Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice

Well, I suppose perception is everything. Constituting yourself a peacekeeper between two grown men who are having a bit of 'a handbags at dawn' exchange which they're clearly enjoying, can come across as a wee bit patronizing. I wasn't intending to have a dig at you particularly. I'm just making the point that the kind of exchange going on between Jon and Dominic is not really a big deal. And look, to be fair now, life is just so insufferably dull if people are polite to each other all the time - though I draw the line at vulgarities :)

Sorry I wasn't intending to be patronizing at all...I was really hoping it would lowerall the overall tendness for rudeness on here to one another and not just in this thread in particular. I'm sorry you saw it the way you did.

It's a waste of time. You won't be able to make any difference at all. Though you might try to sprinkle your magic pixie dust on Adrian. He's a more worthy cause, being one of the most angriest people here and he's still young enough to be influenced. He might pay some attention because you're an American and hang out with soldiers :)) He'd be very impressed by those credentials.

Not angry, just practical and realistic. Also, I don't want my beautiful Polish motherland to turn into a place like Paris with garbage and sh!t strewn all over the streets and a nonstop state of emergency because we took in unvetted migrants, that's all. And no, being a US soldier by itself doesn't impress me. There's plenty of them with complexes like thinking they're another gender than the American taxpayers get stuck paying hundreds of thousands for gender reassignment, hormones, and all sorts of nonsense that has no place in the military. What impresses me is someone who stands up for their family, country, culture and knows how to make money.

Dirk for someone who is always banging on about his intellectual capabilities, you sound remarkably dense.
Now, think hard....
What colonies did France have ? OK?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_possessions_and_colonies
Now think a bit harder..
What colonies did Poland have?

Me again, i know we have digressed but what do you all think if i do a masters in translation and get that qualifications i can do some work in translating even without a technical expertise niche market? More part time? I mostly want to work several different jobs to keep the hours low, my lifestyle how i like and keep things fresh and evolving.....so would you say i am wasting my time to get the degree at all or to have realistic expectations (that i have) that i likely wont be able to live on translation work alone (ie free lance online stuff) and will need to supplement income with other skills? I dont expect or want to try to live off translating alone....Ideal i will be using different skills more and less at differetn times and depending on what country or region i am in at the time... :) happy to hear any opinions, its helps me to see different angles as i explore this idea and process it. cheers!

@rozumiemnic

Doesn't mean they had to take in a flood of migrants that cause a ton of problems and throw garbage all over the streets and sh1t because they've never seen a trash bin back home in Afghanistan.

Italy had colonies as well and up until very recently their foreign population was low. Same with Portugal - they had plenty of overseas territories yet have largely been unimpacted by the migrant crisis. Sorry but I don't buy the BS that having colonies during the age of imperialism and somehow that means you have a huge migrant population today.

Poland yes didn't have colonies yet nonetheless took in migrants - Ukrainians primarily -1 mln, roughly the same amount as Germany yet Poland doesn't have to face terror, rapes, etc. Just yesterday i read a story about a teenage afghan who killed a 15 german girl because she dumped Abdul... well Abdul didn't take it too kindly and his culture tends to have zero respect for women, let alone equality. Clearly, the problems that arise out of migration as evidenced when comparing Poland to Germany, France, Sweden, etc. is WHERE you take in migrants from - and not necessarily whether the host country is very wealthy or even how many migrants you take.


I highly doubt you'd need a masters in translation to get a good translating job. I'd do something more general IMO to broaden your employment possibilities. Maybe consider something like linguistics, language arts, or simply majoring in English or some other language.


Probably not. A lot of the people who teach English in schools make money on the side tutoring as the wages tend to be very low for teachers even by PL standards. Some will write or publish books but tutoring is I'd say the most common side hustle for teachers. You can make half decent money by PL standards tutoring and you don't really need an advanced degree (or really any degree) to do that. Oftentimes the highest rates for tutors are those who are native English speakers and have business experience/business degrees and focus on clients learning 'business english' and focus teaching more on things you'd encounter at a corporation.

Frankly, yes it does, after raping Africa and Asia and stripping wealth worldwide, not to mention how its early immigrants were treated, not to mention the atrocities of the Franco-Algerian war, France deserves everything they get, along with Belgiium, and the Netherlands. And the UK.

