Dream Achievement Support Assistant

If I tell you my job title, you'll smile politely. You might think 'oh well, at least I know what that is'; you'll think you know what I do. You're probably right about some of my daily tasks. I do drill irregular verbs and explain the difference between affect and effect and make red marks on essays.

As for what I do: I give people a leg up to their dreams.

When I first starting teaching English, I thought I would be primarily teaching people who wanted to...erm...learn English. The odd student does turn up to wax lyrical about how beautiful English is or rhapsodize on Austen and Dickens, to answer "why do you want to learn English?" with "Because I love it!!" but the vast majority have an entirely non-linguistic goal.

Off the top of my head, I've taught students who wanted to: build firefighting robots, write scifi novels, stand a fighting chance of escaping impending political persecution, publish their research into eye diseases, share their art with the world and reconstruct bombed-out Middle Eastern cities in environmentally sustainable ways; that's aside from the legions who needed English before they could even get started on their illustrious careers in engineering, architecture, dentistry, medicine, microbiology, classics, diplomacy, and teaching English itself.

Everyone has a starry-eyed vision of their own or their children's future, and for millions, the English language is a shaky rung of the ladder. In many countries, you cannot get into a top university without passing an English exam, even if your field has nothing to do with language. English language ability is listed as a job requirement just to thin the entry-level herd; failing that, promotions are shelved further down the line.

I still remember the shock I felt the first time a student, a middle-aged, good-humoured Russian man, told me he hated English. I couldn't believe it; why on earth was this guy paying me for 30 minutes a day of something he hated? It was because he needed English for work; he wouldn't even be considered at the next round of promotions unless he could discuss his role in English. OK, fair enough. I enquired whether he had to speak English at work a lot; he laughed and said no. So he would have to speak English a lot after getting the promotion? No. Did he, maybe, want to travel in an English-speaking country? Another scoff; no. He did not want to travel.

Oh-kay then. He ended up taking at least seventy lessons, and his situation was far from unusual. A talented Spanish engineer dolefully informed me that he had six months to jump an English level, or he was out; a Bulgarian dentist cried after four rounds of the IELTS exam left her half a band short of the incredibly high target of 7.5. And university student after university student has greeted me after a sleepless night, caffeine-fuel in hand, brushing aside my assertion that a good night's sleep is just as important to exam performance as an extra three or four hours with their books.

They will sleep the night before the exam, they assure me. They will not.

Every time I wish a student 'good luck' the night before an exam, I allow myself a few minutes of worry. Will they manage the extra two listening points they need? Will they have to wait three demoralising hours before their speaking exam, and will they be able to withstand that psychological pressure?

Every time a student has a job interview, I grimly note the time and start counting the minutes until I get the message about how it went. I pray they get some variation on that one question they answered really well during their interview and please-god don't let them get asked one of those stupid wildcard questions full of words they might not know.

All this tension is totally worth it when, days later, I get a glowing thank-you message, or see the student in another lesson, grinning from ear to ear, talking about all the things they will do now that they've got the English out of the way.

Some of them I will see again, for conversation practice or something else more fun than exam prep; some I won't. I wave them off into the metaphorical sunset.

They have achieved one of the crucial steps on the way to their starry-eyed dreams. All I have done is give them a little help; the triumph is theirs. But sometimes a little second-hand triumph is enough to leave you with a little grin on your face for the next few hours.

And that's why I love my job. That, and the fact I don't have to take a bus every day.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you did, you might like to check out the other articles I've written about language learning on Vocal.

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