Freelance plus. It's not really about teaching, is it?

Business Money
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I just had an entertaining dig through some old threads, including [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/create-your-own-course/11666/1 one[/url], about alternatives to the usual way of doing things. Almas John’s [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/taiwan-esl-graveyard/33268/1 rant[/url] about conditions, and the later part of this thread, plus a few others, are food for thought too.

Add to the mix my own recent ruminations, and the result is me coming here to the B&M forum to seek thoughts about the business of running a business, as opposed to the technical work of teaching English.

The English language is a product, one that everyone claims to need. And it’s sold by schools, or entrepeneurial teachers, or other agents of one form or another. They sell us, or we sell ourselves, and then we do the work of providing the service/product, the language teaching.

Very good. Except for one inconvenient truth that everyone seems to ignore: Nobody really wants to learn English!

OK, some people really do want to master the language for its own sake. There are a few people out there who are fascinated by the nuances of English, but for the majority it’s just a tool to help them pursue some other goal.

Why does this matter? Well, when I learned a bit about sales the theory was that you were supposed to define (or guide :slight_smile: ) the clients’ goals, and then sell them something to help them get to where they want to be. Teaching english for its own sake, or even as something to be conquered in order to pass a test, is not really helping.

Times are, allegedly, tight. How do you make yourself stand out from the crowd? What do you do to make your service/product more attractive than the next guy’s? I feel that you should be helping students to reach their goals rather than selling them courses of language study. The English may be a large part of the activity, but ultimately you’re there to help them get to where they want to be.

Schools don’t seem very keen on this approach, but I wonder if it’s suitable for a jobbing peddler of idioms, verbage and miscellaneous inter-cultural trivia. Instead of advertising yourself as a language tutor, why not advertise yourself as someone who can help students achieve something that’s important for them in its own right? Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation.

You would need to have some skill other than being a native speaker with a degree in sociology, a demonstrable ‘added value’ that makes you marketable, but isn’t that what a real teacher is?

I guess I’m talking about branding yourself. To an extent it may even be necessary to create your own market by doing some activity that will attract and inspire students.

There are layers and layers to this.

Take test-preparation classes for adults as an example. They’re all there slogging away in these awful classes that are supposed to prepare them for overseas study. After ten years of language study they still can’t form ‘Wh’ questions in the present simple tense without a reminder, and here they are trying to ‘improve’ their report-writing or other skills. Honestly, they’re just not very good students, and the majority are never going to make it out of Taiwan. What’s the point in more of the same kind of study?

Is it your job to teach them something they’ve already learned, again? Or is it your job to embrace their goal of studying overseas and focus on that instead? Teach them about life overseas, how to research and apply to universities, how the study environment will be, what is expected of them. In English. And use these ‘real life’ examples for them to apply their language skills to instead of focusing on tests?

Next, why do they want to study overseas anyway? They will usually (90%) tell you it’s for career purposes, but try sitting down with a business and finance student and asking him to quantify the costs and benefits. It doesn’t make sense. Financially, it’s suicide. So why are they still so dead-set on it?

They mutter stuff about becoming independent and broadening their minds, exposure to other cultures. In other words, they’re doing it because they just want to do something cool. They want an escape from their mundane existence, a life worth living, excitement, adventure, and really wild things - and we’re teaching them about prepositions. Again. :unamused:

Why do adults go to conversation classes if they don’t show any improvement? Because you’re their hobby, the only cool or interesting person they know. Why are you trying to teach English? Why aren’t you being fun and interesting, and helping your students to set some attainable goal they can get excited about, and helping them get there?

So, the issue at stake here is the eternal one of how to attract students. How do you package, present, market, sell, and ultimately deliver something that actually helps the client reach his real goal?

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Admit it tmwc, you want to be a professional lifestyle guru. You need to make a motivational DVD or two and charge folk NT$30,000 for “weekend retreats.”

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I’m hardly a shining example of someone who’s got his life together, so I’ll hold off on starting my own religion for a while. Another ten years. :s

How much do you want for that space, btw?

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A ride in your rocket. AFTER its been personally tested by yourself.

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From a business in Taiwan standpoint, this looks as valid as anything else floating.
Flesh it out.

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That was quite a brainstorm, tmwc. What are you, 23, 24 years old? Bit of advice. Stop thinking so much about your classes, students, and all that jazz, and find some way to enjoy life. Get a hobby. Otherwise you will go insane.

