Welcome To Your Local English Academy

As a highly qualified and hugely experienced teacher of English, it has never failed to amaze me how many bullshit merchants manage to make a successful career in teaching knowing next to Sweet Fx@k All about anything, let alone the English language. Talk about fake it 'til you make it!

I have to say, a great many of the idiots are people for whom English is a second language. And because they have accumulated a little bad learning, they have decided that that qualifies them to teach others, often with disastrous results.

When I had my own bilingual academy in Spain, I had more than my share of these types of people coming to see me about a job. And when they failed the interview due to a lack of qualifications, and experience, and having only a smattering of spoken English, well they simply went out and advertised themselves as freelance English teachers.

One guy, whose name I shall not mention, had only a military background as a paratrooper. I had images of him entering a classroom full of young children camouflaged with army fatigues and fully kitted up with grenades and an AK47, screaming...

"Hey Johnny, motherfucker, ya didn' ought a do that. Do dat agen an A'm gonna pop a cap in yo ass, an A'm gonna whoop yo ass boy, 'til ya cry like a baby." Not exactly an appropriate mode of address for a three year old child.

Funnily enough, I once had a bi-national Spanish/American adult student who told me that "Ya didn' oughta do dat." was grammatically correct! When I pointed out the correct form is "You should not have done that." he very belligerently told me that I obviously knew nothing about correct English grammar.

I see, an excellent degree in English, another degree in Education, thirty-five years of experience teaching all ages and levels, from kindergarten to university, the same thirty-five years also working as a professional writer for tv, radio, and print media, plus a dozen published books of short stories and poetry, almost a thousand published articles on a wide variety of subjects, Top Writer awards galore, three recorded albums of music albums.....What a fucking uneducated arsewipe of an idiot to insult me in such a manner.

The ex-paratrooper wannabe politely left and the next thing I hear is that he had set up his own academy in competition! And from what I hear he is doing well! "Fake it 'til ya make it. The last time I spoke to him he was talking about starting a course, teaching teachers how to teach! He cannot even teach himself, from what I hear.

Some of these people get on board with a local bar and run English conversation nights. They go around town sticking posters up on street lamps advertising English classes for a dollar an hour. They fill the bar with about twenty 'students' and get twenty dollars, plus another twenty from the bar owner for bringing so many paying customers into the bar. They then give the unwitting students a subject to chat about amongst themselves and hey, you're a teacher with your own academy. These types of situations are now commonplace all over Spain.

What these wannabe teachers are doing is what you might call the McDonaldization of English classes. Sell the 'classes' cheap and fill them full of crap. And speaking of Macs, I do blame them to a degree for the bastardization of English. For example, Macs have a slogan "I'm lovin' it."

Well for their information, the word 'love' is what we call a 'stative verb' and the rule is that you cannot turn it into the present continuous form by adding "...ing..." to the end of it. Then again, I am talking about a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation, which once advertised a new product, a wrap, on a ginormous poster with the headline...

"Introducing the tasty new McDonald's McWrap."

Really? A McDonald's McCrap? That says it all really. At least they're being honest.

A very big part of the reason why wannabe English language scammers are so successful is gullible students and complicit bar owners. The students who fall for these scams are just after cheap classes, like people who just want a cheap burger. And just like the burger customer who doesn't look into what goes into a burger, the students never think to question the qualifications and experience of the 'teacher'.

I sometimes used to ask them "Would you get on a plane with an untrained, unqualified, inexperienced pilot?" Or, "Would you be happy to go under the knife to be operated on by a phony surgeon, in a bar?" The answer was, of course, a resounding "No!"

As for the bar owners, I once told my guilty local bar that I was going to set up an illegal bar in my academy and advertise English conversation nights, for a dollar per student for one hour. At least they would have received proper English tuition, even if it was over a glass of beer. The bar owner was unimpressed and said if I did that he would report me to the authorities for running an unlicensed bar. He claimed what he was doing was different from what I suggested. Oh, the sheer hypocrisy of it.

Now I have to say, all of the above seems to be exclusive to living and working in Spain. I never ever came across any of this nonsense in the UK or in Japan, where I have extensive teaching experience. And it is not just American nationals who get up to these types of scams, I came across many from the UK and all over Europe, and even from Ukraine and Russia!

The reason these scammers resort to this activity is that they go to Spain and love the lifestyle, the climate, and the Spanish hospitality. The scammer dearly wants to extend their stay, but needs some sort of income. And since they do not speak Spanish, and they cannot get a normal job where Spanish is a requisite, all they can do is put whatever English they have to whatever use they can. And perhaps one of the most galling things about the situation was that quite a few of these people used to come to me for free advice! So they wanted me to help them to try to put me out of business!

Errr….bye-yyee, be careful the door doesn't slap you in the face on the way out, scammer!

Try learning Spanish and get a proper job. And yes, I do have Spanish qualifications, teach Spanish, and speak Spanish fluently. I also worked for Spanish companies outside of education.