Teach English in Tangqiao Jiedao - Shanghai Shi

Teaching one to oneTeaching english in a foreign country can be quite an exciting job. As an American living in Romania?s capital city of Bucharest, I teach private english lessons as my occupation. The Romanian people know english quite well, but are generally shy about speaking it to others. Due to their sensitivity to their level of english the Romanians prefer the one to one lessons. I still remember my first meeting with one particular student. They had contacted me through email requesting my assistance in taking the American T.O.E.F.L. exam. She had written in the email she was afraid to meet with me because her english is so horrible and since I don?t speak Romanian, I would never understand her. I asked her to have an initial meeting and see if we are able to understand each other, she agreed. When we met the first time I was amazed at how well she actually spoke english. She made sentence structure errors, but overall I understood her. I learned this is typical of Romanians and they are very humble when it comes to how well they really know english. At first when I had the idea of teaching english here I thought I would like to teach groups or even in one of the local international schools. One day I met a girl who was the roommate of one of my friends. She had asked me if I would help her with conversational english. I agreed to help and quickly learned how much I enjoyed the personal level of teaching one to one. I was able to quickly identify the level she was at and any problems she had in speaking english clearly. I also noticed she was able to relax while away from other Romanians who would culturally judge her english speaking abilities. As I placed advertisements for my lessons in local papers I received many calls from potential students. The same story was told to me by each one of them. They had learned english in school, but were afraid to speak it in front of other Romanians on the chance they were better. I noticed how valuable it was for a native speaker to be able to nurture their learning of the english language in their own environment and at their own pace. I also realized that for these students to grow, it would require someone with patience and time to offer them support and encouragement. I now knew that teaching one to one was a far more better option here in Romania. It is for sure exhausting, especially in the traveling from one location to another all day long, but it what the students prefer. I knew I would have to adapt to this by strategic time management and planning of my lessons daily. This also included planning lessons for each person individually based on their level of knowledge and their reasons for learning. Even though it may be easier to teach in a large group setting, we as teachers must adapt to our surroundings. We must find out about the culture we live in and focus our methods of teaching based on the students needs. If the students are sensitive to learn in a large group setting it is important to teach them individually and give them the necessary encouragement to help them become more confident. In doing so, we become not only the teachers we want to be, but the teachers our students need us to be.