{"id":1029,"date":"2015-11-05T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2017-01-12T09:02:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T14:02:48","slug":"say-what-language-barrier-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/say-what-language-barrier-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching English Abroad: Language Barriers – Say What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a person just needs a change. Last year, I decided to take a sabbatical from my \u201cliving-to-work\u201d life in the United States and change to a \u201cwork-to-live\u201d life, so I could travel in Europe.\u00a0 Teaching English as a second language seemed to be the best course to meet this goal. I completed my English teaching certification and chose Slovakia<\/a> as my home for the next year.<\/p>\n

I was fortunate to find the position through Oxford Seminars<\/a>. After I completed my TEFL course, Oxford helped with my resume and sent it to schools they had relationships with in central Europe. I taught all levels of students and ages, from conversational English to business English.<\/p>\n

\"River<\/a>

River Vah – photo by Robin McGuire<\/p><\/div>\n

Having traveled a bit, I knew it was important to know some words and phrases in the language of the country you\u2019re visiting to try to avoid language barriers. Before vacationing in Italy a few years prior, I took a short beginners course in Italian. I felt that, after this course, I would be able to carry on a conversation with native Italian speakers.\u00a0 I had my books, CD’s and 90-minute weekly lessons for six weeks. I was well-prepared… or so I thought.<\/p>\n

I was sure I had the perfect diction, pronunciations and sentence structure for questions I wanted to ask native speakers upon deplaning in Rome.\u00a0 I went to the taxi stall outside the airport and preceded to tell the driver where I wanted to go. However, one of the things I forgot to anticipate was he that he was going to answer me in his native tongue, which he did quite quickly and with abandoned flare. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble. I had no idea what he said to me, and my self-described feeling of knowing the language quickly dissipated.<\/p>\n

After that experience, I knew it was going to take me some time to even have a slight knowledge or understanding of a foreign language, let alone speak it to the point of conversation. I only had a short time before I left for my year in Slovakia, so I felt just learning a few words and phrases and how to respond in one or two-word sentences would do in the beginning.\u00a0 I practiced the basics (You can quickly see where my basics lie!):<\/p>\n