Teach English in Jinzhong Jiedao - Tianjin

Foreign Language ExperienceAs a child I spoke fluent czech with my family. My mother was born in the czech Republic and consequently my sister and I spent a great deal of time there as a children. As time went by, our communication with our mother was conducted only in english and my vocabulary and listening skills declined somewhat. (My reading and writing skills were always very limited). I now meet with my czech tandem partner once every two weeks in order to keep my confidence with the language in tact and especially in order to prepare myself when I visit my family in the czech Republic once a year, as they speak no english. Having moved to Berlin from London three years ago, I naturally set about trying to learn German. I assumed learning the language would be simple and expected my familiarity with another European language to help me in my efforts. However, I was sorely disappointed to discover the differences between Germanic and Slavonic languages! Despite it's geographic proximity, the relatively new German language received very little Slavic influence because most Slavic migrations headed south instead of north. czech, however contains a large vocabulary adopted from the German language ? something I only found out as I began to learn the language for myself and began to hear the 'German' words for the first time. I am now also able to communicate a little with my grandmother in German as she still remembers it from her school days when her home town was occupied. The word order in czech is relatively similar to english but in some ways, grammatically a bit trickier to learn as the language contain 7 cases and a large variety of declination structures. It does however comprise only 3 tenses; past, present and future ? much simpler than english and many other romance languages. As well as German, czech has also been influenced by a number of other languages, especially Old Church Slavonic and Latin. I imagine the pronunciation of czech would be difficult for most english speakers as some words do not even contain any vowels. A popular example of this is the phrase, 'str? prst skrz krk' which means 'stick a finger through your throat'. This can be a fun game to try out on friends... Living in Berlin, I have come to notice just how many people are bi, even tri-lingual. Most young, European people living in cities speak fluent english and will usually always have studied another language at school. It is something which is not impressed upon us as important in the UK and I am grateful now to have the opportunity to focus on my language skills. I very much enjoy learning German in a multi-lingual class and do find that my familiarity with czech and some basic, school french do all feed into each other. I get a lot out of learning about language history and cultural influence and luckily I have be taught be teachers who are able to add some historical reference to the speech we are learning. This enables me to compare it with the languages I have already accumulated and to think more deeply about communication in a wider context. I do very much believe in that saying, 'you are as many people as the languages you speak.' Aside from the fundamental issues of communication I believe knowing the language of the person you are communicating with is instrumental in truly understanding them and can open up never ending avenues of experience. I believe that a teacher who possesses a little sensitivity and awareness to language and culture in a fairly broad context could add a great deal to the learning experience of his or her students. I very much look forward to imparting my knowledge of the english language and learning about how others will communicate with me and absorb new language knowledge.