This is not 'BS'. YOu cant take , take and take and not give back. Those countries are only rich , attractive destinations because of colonialism and slavery.

Poland will simply not hve the same issues and to declare hysterically that it will..is just...hysteria.

Italy was not a great colonial nation, just a few short lived colonies under Mussolini. They are unfortunate geographically.

Definitely yes. Most translators are part-time or freelance, unless they're salaried staff at a translation agency (rarer and rarer nowadays). There's plenty of wotk out there, and as myself and another person mentioned, networking skills are important, as is specialising. Think about indexing - I have a relative who works at home making indexes for non-fiction books. It's quite specialised, (and she has a science degree and an EFL qualification) however she indexes everything from politicians' biographies through history books right through to textbooks. The kind of thing that is hard to get into, however once you've done it, more work comes. It subsidises her real passion, writing and performing folk-tales.


Absolutely not.


This is normal, and the more strings in your bow, the more options that you have. A good, solid course in teaching adults (inclcuding curriculum development - this is important) can stand you in good stead for the future. Expoerience in teaching Academic English is useful, since being able to pop off and do a pre-sessional course every now and again is a way some people top up their bank account so they can have freedom to do the things they like the rest of the time.

Hi Matlinka. I don't feel qualified to advise you one way or the other but I think you would do well to listen to Jon and Rozumiemnic. Jon has the most experience in the TEFL and general English language area and lives in Poland, Roz has an English degree and a lot of common sense. Dominic is a very sensible person too but he has extremely fixed ideas about how people should pursue their career path and is obsessed with maths and technical subjects and saving for your old age :)

thank you Atch..:) and many years of TEFL experience...:)

If i live for the next 3 years at least in poland, immersed and studying formally the language, i think my polish will be at a pretty good level (and i heed the reading advice i believe that is very true!) so should i also try to study something random and specific like ie hearning aid technology ao i can translate articles about that or focus on what i love, yoga, art etc and maybe find some weird need for translating in these areas...im not looking to be a crazy competitvie business person, i want to develop as a linguistic enjoy my work and be interested in the field.


so harsh when you put it that way....but its kind of true. BA degrees in general, most of the people i worked with in the bar for 10 years we all had BA degrees. but still, actually, i have been using mine since I started teaching and I feel llike this is a natural and interesting way to go further into it and do something fairly practical with it no? translating seems like a fairly good route to head towards..

.but maybe you are rigth about the MA in ENglish (all of you that mentioned it,) so i dont know, honestly i think it vital and important for me to immerse myself for at least a few years and study formally if i want to really get anywhere in that i come out of that study program and my language is up to par....and so that is one reason to do the study in poland, the other is its free....its not 10000CAD/year and that is attractive to me...its a great opportunity having gotten my Polsih Passport in the last few years, something i can take advantage of, because really, haha well i dont have 20G's.....but maybe a specialization in something esle is better...hmmm to be honest i just want to do yoga and live i a beautiful place with enough money to visit my family and friends in Canada pretty regularly, ......the dream!! i i want the dream ;)

So the descendants of colonialists have to account for their great great great great grandparents' sins? You realize that's the line that North Korea takes - that a son is equally responsible for his mother's or fathers and even their grandparents' crimes.

If that were the case then it should be applied universally - Poland should be given billions of dollars then by Russia and Germany for their destruction and these countries should also pay for their crimes which occurred far more recently than the age of imperialism.


Yes, they indeed do - they made their bed, they must now sleep in it. Although I hate to see all these beautiful countries that I've travelled to be utterly invaded by seas of ninja women and neck beards, their lefty politicians lead the citizens down this course. And the millions of conservative and even centrist citizens hate it! This only makes countries who aren't having to face nonstop terror, rapes, economic strain, etc. like Poland, Hungary, etc. who voted in nationalist governments look better. Don't believe me? Just take a look at AfD's success. Europeans are getting sick of this lefty nonsense that we are somehow obligated to take in economic migrants. No - we have no responsibility whatsoever.

