is to use Castillian Spanish as spoken in Spain. This is seen as the mother tongue, universally comprehended, and carries style, weight and considerable currency throughout Argentina and Latin America.

There are a number of options that can be utilized to gain a placement prior to teaching English in Argentina. Many US TEFL schools have close ties with Argentina and other South American countries. The Buenos Aires Herald carries TEFL job advertisements for English Teachers and sometimes information about TEFL courses in Argentina. The Net has many forums and dedicated websites for TEFL jobs and teaching English in Argentina.

The local yellow pages detail schools, language institutes and universities which are often only too willing to interview candidates. Well presented, organized and enthusiastic TEFL teachers are in short supply. It is quite likely that if an employer likes you they will most certainly find some teaching for you!

TEFL job opportunities for teaching English in Argentina are in plentiful supply. There is a wide and varied market for those having completed a TEFL course in Argentina or at another location. Argentina offers great travel options and the opportunity to become part of the local culture through teaching English. When choosing a location for a TEFL course and teaching English overseas, Argentina and South America should be given some serious consideration.

About the Author

TEFL International offers TEFL courses in Argentina and TEFL jobs leading to teaching English in Argentina. Teach, travel, live and work in Argentina.

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What Would Motivate you to Take a New Job?

What do we want from our jobs? There must surely be a reason for us to move on to bigger and better things at one time or another. So, what are our motivations? What are those bigger and better things? Why do we make the decision to up and move to a new school? The poll that ran on the blog and the forum during December shed some light on to why we move from one job to the next… read on

Interview: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections

Last month on the ELT World Blog I highlighted the excellent Teaching without Borders blog: Teacher Reflections, Global Connections, explaining what a great idea I thought it was to reflect on the different teaching experiences of the different countries of the contributors. I’m delighted that Jennifer Uhler and Jeff Mattison have taken the time and considerable effort to tell Horizons about their blog… read on

Teaching Collocations

Whilst learners often focus on the acquisition of new grammatical structures as a guideline to their progress in learning English, the same cannot always be said of an English learner’s regard for the importance of progressive vocabulary acquisition. Whilst it is true that language structures form the basic skeleton of a language , vocabulary provides the flesh to these bones. Without words, what do we have?… read on

Was your Initial Training Course Worth it?

The four-week TEFL course, a starting point for so many of us in our careers as English teachers. But is it really worth it? What do we really gain from these short, intensive courses that can’t possibly hope to adequately prepare us for a career in teaching? A great deal, it would seem, according to the poll that ran on the blog and the forum… read on

The EnglishUK Teachers Conference

Anyone who’s ever attended a TEFL conference will tell you it can be something of a mixed experience in terms of what you gain from it. It’s not unlike gold mining: you have to sift through a lot of stuff to get to anything even remotely of use to you. Presenting at a conference is, on the other hand, a whole different experience. Anyone thinking of venturing into the conference circuit would be well advised to read the following article… read on

Academicus Electronicus

For this edition of the journal, I offer you, my dear friends, two websites dedicated to the development of TEFL professionals… read on

Teaching English in New Zealand

The situation regarding English language teaching in New Zealand is pretty similar to Australia and not so different from the UK in many respects. As in those countries, there is a private language school sector in addition to state provision through various ESOL programmes… read on

My Favourite Waste of Time

At a certain point, we all get fed up with certain aspects of living in another country. The little things suddenly become big problems in your life. Some of these things, however, bug everyone, and not just us poor expat teachers. Facebook, for all its sins, seems to be becoming a way in which we are able to find kindred sufferers, as M. le Prof d’Anglais explains… read on

Politically Correct Revisited

Last issue’s article on political correctness was well received by many of you, who were able to relate to the ideas being explored. Luckily for Horizons, Istanbul’s Stranger has decided to follow up on the previous article, exploring further the linguistic barriers to the cross-culturalization of the notion of political correctness… read on

The Ideal English Teacher through the Eyes of ELT Trainees

Do you remember what you thought about teachers when you started out as a trainee? How much have your perceptions changed? This article explores the way that trainee teachers in Argentina perceive those already in the profession… read on

Interview: The Latin America Job list and TEFL Tips

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Why did you set up your sites?

I wanted to create a place where people could get information about teaching in Latin American, living in Peru, and hints to help teachers. I have three sites; two are about teaching and one about Peru.

Firstly, there’s the the LA Job List where in addition to giving information about teaching in Latin America, such as visas, how to find a job, etc. I have job lists for 19 Latin American countries.

TEFL Tips gives tips for teaching, such as Teaching English, Teaching Large Classes, Living in a Foreign Country, etc.

