How many polish adults want to learn English?

I'm having trouble with this post - originally posted and then another member merged me and it's disappeared!!!!
I'm asking for feedback on what the demand is from polish adults who want to learn english.....I'll be living in poland next year and am qualified teacher of english - would like some info re opportunities for work, pay rates etc. Many thanks.

Why do you want to teach adults only? It seems students or children create a bigger market overall.

mainly because my qualification relates to adults - it's the CELTA (Cambridge University course for teaching english to adult learners), but I suppose I could modify it to teach children - depends whether polish education system accepts this qualification in schools or not, I guess......

The Polish society is becoming more mobile so while 20 years ago a 40-year old student was considered unserious, now it's more "normal" for the Polish society (in the bigger cities at least).

When I use the term "adult" - it refers to people over the age of 18 (university students, managers, academics, workers, general public). There must be people who are planning to live and work in English speaking countries who need to learn English or revise the little that they have.....am I right in my thinking?

Unless you have studied to be a primary school teacher with Q.T.S. in England and you have experience of children is there a difference between a CELTA and the Trinity TESOL? Teaching adults and children English is the same thing except perhaps for the discipline in the classroom. State pay is not good and even private language schools will not pay you enough money to make a profit to take home with you. I was once in Warsaw and was offered a job teaching English. The man with whom I was staying in Warsaw with laughed after I told him the conditions of employment as his monthly mobile telephone bill was more than my wage as an English Language Teacher would be! I think that I will stay in England and remain a postman!!

the difference between these 2 qualifications depends on who you talk to...

the CELTA originally referred to itself as an EFL qualification designed for teaching english abroad, as mentioned earlier the A refers to Adult and it concentrates on group teaching... Cambridge now calls the qualification ESOL - i wonder why... - and is happy to sell you a Young Learners programme once you have completed the CELTA…

Trinity Cert. TESOL is, as it suggests, an ESOL qualification… designed to teach English to Speakers of Other Languages in a native English speaking countries… the course covers young learners as well as adults and looks at teaching individuals as well as groups… some courses may also contain elements of teaching business English…

QTS is an entirely different qualification…

CELTA and TCL Cert. TESOL will get you a job teaching English in a private language school in Poland… having QTS wont… necessarily


i think you will find a lot of people happy to disagree with this statement...

EGLISH SUCKS!!!!!

but i wouldnt mind helping you to teach though!

I can only add that when I did my Trinity TESOL course in 1999/2000 there was no teaching of English to children element (exept maybe a sheet of paper showing how children sit in a classroom) and no business English though a one month intensive course can not do everything. Maybe Poland 2006 is right when she says 'English sucks!', why should we spread our culture on to everybody else? I used to go to Poland when there was still 'communism', if that is the right word, and the Polish Language was pure, now so many new words of English origin have crept in...they do not say przepraszam but use the English word sorry!

That's why 1/2 the world can speak it.


Where would this be? I've never heard anyone say "sorry" in PL.

Half the Polish Language is full of English words. If you watch the Polish serial M jak Milosc all the time you will hear sorry sorry sorry and yet again sorry. I am not in Poland I am in Guildford Surrey but we get the serial via satelite. I was in a train in Gdansk and I hearded a student using the word amongst his friends. Obviously you have never been to Poland!! Even I am aware of some of the mdern linguistic trends. I used to visit Poland quite a lot but have moved on to Australia and other more interesting destinations now.

You watch M jak Miłość too???
Yeah, they say 'sorki' all the time. I noticed that also.

I never miss it! I always manage to fit in to my important busy life style attending cabinet meetings and parliamentary debates and around watching Neighbours and Home and Away from Australia. We get it on Satursay and Sunday and even the Sunday version is repeated on the Monday at 12.30p.m. Sometimes its better than at others but it was better when Kamil was in it though he is in London now. It is good practice for my Polish, in fact I think that I will go to Poland after redundancy from work in the U.K. and see if I could be Doctor Artur's understudy!

Quoting: Michal
Teaching adults and children English is the same thing except perhaps for the discipline in the classroom

No, it's not the same at all!! Adults and children have V ERY different learning styles and needs.....they each require different treatment, communication, timing, strategies, activities etc. etc. If you applied the same learning strategies to children as adults or vice versa, the results would be disastrous.....e.g. children would be totally lost, adults would be totally bored....etc. etc.

In my experience that I have of Polish and Czech people in the classroom, they are worse than children. They sit and talk amongs themselves in their own language. They lack the same ability of the English. Generally the Polish are quite lazy and want all the work done for them, so in my lessons I have to help them a lot. Children are the same throught the world, What is the problem that you can not see here. I have never mad a Polish student stand outside in the corridor yet... but who knows...

i did mine in 1992 and both elements were included... maybe you went to the wrong provider...


it can be difficult not to impose your culture when teaching english... and sometimes this is included in lessons and materials... but at the end of the day, as and english teacher you are teaching a language, not forcing your culture...