03.23.10
Posted in Language Management at 2:54 pm by admin
The employment situation can be quite uncertain for newcomers to Greece and therefore many people choose to try teaching English as a foreign language, on a full or part-time basis. It can bring in a good income whether it is your preferred career choice, or you wish to do it short-term until another career choice pans out.
Qualifications and Experience
There are many language schools or frontistiria in Athens and all over Greece, to which you could apply for work. In order to get a job in one of these schools, it is still not strictly necessary to have a formal teaching qualification such as TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Often all that is required is a university degree (in any subject) from a UK or US university. That said, if you are uncertain about your ability to teach English and want to ensure that you start off in this line of work with the necessary skills, a course would be useful. It would provide you with some teaching theory, knowledge of English grammar (let’s face it, many of us have never formally studied English grammar in any great depth, even though we speak and write English everyday) and give you some valuable experience of teaching in a classroom, since this is included in most courses. When applying for jobs, you will find vacancies that specify that previous teaching experience is required and others for which no experience is necessary.
It does not matter if you do not speak a lot of Greek. Native English speakers are often valued for other reasons such as having what is seen as a “proper” accent. Many people also swear by the approach of not speaking your students’ language, so that they hear only English being spoken for the duration of the lesson. You will find ways to make yourself understood. In my experience of language teaching, it can even be counter-productive if your students know that you speak their language well, because they may be too easily tempted to speak to you in Greek when they find it hard going.
Finding work
Teaching English as a foreign language jobs are widely advertised in newspapers and on the Internet all year round and most often from August to October. As well as applying before in Greece, you can also go to door-to-door around the frontistiria with your CV, again in the August to October period. If you are visiting them in person, it is not recommended that you spend time doing this any earlier than August because the schools often do not consider their recruitment needs much before the beginning of the academic year.
Pay and working conditions
Pay and conditions offered by language schools will vary enormously, so it is important to check these out in detail first before accepting a contract. If time is on your side, it may be worth speaking to several schools rather than taking the first job you are offered. Also, if you work in a frontistirio it is quite likely that you will be working mainly in the afternoons and evenings, since this is when children and adults are free to take their lessons.
Making some extra money
Many people who teach English as a foreign language in a school, also do private English on the side and this can become a lucrative activity in itself. Working in a language school for a few months is a good way to meet students and advertise the fact that you do private English lessons, on a one-to-one basis. It can be difficult to get the first few, but then through word of mouth, you’ll get more if you do a good job - that great social network of mums and dads on the school run can work wonders! The University of Cambridge ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) exam system seems to be the most widely known and respected in Greece, many people who want to be taught privately are preparing to sit a Cambridge exam or some other type of test. It is worth familiarising yourself with the system - there is an enormous amount of free information on the Internet, including lesson plans, tips, exam practice etc. The exams which are most commonly sat by students are the “First Certificate in English” (which many people still refer to by its old name: “Lower”), “Certificate of Proficiency in English” (known as “Proficiency”), and “Certificate in Advanced English” (commonly referred to as “Advanced”). More information is available from the Cambridge ESOL web site (www.cambridgeesol.org).
What private students will want from you varies a great deal. Some may just want a conversation class, others may just be starting on the Cambridge examinations path and there will be some who are already at a very high level and may need detailed coaching on specific grammar points or on vocabulary for a particular purpose e.g. business English. And given these differences, the amount of preparation required on your part and the fee per hour you are able to charge will probably vary too. I will finish with a word on advertising. My experience has been that I have paid out money for two newspaper ads, which got back zero replies! What has worked well for me is local advertising - you need to use your imagination. I put a card in local shops and a small notice in the back window of my car and you can see people reading it at every traffic light! Just beware of getting calls on your mobile phone while you’re driving - not good! As I said before, word of mouth should kick in too once you have your first couple of lessons.
Emmanuel Mendonca is the webmaster of Greece Travel Articles - a source of interesting articles and information about visiting, living and working in Greece.
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11.03.09
Posted in Language Management at 1:23 am by admin
Imagine the following scenario: You wake up one morning and instead of speaking English, everyone around you–including your family and friends–is speaking Hungarian. This is a problem because you don’t speak Hungarian and you don’t have a clue what they’re saying. You become frustrated. The people around you become frustrated, too, but instead of switching back to English, they speak Hungarian more loudly.
Somebody gets the bright idea of writing you a note. You take the note in your hands and study it. Unfortunately, it’s in Hungarian, too, and you can’t read it. So they write you another note, still in Hungarian, but this time with large, block letters. You can’t read the second note, either.