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Bang on twmc.

A looong time ago I took a look at my students lives and concluded that for most of them the most interesting, valuable, reliable source of English in their lives is the popular media. Music, movies, television programs, newspapers, the internet (heck I’ve even suggested radio, though that might have been a mistake, I wouldn’t know for sure as I never listen to it).

Some people take to it pretty well. It is to quite an extent a question of whether or not they are interested in the broader world generally and popular art specifically. Some call everything “boring” and don’t seem eager to quibble much even when it is suggested that the problem might be themselves. Not much that can be done with them. Sorry.

Anyway, I’ve got one guy who is basically doing a course in left wing rhetoric through films like “Roger and Me” “Farenheight 911” CNN and the China Post, another who loves analyzing, translating and trying to sing old rock n roll songs, and two classes that have been given the script to “Before Sunrise” and are suprisingly willing to be tested on it “before” they see the film. It is
a lot of TPRS style vocab testing (or at least my take on TPRS - language circle excercises, translations, quickly drawn pictures, gestures…) before the film and some comprehension testing and summarizing after with an emphasis on recycling the most common vocab. It is a complicated process and open ended as hell but it definitely provides tons of practice with creating and responding to commands, statements, yes/no, or and info questions, and it definitely introduces the idiomatic, contexualized, figurative langauge that people need to learn to cope with. Tough stuff and much better suited to the really intelligent, open minded intellectually adventurous set. As Taiwan’s economy becomes more and more tied to the mainland and less dependent upon trade with the rest of the world that distinctly diminuitive demographic will be about the only market left to us I suspect.

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Interesting topic TMWC. Motivation is so important for the students, and we foreign teachers often don’t really understand why our adult students come to class.

As you said, it’s often just to do something different from their mundane routines.

When I was teaching IELTS classes up in Taipei I also came to the realisation that the students weren’t really interested in getting a degree overseas - they simple wanted to go overseas because it promised excitement and a change from routines, and “studying overseas” was mostly just to provide a suitable justification to their parents.

Anyway, perhaps the much maligned local buxibans have got it partly right, in that they sell the foreign teachers as a chance to “touch” foreign culture, and that our classes are expected to be much more fun than those taught by our local counterparts.

Time for my bottle. Cheers.

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:bravo: Thanks. You’ve just made me realise what I’ve been doing wrong all these years. Here was me trying to enjoy life by doing something meaningful, and seeking to understand what I’m doing in order to prevent myself going insane, when in fact I should have been going through life without thinking about it. Still, at least it’s an approach that has kept me from ageing.

OK guys, my new hobby is working out how to make money in Taiwan. How do follow TainanCowboy’s advice and flesh it out? All I have so far is the realization that the assumptions I’ve been working on are invalid. It’s like the old conundrum about men using love to get sex and women using sex to get love. I use fun to teach English, to people who are using English to get fun.

Does it make me a whore if I accept that they don’t really love me and just want to buy some fun? If so, so what? And what special services should I be offering? Where is the business opportunity?

As AJ said, they’re using the English to justify spending the money. You can’t just advertise fun.

How do you get people looking at your site and then calling, emailing, or visiting to try a class? What do you do in the first class to make them come back? Clown around in a wedding dress? Make them define their goals? Challenge the conventional wisdom? Comfort them? Maintain the charade that they’re getting ahead? Show them loads of cool stuff and (attempt to) inspire them with all the opportunities open to them?

And why is there an orange on my desk, where my mouse should be? It makes concentrating difficult.

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I’ve been thinking of applying for a teaching job but I am afraid it might interfere with my development as a teacher.

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[quote=“tmwc”]
I guess I’m talking about branding yourself. [/quote]

That sounds painful.

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I’ve been thinking of applying for a teaching job but I am afraid it might interfere with my development as a teacher.[/quote]

Maybe it would. It would shift the focus away from helping students with what’s important to them, and back to teaching something they’re not interested in. :slight_smile:

Some stats: I work with a language school to provide advice and assistance on studying overseas to their students. Few use the service, and come up with reasons like “I want to pass my IELTS before starting to look for a school, even though it may take six months to get a conditional offer.” In other words, they’re not serious. Of the ones who do use the service only 1 in 4 actually go anywhere. The rest are timewasters with no money, time, or English skills. But there they are in the class, going through the motions.

