What a way to make a buck!

Okay, I feel that I need to write something, but I’m not sure what.  I know, let’s talk about my work.

I am getting a monthly living allowance scholarship while I’m here.  It doesn’t quite pay for all of my living expenses, but it pays for about two thirds; couple that with the fact that I don’t have to worry about any sort of tuition, and I am a pretty happy girl!  I don’t get the money entirely free, however, I have to work for it, but it’s a pretty cool job, so I’m okay with it.

Twice a week, for 2 hours at a time, I go to the Multimedia Speech Lab and… well… talk English.  It’s great.  The thing is that it’s, apparently, pretty hard to get into a face-to-face English class here.  Also, some people just have a hard time fitting them into their schedules, and others might just need to brush up their English skills and don’t really want to take a full class.  So a couple of semesters ago someone came up with the idea of, basically, an English correspondence course.  The way it works is that the university uses this program called Reward (I’m not sure which company makes it) and the interested students take a test at the beginning to place them into one of 5 levels of Reward (beginner, pre-intermediate, intermediate, etc.) and then they can come to the MSL in the evenings when they have time and do the lessons.  There is also homework for each week that isn’t to be handed in, but these people are here of their own accord, right, so they should be doing the assignments.  Anyways, for each level there is a schedule set up of 15 weeks, each week has different lessons associated with it (eg.  In intermediate, week 1 is lessons 1-3, week 2 is lessons 4,5 and Video A) and when a student has done all the lessons for a week we check their work over and give them a stamp.  The whole point is that if they finish all 15 weeks and hand in 2 of the 3 homework assignments that actually are marked as “written assignments,” they are guaranteed a spot in a face-to-face course the following semester.  This is their incentive.  Oh, and learning English, I guess.

So where do I come in?  Well, a lot of the stuff in Reward is marked by the computer, but there are usually one or two exercises in each lesson that involve writing something that can’t be marked by the computer, so they need English speakers to correct these.  There is always a Language Tutor in the lab for people to ask questions to and to correct the work.  These are usually German native speakers who have taken enough English courses to count them as experts in English.  These people are great to have around because they know all the rules of why things are the way they are, unlike us native speakers who just know what sounds right and what doesn’t.  The truth of the matter, though, is that nothing compares to speaking to a native speaker when you want to learn a language, and that’s where Katie and I come in.  For four hours a week I walk around and correct people’s grammar.  I wish I could do this for a living!  I correct their grammar and their spelling and tell them how I would say it and so on and so forth.  It is truthfully the perfect job for me, because I wander around doing what I love to do and no one thinks I’m a bitch or a know-it-all, because it’s what I’m expected to do.  And sometimes when I talk, people take notes of what I’m saying.  How cool is that?!

So, at the rate of four hours a week, and that I make 486 EUR a month, that pretty much works out to about 30 EUR an hour.  And that’s about $45 CAD an hour.  And I really like it.  Life is good.  I actually feel a little bad that we are getting so much for doing so little; I think that we might start marking some of the written assignments, but I’m not sure.  Katie and I are talking to our supervisor about putting on a speech course.  That would make me feel better about the situation.

Anyways, that’s pretty much it for me for today.  Ciao!