This strange scenario is almost exactly what happens to people who have a stroke (circulation impairment) to the left side of the brain, except that the family and friends aren’t really communicating in Hungarian. They’re speaking and writing English–same as ever–but to the stroke victim their words are suddenly incomprehensible. This sudden disruption in language-processing is called aphasia.
Different patterns of aphasia occur with damage to different parts of the left side of the brain. The preceding scenario, in which comprehension of language is impaired, is called a receptive aphasia and is associated with injury to the upper portion of the brain’s left temporal lobe, roughly adjacent to the temple and top of the ear. In receptive aphasia the affected individuals can still produce sentences, but, in an odd twist of fate, they can’t make sense of or properly monitor their own words, so their output is riddled with errors.
A pattern of language impairment opposite of receptive aphasia is called expressive aphasia, in which individuals can understand what others say or write, but cannot produce much, if any, speech or writing of their own. In 1861 Pierre Paul Broca, a French surgeon, recognized a case of expressive aphasia and followed through with an autopsy of the patient’s brain.
For much of the nineteenth century most scientists and physicians believed that the brain was homogenous, and that its different actions were spread diffusely throughout the entire brain. They did not believe that functions were localized to specific regions of the brain. (The phrenologists believed otherwise, but that is a story of its own.)
However, when Broca treated a patient who lost his power of speech (the only word he could still say was “tan”) he was able to correlate this language impairment with damage to the left side of the man’s brain. Instead of being in the temporal lobe, the destroyed brain-tissue was in the frontal lobe in an area now referred to as Broca’s area. In fact, expressive aphasia is also known as Broca’s aphasia. Dr. Broca’s case was the principal salvo in a reversal of understanding about how the cerebral cortex (the brain’s wrinkled gray surface) operates. Now we realize that many functions–not just language–are localized to specific regions of the cortex.
Receptive and expressive aphasias are not the only patterns of language impairment, but nicely convey the basic idea of a sudden disconnect in language processing. What becomes of these cases? As is seen with strokes affecting other parts of the brain–for example, those causing weakness or paralysis of muscles on the opposite side of the body–recovery varies widely among patients. Some patients become normal again and others don’t improve at all, but the usual outcome is somewhere in between.
Improvement in language function that occurs within the first week or two following a stroke is due to brain cells that were sick from the stroke–but not quite dead–becoming healthy and operational again. By contrast, improvement in language function occurring over ensuing weeks, months and even years is due to the retraining of surviving brain cells that take over for their fallen comrades. A younger stroke patient with more brain cells in reserve has a better chance for recovery than an older patient with fewer reserves.
Is there anything that can be done to improve outcome? First of all, there is the management of the stroke itself which generally takes place in a hospital. One important point to emphasize is that a stroke causing aphasia is no less a stroke than one causing paralysis of muscles. Sometimes it seems that the latter receives more serious attention than the former. Management of fundamental issues–like blood pressure, body temperature and blood sugar–can set the stage for the best possible outcome.
Following a first stroke, physicians also implement “secondary stroke prevention” to decrease the odds of a second stroke. In cases of stroke due to hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) this often takes the form of ratcheting down blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, along with elimination of smoking and other unhealthy behaviors. Also, the doctor usually prescribes a medicine to reduce blood-clotting. Other causes of stroke might call for other measures.
Does speech therapy help stroke-patients with aphasia? So far, this form of treatment has not been proved beneficial. Randomized, controlled trials (the standard of proof in clinical medicine in which patients receiving the treatment are compared to similar patients receiving either a dummy-treatment or no treatment) have not clearly demonstrated that speech therapy is better than either no treatment or treatment provided by family or friends.
Sometimes patients with aphasia are perceived as “confused” in the sense of having a delirium or dementia. But this is not the case. Acutely aphasic patients need to be recognized as having suffered a stroke to a specific part of the brain so they can be triaged for appropriate medical care. Over the longer term, family and friends need to remember that the stroke victim is still a perceiving, self-aware human being who happens to have a communication problem. He or she should be loved, appreciated and otherwise included in activities just as before.
(C) 2005 by Gary Cordingley
Gary Cordingley, MD, PhD, is a clinical neurologist, teacher and researcher who works in Athens, Ohio. For more health-related articles see his website at: http://www.cordingleyneurology.com
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03.17.09
Posted in Books And More, Language Management, Multimedia Center at 2:46 am by admin
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