Finally, the Ultimate Peru List is a site which has information about life in Peru from working, immigrations, settling down, etc.

I have been gathering information on these topics on years and constantly update in order for people to have the latest information.

Why did you feel the need to start your teaching sites?

I feel that I have a bit of experience in teaching and living in Peru. For example, when I come to Peru I knew nothing, there was hardly any info on the web, so I had to struggle with things myself. I believe that now since I have more experience in teaching and Peru that I should share the info with other people. It makes the transition so much easier.

I suppose after you spend years posting in forums, people tend to know who you are and approach you for advice. I originally started posting information on forums due to the fact that people would email and PM (private message) me with the same questions. I thought posting the information would make it readily available to everyone. People’s questions were the motivation behind me creating the information that I have.

I only recently started the websites. I’m involved in several forums both about TEFL and Peru and had the information on those forums, I try to update as often as possible and it just became too difficult to update them all. I thought that instead of updating all the forums, I could just put the links in my signature and people could easily find the information on my website.

What’s your background in teaching?

During university I got the chance to do some short-term teaching in China, Taiwan and Venezuela. Once I graduated I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I’ve been teaching for five years. I did my TEFL Diploma with the Boland School in the Czech Republic in January 2003. Then I went to teach for them in Suzhou, China, later I went to a kindergarten in Changchun, China. In August 2004, I moved to Lima, Peru to teach at a university and had the intention to stay a year, but ended up getting married a year later. In August 2006, we moved to Lima where I taught at a university and secondary school. In November 2007 I made the decision to come to Korea to work at a primary school in order to do my thesis, but will be going home to Lima at the end of January 2008.

I think that it’s important to keep learning about teaching, so I try to attend conferences and workshops every couple of months. I also have presented in some of them. My background isn’t in teaching, so I started my MA in TEFL in February 2006 in order to learn more about it.

What are your favorite teaching sites?

I like ELT World (www.elt-world.blogspot.com) because it’s a breath of fresh air in the TEFL World. The forums are mostly made up of TEFL oldbies who know each other so the atmosphere is very friendly. TEFL Watch (www.teflwatch.org) is also very useful for finding info about good and bad schools.

As for teaching material, I think that good sites are One Stop English (www.onestopenglish.com), Boggle’s World (www.bogglesworld.com), also the Mark’s English site (www.mes-english.com) as well as ESL Galaxy (www.esl-galaxy.com).

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing TEFL teachers today?

I think it’s to overcome the stereotypes. Unfortunately, some people still think of EFL teachers as backpackers who are only in it to see the world, but more and more we’re seeing people who are making a career out of teaching. Seeing people serious about teaching is good for the students and employers.

What’s your most positive teaching experience?

I like playing games in class, so anytime I see students laughing and having fun while in class is wonderful for me. I like teaching children, so it’s fun to see them cock their head to one side and think how to say things in English and then they get a kick out of it when they can communicate with the teacher.

What are your future plans for your various websites?

I’ve had so much feedback about my sites and people have contacted me giving me heaps of suggestions about what to do, which I really appreciate.

For The LA Job List, I would like to have people add their stories about teaching in specific countries, so that people who want to teach in those countries can know what to expect as far as salary, numbers of hours, etc.

For TEFL Tips, I would like to continue adding more tips for specific teaching situations, such as teaching children, teaching business English, etc. I also hope to have people add their tips as well.

For The Ultimate Peru List, I have 50 Word pages of information and would like to work on the organisation so that people can easily find the info they’re looking for.

One thing that I think is important is giving people credit for what they’ve done. So many people have approached me and asked to help me out. I have a Credits section on The LA Job List where I list people who have helped me out with large portions of the website. When people give me small tips I always put their name next to it. Or if they add my website to theirs I do the same. I think it’s important for people to realise “what goes around, comes around.”

Visit the the LA Joblist, the Ultimate Peru List and TEFL tips websites:

http://www.thelajoblist.blogspot.com/

http://www.tefltips.blogspot.com/

http://www.theultimateperulist.blogspot.com

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One area I really like are the teacher letters on their experiences. I featured a few on the blog before, but thought I’d give a more comprehensive list of their reports on teaching around the world:

Argentina: teaching English in a public school

The Republic of Argentina Republic is situated in South America. It has a population of 37 million: about 17 million of the people are poor. at the time of writing every day more people become poor.

