{"id":2001,"date":"2005-05-27T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-27T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/2005\/05\/27\/on-teaching-english-in-portugal-by-sally-pethybridge\/"},"modified":"2018-01-02T16:43:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T16:43:03","slug":"on-teaching-english-in-portugal-by-sally-pethybridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/on-teaching-english-in-portugal-by-sally-pethybridge.html","title":{"rendered":"On Teaching English in Portugal by Sally\n Pethybridge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n Sally, from Malmsbury, Wiltshire in the UK packed her bags a few<br \/>\n years ago to make a new home for herself in a small village near<br \/>\n Estoril, Lisbon in Portugal. She works as an English as a Foreign<br \/>\n Language teacher and here are some of her latest exploits. If you<br \/>\n have ever thought or dreamt about becoming a TEFL teacher, then<br \/>\n this may provide some inspiration.\n <\/p>\n<p>\n I had an interesting job just after Christmas. I was asked to go to<br \/>\n Lisbon to assess the level of English of six candidates for a job<br \/>\n with a large insurance company. As it was 9.00 in the morning I<br \/>\n decided to take the train. So I got up early, got the bus and then<br \/>\n the train into Lisbon. It brought back vivid memories of all those<br \/>\n months I commuted from Chippenham to Richmond just outside London,<br \/>\n except that stood on a chilly platform at Estoril gazing at a blue<br \/>\n sea certainly beat standing on a freezing platform at Chippenham<br \/>\n and gazing at a car park with bored seagulls. The crowds<br \/>\n negotiating train to metro were just like dear old Paddington but<br \/>\n hey, trains coincide with the metro and I was at my appointment at<br \/>\n 8.50 &#8211; not bad eh?\n <\/p>\n<p>\n I really enjoyed the interviewing. They all sat round the table and<br \/>\n I kicked off a conversation asking them what they all did &#8211; some<br \/>\n were very good and articulate but there was the usual &#8220;I am<br \/>\n better than all the rest&#8221; one who got on peoples&#039; nerves.<br \/>\n I then asked them to write a letter of application in English<br \/>\n applying for the job and giving reasons why they thought they were<br \/>\n suitable. This narrowed the field tremendously as although they<br \/>\n could speak English well, their written work let them down. I<br \/>\n managed to shortlist three with one clear contender and then was<br \/>\n very pleased when the HR lady told me I had picked the three she<br \/>\n had thought were right for the second stage. Result!\n <\/p>\n<p>\n Teaching is still fun &#8211; I now have an Argentinean plastic surgeon<br \/>\n who wants to move to England and has limited English. Joaquim is 33<br \/>\n and has been in Portugal for three years. His brother is a GP in<br \/>\n Patagonia. He wants to have his own clinic eventually back in<br \/>\n Argentina but the timing is not right at the moment. He is very<br \/>\n keen for people to visit the country as the currency exchange is in<br \/>\n our favour and not theirs at the moment. I took him on a practical<br \/>\n lesson the other Saturday &#8211; a tour of Jumbo supermarket and Cascais<br \/>\n fruit and vegetable market &#8211; he really enjoyed it.\n <\/p>\n<p>\n I have also got a new class at a huge toy store. They are a hoot.<br \/>\n They are all in the office and I do two hours with them usually on<br \/>\n a Tuesday night. It&#039;s nice when you work on site as you get to<br \/>\n see them in situ. They are very friendly with a wicked sense of<br \/>\n humour and don&#039;t want books, just conversation and how to deal<br \/>\n with English phone calls. One of my students has a great<br \/>\n catchphrase when she doesn&#039;t understand &#8211; &#8220;whattee&#8221;.<br \/>\n They are very interesting and ask intelligent questions regarding<br \/>\n translations of phrases or as last week, the headings on a<br \/>\n financial spreadsheet. When the Head of HR is not in the lesson,<br \/>\n the questions tend to get more relaxed as in &#8220;Miss Sally, tell<br \/>\n us some swear words in English&#8221;! Body parts are also of great<br \/>\n amusement.\n <\/p>\n<div class=\"c2\">\n <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon, photo by the Beetle\" src=\"\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/pictures\/may-2005-image011.jpg\" class=\"pic\" \/><br \/>Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon, photo by the Beetle\n <\/div>\n<p>\n Jorge, my Siemens student, is constantly keeping me amused &#8211; if<br \/>\n it&#039;s not the latest scandal in football, it&#039;s the problems<br \/>\n at work and the entertaining saga of getting building permits and<br \/>\n planning permission for his new house. He is a real pleasure to<br \/>\n teach because he is such fun. In fact the whole office makes me<br \/>\n very welcome and they all come over and chat and tell me whether<br \/>\n they think he is improving or not. He went to Dresden two weeks ago<br \/>\n that meant a couple of German\/Portuguese\/English lessons &#8211; I seem<br \/>\n to be learning bits of German as well as Spanish these days.\n <\/p>\n<p>\n Last week I gave him a crash course in football reporting &#8211; three<br \/>\n English articles on Jose Mourinho and Chelsea &#8211; very amusing and of<br \/>\n great interest to the other guys in the office that wanted to know<br \/>\n what he was reading. I was very pleased when he told me that he had<br \/>\n tried to read English articles on the plane to Dresden.\n <\/p>\n<p>\n Tatiana, my tourism student, is having problems working on essays<br \/>\n so we have been trying to break her block. We did a short one last<br \/>\n week that was basically a pr&eacute;cis of a Portuguese legend from<br \/>\n Nazare. I&#039;m hoping that the work we did will give her the<br \/>\n confidence she needs. We started meeting in the coffee bar at Jumbo<br \/>\n supermarket but the smoke was a pain on days when we couldn&#039;t<br \/>\n sit outside, so then we moved to Cascais Library, where they have<br \/>\n tables and chairs (and resident cat) outside but that got too cold.<br \/>\n We then found a very nice pastelaria (Lua da Mel or Honeymoon) but<br \/>\n recently she has had problems with babysitters, so we have the<br \/>\n class in her flat with her baby daughter, Ayeesha who is very sweet<br \/>\n and loves unloading my bag and pinching pencils.\n <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-article"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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