Do you sometimes feel that you have to do something immediately? Kiss
your beloved, quit a job, drink beer, break up or just run? It simply has to be
done. I experienced this need to leave everything and everybody and spend some
time in a foreign place this summer, doing whatever and staying wherever. I am not an adventurer, on the contrary, I am said to be a rather
timid, even boring person, who enjoys calmness and silence. Nevertheless, when
you study a language, you simply can´t stay all holiday in your town. Some
inner desire for new experiences forces you to go and discover distant
countries, where people speak a different language than you. For more and more
young people the Czech Republic is becoming simply too small. But be warned,
the courage to leave a comfortable bed and moments spent with your relatives
and beloved for an uncertain stay at a stranger´s house is only the first step.
You also need patience in your search, good intuition and lastly a good
relationship with your family and their children.
Au-Pair Position: Challenge Accepted
Anyway, at the end of May, after sending plenty of CVs
and cover letters to some of the families, my plan seemed a bit ruined and my
mind was a bit desperate. Fortunately, thanks to another family, whose friends
had been looking for an au-pair, I finally succeeded. That was how a student of
the English language appeared in a small town 15 minutes from Barcelona,
staying with a family with two Spanish kids; a very mature and thoughtful
9-year old girl and a rather active 2-year old boy. English is first and the
foremost for me, it´s not necessary to say more. Better to ask my father, it
was him who showed me years ago, how broad and entertaining the world of languages
could be. Spanish receives, to put it simply, as far as the language skills are
concerned, a silver medal. I am lucky enough to speak English rather well,
which is very valuable in Spain. So why not to combine it? Sea and beaches in
Costa Brava together with a very nice family; their friends, warm weather and
splendid sightseeing around Spain- these were some of the extra benefits.
Can a girl from the Czech Republic speak and teach English?
I was a strange au-pair, wasn’t I? I do not particularly long to be an English
teacher. I like children, but others do not usually consider me much as a fond
mother-to-be type. I’d spent only a month and a half there and did not have to
do much of the household chores. The deal with my family was particularly to
teach English, to speak with the members of the family in English, basically to
improve their language skills in everyday life. I spent the end of the holiday
and the beginning of their school year with the children, so during the holiday
I prepared a lot of games focused on the English language, outside and at home,
for both the children or just for one. It was rather difficult, because I had
been “working” all day long from morning till evening (although the mum has a
university degree in Education, at the moment she is, like plenty of other
people unemployed and stays at home, which is a sad reality frequent in Spain
nowadays). At the same time however, it seemed ideal both for me and for them. They
were using English all the time and I tried to engage them in a conversation as
much as I could, mainly the girl, and strictly in English. I had also a
possibility to hear them talk during the dinner in Spanish (because their
father could not speak English) and thus practice my skills at the same time - truly
multicultural, isn´t it? During the school year (the school starts on 12
September) there unfortunately wasn’t as much time to play with them, but still we talked.
For example; during a walk to and from school, where I used to wait for them,
during the lunch, discussing school issues or talking with their friends.
What about the children and their attitude to this
language? I thought that it would be a great challenge to teach a 2-year old
boy how to speak a foreign language although he did not know properly his
mother tongue. He was so talkative, that after a while he did not have a
problem with absorbing some English words, simple ones like colours, numbers,
animals, and afterwards also words connected to everyday life, like “teeth” or
“delicious.” Fairytales really work, because you can make the child repeat some
words in a story, point at the pictures in the book etc. Sometimes,
unfortunately, he even mixed the two languages together. So for example the
colour yellow was only yellow, amarillo
in Spanish disappeared somewhere. The level of the 9-year old really surprised
me a lot. She had attended the language school for a long time and had a
wide-ranging vocabulary, but she wasn´t used to speaking a lot and had some
problems with the word order in English. However, in my opinion she was willing
to learn English and understood why her mother took me to their house... Though
I had to be a bit of an alien to her - they did not have any au-pair before.
The Importance of Speaking English
For the Spanish it´s really important to speak English
well. It is an ability that not everybody obtains. It is learned at schools
and, in fact, is the only foreign language that is offered there. I´ve met
rather a lot of Spanish adults and even teenagers who could not speak this
language very well. Subsequently, the Spanish are really happy and enthusiastic
if they can speak English with somebody who is a non-Spanish speaker. That
reminds me a really funny fact that you have to count with, if you want to work
as an au-pair in Spain. You do not care only about the children that your
family has. There is usually a bunch of kids of your neighbours, friends,
relatives, who stand close to you, asking you; where you are from? Where is your
country? How to say “hello” in Czech? What do you like? And so on. All of whom
want to speak English as well... Or at least, their parents make them speak.
It´s true that most of the women who are looking for
an au-pair prefer English and American girls. For them the situation in Spain
is almost ideal, because they can find a job there rather easily.
Paradoxically, even some Spanish teachers of English are not able to speak
English as well as fluent speakers. My mother wanted to choose a course for her
daughter and couldn’t decide between two language schools. So when the daughter
was doing her entrance exam in order to see what level she had, the mother was
also there to observe whether the establishment was good, which material they
would have etc. The daughter told her mother afterwards that the test was O.K.,
but the teacher spoke rather weirdly. “Well,” the mother thought, “the teacher
may speak quickly or has an American accent, but I´d rather like her to prove
it.” She was horrified when she heard the teacher speak - it was not at all an
appropriate level for a teacher in a language school!
An Au-Pair’s Conclusion
The theme of language was discussed many times. Most
of the women I met at the café or in the garden after their children were taken
to school had been attending a language course, or preparing for an exam. My ‘mother’
also used to visit an intensive monthly course in Barcelona which prepared her
for an exam. For teachers in Spain it´s necessary to succeed at a certain level
of English and to obtain a certificate that proves their knowledge. The importance
of understanding English is nothing new, but for the Spanish who experience truly
difficult times these days when looking for a job it is a real must.
- Adéla Lávičková