A few years ago I used to teach students how to present information, specifically I’m talking about IELTS task 1 - a short talk on a topic the examining authority figures you’ll have no trouble with. Many of the students had problems with the topics. “Describe an art gallery or museum you have visited” would result in near panic from people who never go near such places. One time, this student came to me one class and announced that he had taken the test the week before and ploughed. He was required to describe something he had created, and had been completely stumped. Me? Create? What?

These days I shift the focus away from ‘getting the answer’ and on to ‘having something to say’. There’s public art in the MRT, for instance, or in certain parks. That’s close enough, and the only problem then is that their English is crap. But that’s not my problem, it’s up to them to do something about that by actually using what they know, so I don’t concern myself with it.

Anyway, I’ve been asking students about what they would create if given the opportunity. Again, many ‘have no idea’ and wait to be told what to say. But with some prodding and encouragement all sorts of ideas surfaced. One would like to build a garden, another pair came up with a revolutionary new home security system, a third would like to make a coffee table to put drinks on when his friends come around. They got quite animated.

It was difficult at first, because it’s a new idea. They’re not used to being asked what they want without any boundaries. Study abroad is about as wild as it gets before some authority figure clamps down. But the ground is extremely fertile when you plant the seed, and the majority of these guys are not going anywhere.

So what do you do for them? Sell them more English, or sell them something else?

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I have a guy on Friday nights who wants to go to Harvard Law school and has the money and the education and needs now only to improve his score on the Ibit listening and speaking sections. His score on the reading and writing was already 27 or 28 (out of a possible 30). His listening and speaking were under twenty. In the beginning I told him that improving people’s listening comprehension is the one thing I definitely know how to do and put him through my regular program. Then I actually opened the Ibit test myself and tried to imagine some way to tech that material. In the end I told him that I wasn’t likely ever to become good at preparing anybody for that kind of test and that it didn’t interest me anyway. We both agreed that it wasn’t likley I’d ever develop any skill in something I was neither good at nor interested in and so went back to studying movies, something I am good at and interested in. This went on for awhile and last week the results from his latest Ibit test. Out of a possible 30 on the listening section he got 29.

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OK, but if you advertise a service which doesn’t appear to meet their immediate perceived need of ‘learning English’ will they buy it? I can watch movies at home, so what’s the point of attending a class on movies when I think I need to focus on grammar, vocabulary, blah blah blah?

Students rarely make the connection between English as a real-life medium for communication, and English as an academic subject to be conquered. Deep down inside, their intrinsic motivation may be to enjoy life a bit more, but officially it’s all about the extrinsic goal of career development and they want to be told - and believe - that there is some academic benefit to what they’re signing up to. You and I can see the benefit, but they often can’t and it’s not acceptable for them to just say “screw it, I’d rather study Brigitte Bardot’s breasts than the iBT.”

Let’s say, for instance, that you somehow manage to get people to look at ‘englishwithbob.com’ in their mistaken quest for English proficiency. What does it say on the website? What message do you want to convey? What is your brand identity?

Do you promote the wackiness of your ideas? Tell them you’re breaking the mould, challenging them? Do you offer to empower and enable? To release their inner English demon? To activate what they know through task-focused, experiential teaching?

Or do you offer activities they really want to do, with the fact that they’re in English being merely incidental? In other words, focus on what the student wants and values, with the assumption that they will acquire/activate whatever language they need as they go along.

I’m interested about the business aspect of this rather than the teaching. You do whatever makes the students happy, but first you have to get them into a class. bob’s guy above was willing to follow teacher’s advice AFTER establishing the relationship with teacher. But how do you attract students into something whacky on any appreciable scale?

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[quote=“tmwc”]Let’s say that you somehow manage to get people to look at ‘englishwithbob.com’ in their mistaken quest for English proficiency. What does it say on the website? What message do you want to convey? What is your brand identity?

Do you promote the wackiness of your ideas? Tell them you’re breaking the mould, challenging them? Do you offer to empower and enable? To release their inner English demon? To activate what they know through task-focused, experiential teaching?

Or do you offer activities they really want to do, with the fact that they’re in English being merely incidental? In other words, focus on what the student wants and values, with the assumption that they will acquire/activate whatever language they need as they go along.

