Sally, from Malmsbury, Wiltshire in the UK packed her bags a few
years ago to make a new home for herself in a small village near
Estoril, Lisbon in Portugal. She works as an English as a Foreign
Language teacher and here are some of her latest exploits. If you
have ever thought or dreamt about becoming a TEFL teacher, then
this may provide some inspiration.

I had an interesting job just after Christmas. I was asked to go to
Lisbon to assess the level of English of six candidates for a job
with a large insurance company. As it was 9.00 in the morning I
decided to take the train. So I got up early, got the bus and then
the train into Lisbon. It brought back vivid memories of all those
months I commuted from Chippenham to Richmond just outside London,
except that stood on a chilly platform at Estoril gazing at a blue
sea certainly beat standing on a freezing platform at Chippenham
and gazing at a car park with bored seagulls. The crowds
negotiating train to metro were just like dear old Paddington but
hey, trains coincide with the metro and I was at my appointment at
8.50 – not bad eh?

I really enjoyed the interviewing. They all sat round the table and
I kicked off a conversation asking them what they all did – some
were very good and articulate but there was the usual “I am
better than all the rest” one who got on peoples' nerves.
I then asked them to write a letter of application in English
applying for the job and giving reasons why they thought they were
suitable. This narrowed the field tremendously as although they
could speak English well, their written work let them down. I
managed to shortlist three with one clear contender and then was
very pleased when the HR lady told me I had picked the three she
had thought were right for the second stage. Result!

Teaching is still fun – I now have an Argentinean plastic surgeon
who wants to move to England and has limited English. Joaquim is 33
and has been in Portugal for three years. His brother is a GP in
Patagonia. He wants to have his own clinic eventually back in
Argentina but the timing is not right at the moment. He is very
keen for people to visit the country as the currency exchange is in
our favour and not theirs at the moment. I took him on a practical
lesson the other Saturday – a tour of Jumbo supermarket and Cascais
fruit and vegetable market – he really enjoyed it.

I have also got a new class at a huge toy store. They are a hoot.
They are all in the office and I do two hours with them usually on
a Tuesday night. It's nice when you work on site as you get to
see them in situ. They are very friendly with a wicked sense of
humour and don't want books, just conversation and how to deal
with English phone calls. One of my students has a great
catchphrase when she doesn't understand – “whattee”.
They are very interesting and ask intelligent questions regarding
translations of phrases or as last week, the headings on a
financial spreadsheet. When the Head of HR is not in the lesson,
the questions tend to get more relaxed as in “Miss Sally, tell
us some swear words in English”! Body parts are also of great
amusement.

Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon, photo by the Beetle

Jorge, my Siemens student, is constantly keeping me amused – if
it's not the latest scandal in football, it's the problems
at work and the entertaining saga of getting building permits and
planning permission for his new house. He is a real pleasure to
teach because he is such fun. In fact the whole office makes me
very welcome and they all come over and chat and tell me whether
they think he is improving or not. He went to Dresden two weeks ago
that meant a couple of German/Portuguese/English lessons – I seem
to be learning bits of German as well as Spanish these days.

Last week I gave him a crash course in football reporting – three
English articles on Jose Mourinho and Chelsea – very amusing and of
great interest to the other guys in the office that wanted to know
what he was reading. I was very pleased when he told me that he had
tried to read English articles on the plane to Dresden.

Tatiana, my tourism student, is having problems working on essays
so we have been trying to break her block. We did a short one last
week that was basically a précis of a Portuguese legend from
Nazare. I'm hoping that the work we did will give her the
confidence she needs. We started meeting in the coffee bar at Jumbo
supermarket but the smoke was a pain on days when we couldn't
sit outside, so then we moved to Cascais Library, where they have
tables and chairs (and resident cat) outside but that got too cold.
We then found a very nice pastelaria (Lua da Mel or Honeymoon) but
recently she has had problems with babysitters, so we have the
class in her flat with her baby daughter, Ayeesha who is very sweet
and loves unloading my bag and pinching pencils.