When I first arrived in Paris, I decided I wanted to get a job. Although I have my internet work, it's nice to have some actual human contact. Since I had read that English teachers were in high demand, and since I not only speak English, but also studied it, I figured that was perfect.
I asked around about how to find these types of positions, and a few people mentioned FUSAC, a classifieds advertising magazine for English speakers. Lo and behold, there were tons of positions for native English speakers to teach at professional, business and conversation language schools. I applied to most of them. Being the naïve American, I decided to ignore the fact that the majority of them required 'working papers'. I mean, how hard can those be to get?
Sure enough, I wound up with plenty of responses to my queries, but all ended the same way -- nothing happens without working papers. So I looked into getting this French requirement - la carte de séjour. But once I discovered that it can often take over a year for an individual to get one, it didn't seem worth the effort since we might not stay in Paris that long.
Fortunately, Paris has an industry just like the U.S. for workers 'sur la table'. I wound up finding two private English tutoring jobs of two separate 13-year old French girls. I found the positions, for which there appeared to be little competition, through the bulletin board at L'Alliance Français. During my first job interview (in French, ironically), I was not only offered the job, but immediately given a raise from 13 to 15 euros per hour. On the second interview, my soon-to-be-employer told me I was the only one who responded to the position, but no matter since I seemed perfect! For tutoring his daughter, I'd receive 20 euros per hour.
My first tutoring lesson proved to be a bit of a challenge. Mostly, I was there to provide conversational practice which seemed easy enough. However, both my students are taught English by native French speakers who I presume to have thick French accents and who I've learned spend most of the class speaking in French. So it was no wonder that I got some very strange looks those first few days as they tried to adjust to my accent (or lack thereof depending on how you look at it). I also needed to adjust to hearing their English with a French accent. During my first lesson with Mathilde, we discussed the show Friends which she was quite passionate about. I spent several minutes trying to understand what was 'chewy' until she finally got some paper and clarified by writing the word 'Joey'.
In fact, I would learn a lot about the differences between French and English by tutoring. It's funny how when you know a language, you just know what sounds right. As I was teaching Mathilde about prepositions, I explained (as instructed in my Oxford Guide to English Grammar) that "on" usually suggests being on top of something. For example, the book is on the table. Of course, this made it awfully difficult to justify why we say "He's on a plane," since presumably the person isn't actually sitting on top of the plane but is actually in the plane. Languages are funny that way -- there are often more exceptions than there are rules. Unfortunately French is equally chaotic with prepositions, which explains why I almost always use the wrong one.
Geoff has pointed out that my other tutoring job with Judith is not actually tutoring, but in fact baby-sitting. Judith needs to take a half-mile walk, a bus and a metro to get from school to home. This makes no sense to me since she attends a public school, but apparently that's how it works here. So what her parents needed was someone to pick her up one or two days a week from school and accompany her home. They figured picking a native English speaker would help give her some practice in a subject she was floundering in, and the lesson could then be continued at their house for a short time. However, her commute is quite long which leaves most of our time together on some form of transportation. There are two problems with this - first, the bus and metro are too crowded to concentrate on a conversation, and second, Judith hardly can put a sentence together and rarely understands what I'm saying.
This week, I re-connected with my two students whom I hadn't seen in over a month. I was quite proud to see that Mathilde was doing well in English and we had a very mature conversation about politics which was surprising not only because she could carry on such a complex dialogue, but because she was informed enough about the Iraq War and politics to have formulated some serious opinions. As for Judith, it turned out she had failed her most recent test which isn't a good sign considering she's still only on the present tense.
I asked around about how to find these types of positions, and a few people mentioned FUSAC, a classifieds advertising magazine for English speakers. Lo and behold, there were tons of positions for native English speakers to teach at professional, business and conversation language schools. I applied to most of them. Being the naïve American, I decided to ignore the fact that the majority of them required 'working papers'. I mean, how hard can those be to get?
Sure enough, I wound up with plenty of responses to my queries, but all ended the same way -- nothing happens without working papers. So I looked into getting this French requirement - la carte de séjour. But once I discovered that it can often take over a year for an individual to get one, it didn't seem worth the effort since we might not stay in Paris that long.
Fortunately, Paris has an industry just like the U.S. for workers 'sur la table'. I wound up finding two private English tutoring jobs of two separate 13-year old French girls. I found the positions, for which there appeared to be little competition, through the bulletin board at L'Alliance Français. During my first job interview (in French, ironically), I was not only offered the job, but immediately given a raise from 13 to 15 euros per hour. On the second interview, my soon-to-be-employer told me I was the only one who responded to the position, but no matter since I seemed perfect! For tutoring his daughter, I'd receive 20 euros per hour.
My first tutoring lesson proved to be a bit of a challenge. Mostly, I was there to provide conversational practice which seemed easy enough. However, both my students are taught English by native French speakers who I presume to have thick French accents and who I've learned spend most of the class speaking in French. So it was no wonder that I got some very strange looks those first few days as they tried to adjust to my accent (or lack thereof depending on how you look at it). I also needed to adjust to hearing their English with a French accent. During my first lesson with Mathilde, we discussed the show Friends which she was quite passionate about. I spent several minutes trying to understand what was 'chewy' until she finally got some paper and clarified by writing the word 'Joey'.
In fact, I would learn a lot about the differences between French and English by tutoring. It's funny how when you know a language, you just know what sounds right. As I was teaching Mathilde about prepositions, I explained (as instructed in my Oxford Guide to English Grammar) that "on" usually suggests being on top of something. For example, the book is on the table. Of course, this made it awfully difficult to justify why we say "He's on a plane," since presumably the person isn't actually sitting on top of the plane but is actually in the plane. Languages are funny that way -- there are often more exceptions than there are rules. Unfortunately French is equally chaotic with prepositions, which explains why I almost always use the wrong one.
Geoff has pointed out that my other tutoring job with Judith is not actually tutoring, but in fact baby-sitting. Judith needs to take a half-mile walk, a bus and a metro to get from school to home. This makes no sense to me since she attends a public school, but apparently that's how it works here. So what her parents needed was someone to pick her up one or two days a week from school and accompany her home. They figured picking a native English speaker would help give her some practice in a subject she was floundering in, and the lesson could then be continued at their house for a short time. However, her commute is quite long which leaves most of our time together on some form of transportation. There are two problems with this - first, the bus and metro are too crowded to concentrate on a conversation, and second, Judith hardly can put a sentence together and rarely understands what I'm saying.
This week, I re-connected with my two students whom I hadn't seen in over a month. I was quite proud to see that Mathilde was doing well in English and we had a very mature conversation about politics which was surprising not only because she could carry on such a complex dialogue, but because she was informed enough about the Iraq War and politics to have formulated some serious opinions. As for Judith, it turned out she had failed her most recent test which isn't a good sign considering she's still only on the present tense.
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