I’m interested about the business aspect of this rather than the teaching. You do whatever makes the students happy, but first you have to get them into a class. bob’s guy above was willing to follow teacher’s advice AFTER establishing the relationship with teacher. But how do you attract students into something whacky on any appreciable scale?[/quote]

His listening score improved almost entirely on the basis of the system that I introduced. He was a super smart guy, his reading comprehension very good and his motivation high yes, but his score on the test improved on the back of the system that I introduced. He doesn’t like to study Ibit much more than I like trying to teach it. That’s the thing. Involving your entire person in the process, your body, emotions, sense of humor and the minds love of stories is the most “effective” thing you can do. Emphasize that fact in your advertising. Nobody is going to sign up just for something weird.

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Yes, cult of personality is a huge part of the appeal, particularly in test prep or conversation scenarios.

The most successful (in terms of attracting large numbers of students ready to pay top dollar for a teacher’s services) teachers I’ve observed:

  1. Teach stuff that actually works, like a system for writing, reading, or listening.
  2. Are consummate professionals in terms of preparation. They prepare an enlightening show.
  3. Are highly charismatic.

The folks who do this, and who possess a few other characteristics*, are able to make around well over NT$100,000 a month, working about 40 a week. It isn’t much of a secret how they do it. The difficulty of pulling it off keeps most people out of it.

*Ability to explain abstract concepts on Mandarin; Willingness to invest countless hours writing and preparing materials; ability to adapt one’s presentation to local culture (which you can’t do unless you’re fluent in Mandarin).

Some will take umbrage with the seemingly snooty “You’ve got to speak fluent Mandarin”. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. It is decidedly easier to make loads of cash as a teacher if you can read and speak Mandarin, but I do know a few teachers who make well into six figures each month who don’t rely on their Mandarin ability. As tmwc has suggested, it’s about building an image.

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[quote=“Tomas”]Yes, cult of personality is a huge part of the appeal, particularly in test prep or conversation scenarios.

The most successful (in terms of attracting large numbers of students ready to pay top dollar for a teacher’s services) teachers I’ve observed:

  1. Teach stuff that actually works, like a system for writing, reading, or listening.
  2. Are consummate professionals in terms of preparation. They prepare an enlightening show.
  3. Are highly charismatic. [/quote]

This is on the button for test prep or conversation scenarios, for three reasons:

  1. The teacher provides the students with a system, minimising the requirement for the students to actually use English competently. It feeds the ‘must pass the test’ mentality, without making the students face up to the reality that they’re not really interested in learning English.
  2. The teacher does all the work, thus relieving the students of responsibility.
  3. The teacher meets the basic unacknowledged need the students all share. The class is not really about learning English, it’s about the pleasure of being with the teacher.

Proof of this can be had at any adult buxiban by observing their sales process. It’s all about the teacher. “This guy is a great teacher with all the answers and he will share his secret system with you, and give you lots of tips to help you pass the test, and the class is fun. All you have to do is show up and be entertained.” Nowhere does it say “you have to do an awful lot of work to get your language skills up to the level required if you’re going to function effectively in English.” And while I agree that teaching in Chinese does have value in some situations, people who are planning to spend a year or two overseas are going to have to learn to function in English. Most of these students have spent years having difficult concepts explained to them in Mandarin. When are they going to start implementing that knowledge? Probably never, because they’re not really interested in learning English. They have some other goal, and English is an inconvenient obstacle to overcome. Teaching in Mandarin does not promote English as a means to communicate ideas and difficult concepts such as they will encounter in their continuing education overseas.

Within this scenario, Tomas’ approach is the most successful one. It sells the students what they profess to want. Having witnessed it at first hand I’m not going to argue there’s a better way to get and keep paying customers, but I’m not interested in catering to this market any more. Fuck 'em. It’s a sham.

I’m seeking ways to reach and tap the real market - the huge appetite for activities which stimulate, inspire or validate the participant, and which probably (but not necessarily) have to be presented as ‘active English’ so that people won’t feel guilty about doing them.

I’m tired of having enough personality for an entire class of people who still can’t remember when to use the past tenses and who look at me as their hobby.
What did you do this weekend? Nothing. Sleeping. Shopping. Study English.
What would you do if you won NT$10,000,000 in the lottery? Save it. I have no idea.

Wouldn’t it be great if they could have those conversations (in their own language or mine) and answer that they redecorated the grubby little room in which they live, performed a play, hurled a cow across the Danshui river, or did something else INTERESTING? Given enough money they would open a leper colony, build a castle, distribute condoms in high schools, whatever. It doesn’t matter what they would specifically want to do. The important thing is that they have something in their life that they actually care about doing and get some sense of value from.

