Like any other skill, plumbing or ballet or computer science, speaking English is a skill that is highly valuable in the right market. In the case of English, marketable to 1 out of every 5 people on the planet.
There are over 1,500,000,000 people learning English right now and only 250,000 or so English teachers. That’s over 6,000 students per teacher, so if you can speak English,well, you are qualified for and have access to jobs that pay $1600-$10000 a month and allow you to travel around the world if you choose to.
Teaching hours according to your schedule, curriculum material provided, flight vouchers, work visas provided, there are a whole bunch of benefits to teaching English abroad or online.
English is so commonplace to English speakers that it’s often overlooked as an extremely valued and valuable skill in most of the world.
If you have any questions, ask away!
I prefer to make the effort to learn the local language of my destination to show à little appreciation for the local culture.
That’s good, did you have trouble with any languages in particular? You mean you prefer learning the local language to not learning the local language?
My native language is not English to begin with. And I can see how the English language and the culture within the hegemony of that language is taking over and threatening native languages and cultures around the world through Netflix and YouTube and TikTok. Younger generations around the world increasingly speak better English than their own native language. It’s become a threat to other cultures.
By learning the languages I visit, not only does it show respect, it also helps understand how they think and where they’re coming from. In return you also get respect, and you are more welcome and get access to things you would otherwise not get access to if you didn’t make the effort. Plus you get the added benefit of expanding your own mind and how you think, and feel a lot closer to your fellow human in general.
To answer your question, yes I’ve had difficulty. English was pretty easy because we’re immersed in it. Spanish and Italian were not too difficult, mostly because I am a native French speaker and romance languages share the same roots. But I’m also learning Japanese which is H A R D !!! But it’s really awesome because I can communicate and understand my japanese friends a lot better. And I feel more welcome in Japan wherever I go. People talk to me and ask questions and will strike up conversations and even make the effort themselves to speak to me in English. It’s such a great feeling.
You are setting yourself against positions nobody has established or is defending.
This post is about how speaking a language is a skill like any other practiced ability, not a promotion of speaking one language exclusively.
If you practice electrical engineering for 10 years, people will pay you well for your skill within that field. English is a skill many people have been practicing for decades that over 1.5 billion people will pay them for, but is not generally recognized and often overlooked completely as a marketable skill like truck driving or emergency medical training.
Your sentiment concerning local languages is in oft-repeated agreement with myself, this community and the language learning community in general, where speaking the local language is encouraged for the reasons you have discovered for yourself: to better understand and be part of the wider world.
I found Japanese as accessible as the romance languages because Japanese grammar has such strict rules. Learning the first group of koko, soko, asoko, doko was initially a relief because i wasn’t yet sure the system would be so straightforward. Although that was after learning Mandarin, and I generally find the next language easier to learn than the previous.
My language exception is definitely standard thai, considering how much time I’ve spent there. I learned the alphabet, food and basic greetings, but conversation, the proper use of tones and the dialects have largely escaped me.
What do you use to learn languages? I started exclusively on Duolingo, then AI completely ruined the platform for several years and I switched to Rosetta Stone and increased face-to-face conversation. Now I’m using Duo for the first time in a long time for Indonesian and it’s very effective again, except they still don’t teach numbers first, which I think is bonkers.
