I graduated from college in December 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree in Strategic Communications and am currently working on my TEFL certification. I will be TEFL certified in April 2021. I first learned about teaching English overseas as a career in 2015 and it’s like a lightbulb went off in my head. I knew this was the path for me. I always knew that I wanted to travel and I’ve always been interested in other cultures and languages.
My college degree was heavily focused in advertising and PR principles, writing, studying demographics and target audiences, and ethics. I’ve worked various retail jobs since I was 18 and have been with my current job since 2016. After being with my store for a year, I began training new employees and learned how to adjust my training style to the person’s needs.
Through working retail, I’ve developed many skills that cross over into teaching including: learning how to interact and deal with a variety of people, patience, adaptability, planning, and interpersonal skills. I’m adaptable and work well under pressure. Sometimes there's no pressure like working 40+ hours a week in a mall during Christmas season.
More personally, I’ve always been an avid reader and learned a lot of my early vocab through books. I believe this gives me a unique insight into the frustrating nuances between written and spoken English. I understand the frustration with English pronunciations that don’t follow any rules.
I vividly remember finding the same book in two languages and trying to figure out how translation worked. It definitely went over my 6-year-old head and I remember naively thinking that it was just translated word for word.
I've learned a lot about linguistics since then and have taken Spanish, Latin, and Korean classes. Korean was my foreign language in college. So I have a lot of experience as a foreign language student and I’m ready to take on a role as the teacher.
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