If they want to mess up their countries to the point where women only sections are created during NYE parties and concerts so that migrants aren't able to grope or rape them, that's fine - that's their right as citizens to vote for whatever limousine liberal and shampoo socialists they want. However, we Poles have spoken loud and clear - we don't want migrants from ME and Africa and the majority of Poles will vote for people who respect those wishes amongst others.


Less than that - you'll be nearly fluent in like 6-12 months if you already have a foundation. I'm pretty fluent in Polish although I speak English more in my daily life everytime I go to Poland I always learn new words or like how to phrase something better. Being there forces you to learn the language. One nice thing though is almost all the youth now speak English and will bug you for lessons. You'll be able to find work teaching/translating/tutoring English without a problem. Katowice is a great city too - good location. I've always preferred southern/Silesian Poland over the other parts although the Baltic coast is really nice too. I'm right up the E40 in Wroclaw.

you need to read your history, it's a bit more recent that that.
Personally I think you should stay in the states and not bother yourself with Europe, it's obviously upsetting you.
I don't suppose the people in the Punjab wanted to be annexed, or if the people of the Congo wanted their hands chopped off for not being productive enough...

I was thinking more generally in life rather than long term in poland. I think i will do the schooling in Poland and try to work living in the EU a couple of years, when i can start to get a little more online /free lance work i would like to split my time between canada and asia, ideal, teaching ESL, yoga and translating, and painting and bartending and and ;) whatever other skills i aquire on the way haha that is the general game plan i have

Yes thanks Atch!


And I think you said you do proofreading - which is almost all freelance, so you're well placed to advise. One poster here did it salaried for quite a while. That sounded quite good. The freedom of being freelance is always balanced by the quiet periods, so always pluses and minuses to weigh up and no two people's experience are identical.

I made the move from EFL into training management and then 'mainstrewam' academia. It's possible but hard, and youngsters (under-40s anyway) going into EFL are finding that the days of high salaries for native-speakers are over unless they're a. unusually lucky (us oldies have the last of the good jobs and are not giving them up anytime soon) or b. have a particular specialism and some non-ELT qualification.

Din't you say you were Canadian? There's a place in Doha called CNAQ which recruits only within Canada - I gather it's a good place to work, and the high salary they offer (6 figures in dollars) could give a very nice cushion that would allow you quite a bit of flexibility in choosing what (and when) to do next. I don't think theyt require a masters, but do like solid 'serious' experience.

I'm aware that many of the countries didn't regain their independence till the 60's or 70's -- Poland didn't regain hers till 89 90 when things really changed - where are our billions from Germany and Russia? So the people born after the 60's and 70's in France, basically the majority, have to account for their ancestors sins according to you. Well, at least you and North Korean ideology have that in common.

You should watch Chlopaki Nie Placza - it explains the situation rather poignantly. For example, it asks, do you think it's easy to capture a big African dude in a net? Of course not. The people who were caught were those too stupid to run away from a guy with a net. Also, chiefs traded their own people for muskets and tobacco as they'd rather have a good smoke than keep around a useless guy. Now the descendants of people who were too stupid to run away from a net or who's own leaders traded them away for some tobacco are telling us that Europeans owe them something because one of our great great great grandparents traded a musket for some slaves - a legal (At the time) economic transaction over 100 hundred years ago? Sorry, but if the roles were reversed and Africans had superior technology to the Europeans do you think they'd be so accommodating to us today? Somehow I doubt it - the Chinese sure as hell aren't - they're only about commerce and money, they don't play this namby pamby BS - and actually their levels of technology were superior in many regards to medieval/rennaisaince/imperial Europe.

Who are the modern colonizers? Chinese. They are in every African, Carribean, European, etc. country. Go to Madagascar even - it's Chinese running vanilla plantations. It's the same scenario all over Africa. Yet no one is calling the Chinese to take in millions of Africans.... They don't want em and that's their right as a sovereign nation with its own border policy and laws.


It's very common for Poles to go to EU for work and then spend most their earnings in PL - especially Germany. This has been going on for ages, even during commie times people would go to Germany, buy goods that were hard to get or dollars, marks, etc. and sell them back in PL or move them onto Russia. A lot of Poles went to UK in the past few years, a lot have returned though because of the higher wages and a lot more opportunities than 10 years ago.

yes I do a bit of academic proofreading...it is very up and down ...but sometimes it really is easy money.