ESL HAS A SURPRISE BENEFIT

When we arrived in Hungary August 2024 and told our professional support team we wanted to stay permanently, we were advised to start a business.  I am a bookkeeper, and my husband is a retired chef who is also very handy in woodwork.  However, those skills could have been hard to reestablish in another country.  I mentioned the possibility of teaching English as I had prior experience tutoring a bilingual friend. 

Together my husband and I started a consulting business with this ESL (English as a Second Language) focus on the forefront.  We worked with our relocation specialist, a lawyer and a business plan writer to set our partnership.  Then marketing began.  Our relocation specialist helped a great deal in getting the word out that there was an opportunity to be tutored by a native American English speaker.  That was the draw!  Anyone can watch videos in other languages and pick up some words and phrases, but they don’t get feedback.  They may not really understand when an actual person speaks to them.  Americans in particular use a lot of idioms and informal phrasing.  English speakers from Great Britian or other places can also be a challenge.  I have been told the Irish are very hard to understand.  I sometimes have difficulty when watching British TV so I get it. 

Currently we have 8 ESL clients.  They range in age from 11 to about 50.  There was a group studying Accounting English, but most current clients are more interested in general conversation. Many learn via Zoom and can be in a variety of locations throughout the county. But a couple prefer in-person lessons.  One comes to visit weekly and we go to the other one at a work location. We use a software called Fluentize to get the conversations going. This is supplimented with other literature and discussions about issues of mutual interest.

It is so rewarding helping them as well as learning more about Hungarian culture in the process.  While we share our stories, they are also sharing theirs.  We are not only having an educational and cultural experience, we are making friends. What a lovely surprise!