October 2007 Archives

Are you thinking about teaching abroad? If you are, then this article might help you out. The first thing I've got to say to you is not to allow yourself to be swayed by your emotions or the romantic notion of living in a foreign country. Employers count on this to hook you to come over and likely stay in unsatisfactory working and living conditions. Working for a dud of an employer and living in poor housing isn't a rosy picture, which can happen to you. I don't want to burst your bubble but teaching abroad is peppered with difficulties and challenges. It doesn't have to be a trying process, which prompted me to write this piece. If you think things through carefully and do some planning and your homework you can minimize potential problems and pitfalls. One more thing, don't assume that it's an easy way to make money because it isn't. When you factor in the start up costs and your day-to-day living expenses, you might find yourself no further ahead if you just stayed home.

I've just found the following video in which Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analysing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realise.