While reading this, you may think that Argentina is a country without natural resources. You think wrong! It has 4 very well-differentiated climates. It has more cows than citizens. It can grow any type of agricultural produce. Argentina has rivers, lakes, beaches, a wide variety of animals, mountains, hills and what is more important, plains. You may wonder why we are suffering from famine or other diseases? The answer is that the government is more preoccupied with how to “steal” money from its citizens than how to solve these great social and economical problems… read on

Australia: juggling work, travel and play

I really enjoyed teaching English in Australia and found it a great way to experience a truly massive and amazing country. I’d recommend it to anyone who (like me) can’t afford to fund an extended trip around the place but is willing to juggle work and play over the course of a year.

Work can be found in private language schools, teaching a mix of Asian, European, South American, and occasionally African students. These schools are similar to those operating in other English speaking countries, and generally consist of young adult students hoping to improve their English whilst having a good time in Oz. This means that motivation levels can vary widely. Classes range from hard working Cambridge groups and IELTS/EAP students desperate to get into Australian colleges, right through to easy going general English groups with more interest in surf reports than reported speech… read on

Belgium: opportunities for teaching English

Chocolate I knew about, as well as fries and good beer but what about the teaching situation? “Brush up on your grammar and prepare to teach advanced learners…You’d better get an extra qualification to teach Business English. I would have thought Belgium’s quite a saturated market” was what my director of studies advised me before I left for Belgium. Not quite what I wanted to hear pre-departure.

A pre-intermediate Vietnamese clairvoyant; two upper intermediate French engineers, an elementary Italian MEP; two Greek teenagers; an intermediate group made up of Japanese housewives, a Libyan expert on water management and some Belgians, were on the menu for my first week of teaching – a far cry from what I had imagined. In actual fact, just the Belgian and European capital has so much teaching work available that you need never be without work regardless of your qualifications… read on

Bolivia: different types of English teaching

There appears to be a divide between the experiences of the other South American contributors to this section. On the one hand, native teachers having to contend with apathy in their public school classes due to poverty, and finding the need to instil motivation an integral part of teaching. On the other, TEFL teachers from overseas working in large private institutes where the only necessary motivation is results. My experiences in Bolivia come somewhere in the middle of this divide.

There is obviously a great deal of poverty in Bolivia, and for most, learning English is of minor importance. The poorest are the indigenous campesinos who number half the population and speak the native languages of Aymara and Quechua. When they come to the cities they settle on the outskirts and are generally employed in street trade. Learning Spanish is their main concern. English is of little use to the majority so they don’t learn it. In fact, many of the poorer children forego education entirely to earn a living on the streets… read on

Brazil: two experiences of teaching in public schools

Two very different experiences of teaching in Brazil. Letters from a Brazilian who was shocked to find out how different life was in the Public school system and below a letter from an Irishman working for a rich private school… read on

Cameroon: It’s Milla Time

When I first told people I was going to work in Cameroon, the most common reaction was: ‘Why?’. The second was: ‘It’s in Africa, you’ll die!’. The third: ‘Where is that?’

So let’s give some answers. I was offered a job that looked interesting in a part of the world I’d never been to before. I’d also long had an interest in Africa, if in a rather vague way, so decided it was time to find out the reality… read on

Chile: travelling halfway round the world to work

Why does any woman up and leave her family, friends and beloved country, to travel half way around the world? It could only be love. That is how I found myself arriving in Concepción, Chile two years ago. My inability to utter one word of Spanish left me with only one employment option: teaching English. I found a job at a language institute in town, and off I went.

As with most places in South America, the idea is to have only native speakers as teachers, and experience is essential. Unfortunately, not many people awake from the bite of the travel bug and yell out “I think I’ll try Chile”, so inevitably many teachers are not experienced and receive only minimal training from these institutes. The salaries offered are not the best, but the cost of living is also not very high… read on

The extracts from the excellent One Stop English will continue throughout this week.

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My first destination is New York where friends await. Then it’s Montreal and Vancouver before I head to South America for two months. In Argentina I’m taking the biggest leap outside my comfort zone by volunteering to teach English and learning Spanish. I did a TEFL course in January, so I know what it’s like to stand in front of a class of expectant students who believe that you’re about to tell them something useful. Radio, I realised at that point, has the advantage of not allowing me to see the audience. As for the Spanish, I’m trying to get ahead by listening to 16 Linguaphone CDs. I almost booked a guesthouse in Lima without resorting to lo siento, habla usted inglés? (I’m sorry, do you speak English?) but in the end I gave in. And, of course, the reply was “yes, how can I help you?”, spoken with only a hint of an accent.

Read the full article here. Seriously, though, good luck to him. I’m looking forward to what he’s got to say after his little excursion.

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