What's a TEFL teacher?

These days, now that I'm suddenly connected to educators from all sorts of different fields, located all over the world via various different social-networking sites, I thought I'd left my bubble... yet my bubble didn't leave me.

In a private conversation, one of my new edu-colleagues on Twitter thought I was German - because I live in Germany (understandable) and remarked in surprise about my globe-trotting, which to me is completely normal... because in my niche of education, it is.

I replied "Oh, that's just the life of a TEFL teacher"

to which she responded

"What's TEFL?"

And the bubble popped. Time to define who I am, what I do.


By the end of this year 2 billion people, one third of the world's population will speak English.

It didn't happen by itself like some kind of freakish magic tipping point.

Without blowing any trumpets here (or alright then, with loud blowing of trumpets, sounding horns and a drumroll) TEFL teachers are the behind-the-scenes make-up artists, set builders, choreographers, composers and conductors; the designers, the dialog coaches and the dolly grips.

We have a job because of globalization and we're the reason globalization is happening relatively successfully.

Globalization is nothing new, started back in 1492, however it was mostly a dog-eat-dog scenario - the dynamic force in the first round of globalization consisted of countries taking over countries, in the second it was the companies that globalized. But around 2000 we entered a whole new era: globalization 3.0, which flattened the playing field.

According to Thomas L. Friedmann in The World is Flat, the dynamic force of today is the new found power of individuals to collaborate and compete globally.

In every corner of the world TEFL teachers actively seek out ways to enable people to speak within one language: English.

It is our waking up at the crack of dawn to teach a businessman before he starts his work, our struggle with kids, our encouraging teenagers to form their tongues around ridiculous pronunciation rules privy only to the English language.

TEFL teachers teach the world's peoples to sing pop songs, read literature and news articles and our teaching day is spent in dough-nut shifts of morning and evening sessions and sometimes we work 40 hours a week (plus prep).

We scavenge through books, websites, podcasts, video sites, blogs and grammar tomes to find materials which will fit to our particular students' needs and then we mash that all together.

• The gas deal between a Spaniard and a Russian was made because we taught them the phrases they needed to use in a meeting.

• The smooth transaction between the Chinese clothes retailer and the Ecuadorian wool maker happened because TEFL teachers taught them how to negotiate using the same expressions.

• The German doctor who had to present the findings of his research on lung cancer, could, because we went through his presentation with him, again and again and again.
  

• The Japanese car maker could launch the latest model and comfortably participate in small talk with the journalists because we taught him how to achieve confluence.
  

• The emails between the Mongolian and the French secretary went well because they could establish the right timing for the itinerary as a direct result of the grammar we taught them both.

• Kids in Germany and Turkey talk to classes in New Zealand about animals.
  

• The Bonairian is now able to tell her Portuguese husband that she's really cross he won't take out the garbage because we taught them both how to pronounce such a silly word.

What is a TEFL teacher?

We learn the different methods in which acquisition of another language occurs.

We test. We teach. We test.

We chat about things of no relevance and we have deep meaningful conversations.

We play games and we cut up cards.

We draw pictures.

We act, we simulate and we role-play.

We're mostly underpaid and largely abused by institutional chains.

We ran away from normal lives and office jobs and found our place in sharing knowledge.

We think, eat and breathe the idioms and nuances of our language.

We're highly specialized and we're highly skilled.

We've no real skills yet through charm can somehow make another person speak.

We know grammar, punctuation and pronunciation like no one's business which makes us very boring when we correct you.



Where are TEFL teachers from?
We're adventurers from everywhere: traveling across the world to teach in villages, to the dusty cities in the back of beyond, we've climbed up mountains, lived on beaches, squatted in jungles. We've learned the culture and the languages of the countries we live in, worn their clothes, laughed at their jokes, danced salsa, shimmied the merengue and stayed up late drinking ouzo.

We're native English speakers who went on holiday somewhere and found ourselves in relationships, got married (and/or got divorced) to foreigners but stayed on in their countries.

We're homesick but no longer fit within our own cultures and settle while yearning for Marmite, Vegemite or American Mustard (or breadfruit and sunsets).

We're non-native English speakers who've mastered the English language through university or work abroad and are now fighting to gain the same status and pay as the native English speakers who're foreigners in our countries... who sometimes don't work as hard or know how to break down the language into bite-sized chunks.




Who are TEFL teachers?

Whatever it is that we are, we're amazing: we're changing the way the world communicates.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links

ELT jargon - Macmillan English Dictionary
Wikipedia English as a Foreign or Second Language
How to find a job in TEFL