Abigail Fulbrook: Welcome back to the Elevate blog. I’m here with Sarah Piedade. Is that right, Sarah?
Sarah Piedade: Yeah, that’s fine.
Abigail Fulbrook: And you’re in France, I believe.
Sarah Piedade: Yep. Southwest France.
Abigail Fulbrook: Lovely. Are you originally from France or how long have you been there for?
Sarah Piedade: No, no, no. I’m English, British from London originally. Uh, but yes, I have lived in France for 30 Oh, it’s 33 years this year.
Abigail Fulbrook: Long time. So you’ve been through the journey like learners, English learners do. You’ve been through the journey of learning French.
Sarah Piedade: Yeah. I studied French actually university in the UK and then I had a year out in France for my third year and as as often seems to happen I met my future husband and finished my studies and then came back to France. So I did study but yeah it’s not the same it certainly wasn’t the same as, you learn in the country obviously in a different ways.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, definitely. I see. Okay. So, now you’re an English teacher and what kind of who, Who do you teach? What kind of lessons are you doing?
Sarah Piedade: Yeah. Only adults in fact I don’t do children. So adults and mainly professional people. Some in companies, some in training centers. In France, they have a quite a well-developed system where people who are working in companies, private companies contribute kind of like a training fund. So they have they clock up a certain number of hours and and money per year and so they can use this for training any kind of training and yeah that’s often language training so I I do ask people like that and often those kind of people it may not be only professional English that can be general English too
Abigail Fulbrook: Oh, I see. Okay. I was going to say, what kind of things are they looking for? Is it more business type of language or are they traveling?
Sarah Piedade: yeah a majority is business obviously travel Yes, most people travel these days, so it’s always useful as well to have English for for travel. But the majority is is business English. Yeah, there’s a lot of big companies where I live, so they have a lot of contact with nationalities and need English for their jobs.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s like you were saying as of studying at university you think of it as a school subject and then suddenly you go out into the world and you have to use it in real. Do your students
have that yeah they have that feeling as…
Sarah Piedade: I think not so much those who are working and use English in their jobs. Yeah. they they see and that’s why that’s somewhere why I prefer professional adult students is because they have that need now you know they they see in what they know in what situations they need English and so I generally find I can be much more um precise in what I offer them and uh and they are too they know exactly as I need it for the telephone I need it for meetings I need it for presentations and I must admit yeah I I do find that easier often when I’m confronted with general English. I kind of think, “Oh, where do I start? There’s so much there’s so much stuff out there. I mean, where do you start?” So, yeah, it kind of narrows it narrows it down in a way. Business English sometimes. Yeah.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Definitely. Do people think though it’s a bit dry if they they oh I I need to study yeah this kind of business stuff but maybe oh that’s a bit boring
Sarah Piedade: Um, no, I think I found quite a lot of stuff. I try to make it, yeah, as lively as possible and use I I often try and use kind of funny videos. I found a a kind of series of YouTube videos where they they show real video conferences or meetings and I sometimes try to bring a bit of humor and you know make it as active as possible in in the lessons. So I try not to make it dry. Yeah, I don’t think it’s too dry.
Abigail Fulbrook: Definitely. Do you have any memorable moments or stories from your students who’ve made progress with you?
Sarah Piedade: I often have yes, particularly in business English I often have students come back to me you know a week after a particular lesson they say oh wow the that last lesson was so useful because yeah this week I actually used that in a meeting, in a video conference I had to give a presentation and I remembered all the all the expressions you taught me and that we practice. So yeah that’s that’s really rewarding when people come back and and do that. Yeah, it just last week actually I had someone I just started some, with some new people in the company and I don’t think it was planned but one of my students had a kind of surprise visit from a German I think it’s actually a German contact remember who, but his manager suddenly kind of handed him the microphone they obviously in a kind of presentation situation said “right Tomas can you present your department” and the week before we had just done describing your department and you know organization charts and that kind of thing. So yeah, he was really really happy about that. So that was good.
Abigail Fulbrook: That’s good. Yeah, it’s funny that comes up. Yeah. When you practice..
Sarah Piedade: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that is nice. Oh, and and people who travel, I suppose. Yeah. Often when people have been on holiday somewhere and they’ve been in certain situations where they’ve had to use English, they see obviously see the utility of it.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, definitely. Okay. And how about yourself as a teacher? Why are you an English teacher? Why do you like it?
Sarah Piedade: I must admit when I first came to France, I wasn’t, I didn’t think I would be a teacher, because to tell the truth, I’d had quite a bad experience on my year out. I was like an assistant in two schools in France and I didn’t really enjoy the experience. Not the school experience anyway. I said, I remember when I came back to do my fourth year in the UK ,I said oh god I’ll never be a teacher you know but things change you know once I came over to France I actually found it difficult to find any other kind of job I thought I was I would you know find something else but I think it was a maybe a recession period it wasn’t a very it wasn’t a great period for finding work and so I thought well maybe with adults you know it’d be okay so I actually went back to the UK and did a CELTA course and then came back to France and yeah and then started teaching at that point and I started to enjoy it, a whole lot more with with adults and continued
Abigail Fulbrook: I see. Is there anything that you particularly enjoy doing with your students? Anything that’s really…
Sarah Piedade: I I do like doing roleplay and simulations and I regret a little bit at the moment in France because of this kind of training scheme that I told you about and I think particularly after COVID too the trend seems to have gone a lot more to one-to-one lessons. Everybody wants one-to-one lessons and I do regret small groups. I’ve had I have a few in some companies but yeah I do regret small groups because I think you can do a lot in small groups and it’s less intense sometimes for the learners because they can talk amongst themselves you know do some pair work do some u role play too and the onus is not all the time not on them you know for the whole hour and a half or however long the lesson is um which they find quite yeah they can find quite intense and quite tiring uh and just the dynam I like the dynamic of groups you know you can do different things with groups and it’s much more logical to do role plays. I mean, you know, how do you do a ro how do you role play a meeting with in a one-to-one lesson? It’s very difficult. So, yeah, I do um I do like groups. It’s not to say I don’t like one-to-one lessons. They’re fine.
Uh yeah, that’s one of my favorite things, teaching small groups, you know, four or five people. It’s great.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yes, definitely. I agree. It I hope that people go back to to groups because it’s very different feeling and you can help. Maybe some people concentrate on the fact that you can get the all this attention from the teacher one to one but yeah it’s not always a natural situation like in meetings.
Sarah Piedade: Exactly. No. And you can I think one of the great things about working in groups is sometimes you’ll have that information gap. it’ll it’ll come up naturally between two learners. One might say something that the other doesn’t understand and so they have to use all that other language around you know learning a language to to to try and comprehend each other to understand each other. So I I think that’s a good exercise in itself. Yeah. I know in France maybe pe people think it’s often a bit forced because yes they’re all French speakers so sometimes they feel like it’s a kind of false situation but you know it’s yeah it is a false situation anyway. It’s a lesson. It’s not a meeting or their presentation. So yeah, but it’s an opportunity to practice. That’s the main thing.
Abigail Fulbrook: Definitely. And it’s all good opportunities to practice.
Sarah Piedade: Exactly.
Abigail Fulbrook: Great. Well, thank you Sarah. It was really great to talk to you today.
Sarah Piedade: Thank you. Thanks, Abby.
Book a lesson and get in touch with Sarah here