This is the fundamental thing lacking in the lives of most of my adult students. Learning English is a sop to that great big hole in the middle of their existences, but it’s not what they really want to do. It’s a socially accepted way of goofing off, in a society which doesn’t allow individuals a lot of freedom for personal expression. Nobody has any control over their lives, they’re in thrall to parents, bosses, education systems, social obligations. They run away to study overseas because it’s the only freedom they can imagine, but it’s beyond the reach of many for all sorts of reasons.

Ergo, offer another sort of freedom to the ones that are left.

I suspect that the personality cult will still be important. What other ingredients are required?

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TMWC wrote: [quote]Within this scenario, Tomas’ approach is the most successful one. It sells the students what they profess to want. Having witnessed it at first hand I’m not going to argue there’s a better way to get and keep paying customers, but I’m not interested in catering to this market any more. Fuck 'em. It’s a sham. [/quote]

My feelings exactly. I’m not interested in pandering to students’ idiotic misconceptions about “tips” and the like.

I know what you’re saving. It’s a pity Toe Save’s “Corner thingy” came to nothing.

Well, offering a discount is a must. Ever notice how many businesses here have permanent sales?

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The corner thingy still exists. I’ve run across a few people who’ve done classes for it, although it seems to have become just another language teaching service.

That was intended to be about cool ways to learn English, but ultimately it doesn’t address the problem that the students aren’t there to learn English. They’re there to do cool things, and justify doing them by doing them in English.

Is it possible to cut the crap, and accept that if you’re still saying “I have study English since ten years” then you’re probably just a lousy student and need to find something else to do in your spare time? Would you start with some kind of self-assessment and goal-setting session before you direct them to something more suited to their talents?

Hmmmm… ‘getting ahead in the global village’ - a seminar on goals and skills acquisition aimed at helping students understand their options for a successful future.

Nah! How about ‘A wider horizon’ - aiming for more.
Yuk. Er, ‘A life less ordinary’ - the quest to be an outstanding individual… Better.

I confronted my IELTS students with an extract from a book titled ‘How to Become CEO’ a while back. This book is all about being outstanding, and this particular short article was about the importance of learning something new, some major thing, every year in order to have a greater breadth of knowledge and ideas to draw upon as you scale the corporate ladder. The most interesting bit was the last paragraph where the author dealt with the ‘I have no time’ excuse.

Students come to classes, but tell you they have no time to read (and paraphrase) an article in English every day. They take the classes to pass the test to get a better job. The nice thing about this book is that it points out that ‘better jobs’ make greater demands on your time. If you don’t have time now to develop yourself then how will you ever have time to meet the increased responsibilities of your better job?

How about an introductory course titled ‘24/7’, all about using time effectively? The purpose of that would be to stimulate the students to make time for a hobby.

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[quote=“tmwc”]

I confronted my IELTS students with an extract from a book titled ‘How to Become CEO’ a while back. This book is all about being outstanding, and this particular short article was about the importance of learning something new, some major thing, every year in order to have a greater breadth of knowledge and ideas to draw upon as you scale the corporate ladder. The most interesting bit was the last paragraph where the author confronted the ‘I have no time’ excuse.

Students come to classes, but tell you they have no time to read (and paraphrase) an article in English every day. They take the classes to pass the test to get a better job. The nice thing about this book is that it points out that ‘better jobs’ make greater demands on your time. If you don’t have time now to develop yourself then how will you ever have time to meet the increased responsibilities of your better job?

How about an introductory course titled ‘24/7’, all about using time effectively? The purpose of that would be to stimulate the students to make time for a hobby.[/quote]

That’s a brilliant point. Many times I have wanted to say this: “But you’re 22. You live with your parents. You do NOTHING but shop, watch TV and flirt with the one guy in the class (who is always a gay architecture student, but you don’t see this) or that’s what you tell me, anyway. Maybe you do have a bunch of other stuff that takes up your time but you are too lazy to look it up in a dictionary and tell me what it is. You do have time, you just don’t want to, or you would have learned at high school or taught yourself like all my English speaking Taiwanese friends did. It’s difficult but it’s not rocket science, either. Why is this is such a drama for you? Teaching doesn’t make you know stuff. Learning and studying does. NOW READ THE ARTICLES AND DON"T ASK ME HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR READING SCORE WITHOUT READING ANYTHING!”

Rant over. And I got a break from IELTS this term! :rainbow: