"Sluggishness....instability....struggling......lay-offs...."

The words stream onto the white-board in neat columns as the four employees of Allianz Insurance — still a bit groggy at the beginning of their 7.30am business English class — answer their teacher’s question: "What words would you use to describe the current state of the German economy? "

Yet, while the word “recession” becomes perhaps the best description of the economic situation, English teachers in Germany have barely noticed.

Recession? What recession?

Schools in all parts of the country, including the states of the former East Germany, say that, if anything, business has been increasing resulting in full workloads for business English teachers in Germany. Many schools, in fact, have had to delay courses or even turn away customers for lack of enough language trainers.

“Every language school is booming at the moment,” says Phillip Wells, training director for Carl Duisberg Center in Cologne. “There is a hell of a lot of demand and it means a lot of work for those who want it.”

Christina Peyser, an American living in Bremen since October, says that her search for a teaching job went much more quickly than she had imagined it would. She sent out 30 letters from the United States to schools around Germany. She received nine positive responses – four of those outright job offers – and ended up with a full-time teaching position within a month.

“All in all it wasn't too complicated or difficult,” says Peyser. “The bureaucracy has been annoying, but my school has helped out a lot with that.” And, she added, none of the schools cared whether or not she spoke German.

Call English a language?

Language specialists like Tim Connell, professor of languages at City University in London, say that more and more, English is seen as a communication tool rather than as a language. While the distinction is a fine one, the result, observable by flipping through the course offerings of language schools, is a wide variety of classes focusing on such business activities as telephoning, making presentations and holding meetings. Even companies such as Siemens, who recently completed a second round of dismissals bringing their total number of layoffs for this year past 8,000, have maintained a healthy language-training programme.

“Language is really a basis for doing your business,” says Siemens spokeswoman Sabine Metzner. “You’d hurt yourself if you didn’t have a good command of English and other languages. Without language you don’t have a chance of doing business.”

An additional element fuelling what many see as a shortage of English teachers, most of whom work on a freelance basis, is the recent decision, which went into effect on 31 September of this year, to require language trainers to pay into the Bundesanstalt für Angestellte (BfA). Basically a federally mandated retirement fund, the BfA takes 19.1 percent of teachers’ monthly income. Many teachers who have taught in Germany for many years, are now avoiding the law by getting out of teaching altogether.

“Trainers are calling it Kaiser Wilhelm’s Revenge,” says John Sydes, a Munich English teacher and activist on behalf of freelance teachers. “It’s an old law that is now enforced. There was a shortfall in the retirement fund so they decided to hit all the foreign language trainers they could find.”

For the majority of teachers who aren’t planning on staying in Germany until retirement, however, the BfA amounts to little more than an enforced savings programme. Teachers can get most of their contributions back when they leave the country. (Some can also qualify for an exemption. Trainerversorgung - www.trainerversorgung.de - can help with questions about the BfA.)

There are also signs that wages for teachers are going up in response to the shortage. Until 1999, EUR 18 per teaching hour (45 minutes) was considered average. Recently, however, new hires are being offered EUR 20 per hour and higher. Peyser, a trained teacher but without experience said that she actually had two schools bidding against each other for her services and ended up with a full-time, salaried position earning the equivalent of EUR 23 per hour.

With large cities such as Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg boasting over 100 language schools each, and many smaller towns having over 40, trainers can be choosy when looking for work and can expect to be aggressively recruited.

And with an ever increasing focus on export and international trade as the economic slump continues, it is not a situation that is likely to change any time soon, says Jean-Pierre Witzman of Berlitz, a European-wide language school.

“There is a dire need,” he says. “You can’t stop the world from turning. During a recession you need to go to the doorstep of others. When you get there, you are going to be speaking English.”

More information

For those interested in teaching English in Germany, there are a number of websites that can be of assistance. Dave’s ESL Café at www.eslcafe.com is a good place to start, offering a number of tips on what teaching English involves, including information on training programs, job search pages and lesson plans.

For job listings specific to Germany, there are, unfortunately, only two websites that can help, both Munich-based. The website for Munich Found (www.munichfound.de) offers numerous teaching opportunities every month, and www.melta.de is the homepage of the Munich chapter of the English Language Teachers' Association. So far, only the Munich chapter offers job listings, but websites for chapters in Hamburg, Berlin-Brandenburg, Ravensburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt provide information on the teaching climate in those cities as well as phone numbers of teachers available to answer questions.

Because of the demand for teachers, the best thing to do is collect addresses of schools in the desired city and mail out resumes. Go to www.gelbe-seiten.de, enter your city and “Sprachschulen” or “Sprachunterricht” as the key word and start mailing. Larger cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich generally have over 100 schools each to choose from. And most of them need teachers.

For information on how to become legal in Germany, a simple process for most native English speakers, go to www.expatica.com/germany and look under “essentials.”

July 2003

Copyright Expatica 2003

Subject: teaching English in Germany, TEFL in Germany, TESOL, English teaching, English teachers