Thread:Yatalu/@comment-1709282-20150519112528/@comment-1709282-20150520110737

What you're doing at university sounds great. I am impressed!

I certainly know what you mean about "being a native speaker sometimes has its disadvantages" as far as knowledge of grammar is concerned. That kind of feeling is normal for teachers at the start of their careers. I recommend that you get a good Dutch grammar book as soon as possible. When students ask you a question that you can't answer, say, "I don't know but I'll find out'. Of course, you have to make sure that you do find out and tell the student in the next lesson.

You certainly have lots of options open to you. You could work legally as an English teacher anywhere in the European Union. Finding legal work as an English teacher outside of the European Union would be more difficult. For example, here in Taiwan, work permits for English teachers are only issued to citizens of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Of course, there are foreign English teachers from other countries working here. They are working illegally on tourist visas and have to leave the island every 90 days to get their visas renewed. I really wouldn't recommend doing that if you're serious about building a career as a language teacher.

If you do get a job as an English teacher anywhere in Asia, you'll almost certainly be told to pretend to be British/American/Canadian/Australian. There was a Turkish-Australian teacher called Yaprak at the school I taught at in Turkey. She'd previously worked at another school where she had to say that her name was Jenny and pretend not to be able to speak Turkish. I also remember that one of my students in Turkey once shouted at me, "You're not English! You're Dutch!" He'd obviously been to another school where teachers were made to lie about their nationalities but he wasn't as good at identifying accents as he thought he was!

I strongly recommend that you work on improving your French and German and get certificates of proficiency from the Alliance Francaise and the Goethe Instiuit. That would give you much greater international marketability. I think that a lot of British secondary schools would be interested in someone who could teach French, German and Japanese and who could offer extra lessons in Dutch outside of normal school hours.

I'd be very happy to answer any further questions you might have.