Mexico City

Updated June, 2021

English a necessity for Mexican professionals

Students and professionals all over Mexico scrabble for proficiency in the “language of business”. English is an edge for ambitious Mexicans in tourism obviously, but it’s also important to anyone competing for jobs in engineering, technology and healthcare. If two people with parallel experience apply for any job in Mexico, the applicant who speaks English will get the offer. This is particularly the case in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city.

Guadalajara is the home of 80 institutions of higher learning, which pump out thousands of graduates a year. They complete for jobs and for acceptance in graduate schools that look favorably on English skills.

In visiting a large college campus language department, not a single teacher on staff was a native speaker, likely due to Mexican labor laws that prevent foreigners from displacing Mexicans in jobs. In Mazatlán, where I live, expats are not even allowed to volunteer as assistants in classrooms. The tools I’ve seen native teachers use are frequently abysmal and outdated and students leave with very little command of the language without outside tutoring or travel.

All this makes parents and students are fairly frantic to find instruction by native speakers. Every young professional I met in Guadalajara insisted in practicing their English with me. Mexicans even speak it socially among themselves in a furtive effort to retain what they have been able to pick up.

Endless resources for teaching English available online

The beauty of teaching English today is that all the tools you need to prepare an individual English lesson are at your fingertips, online and on YouTube, right down to being able to Google “How to teach progressive tense in English.” All you need is decent research skills and a genuine enthusiasm for teaching to put together a satisfying teaching session.

As a native speaker, you have an enormous advantage over many English teachers in Mexico, who often lack the confidence to “stray away from the page” and stick to rigid lesson plans (even if the subject is thermonuclear energy.) In many classes, teachers feel like they should do the talking, to allow students to hear the language. I have taken those classes. They are excruciating.

Tom Campbell, a teacher who has a website and travel blog called, No Hay Bronca, gives what I think is the best advice of all: Remember who your customer is. Campbell's approach is to keep students talking, saying as little as possible himself, even going so far as having students explain to each other grammatical points. He uses open-ended questions, role playing, and believes the most powerful word for a language teacher is the Socratic “Why?” 

These engagement tools are the methods used by the very best language certification programs, as confirmed by my European practice partners who have enrolled in first-rate English certification programs in Spain, often paid for by their employers.

Campbells’ method of teaching English will resonate with anyone who has tried to learn a second language. You want to talk as much as possible. Most everything else; reading, vocabulary-building, listening, you can do on your own. Good teachers obligate students to speak.

Promote yourself as an English teacher on Facebook.

A Facebook page is another great way to introduce yourself as an English teacher. You would need some Spanish and probably a native speaker to help you proof your written Spanish on the page. Once done, would be relatively easy to get started with an attractive page and networking. Facebook ads are worth the investment too, according to Fabiola. Approach anyone people online who can introduce you to interested students.

Why being a language student yourself makes you a better English teacher in Mexico

As an avid student of Spanish who has worked with many adult English students via Skype, I know the challenges of adult language learning. I believe I’m more patient because I know how hard learning a second language is first-hand. I share the passion.

If you are a conscientious language exchange partner, you already have dozens of tools and exercises that you have come up with to help your study partners. You know the common problems they’ll have already (silent vowels and phrasal verbs for instance). It’s easy to translate these skills to teaching more formal private classes.

If you have been practicing English/Spanish exchange with various partners online through sites such as My Language Exchange, you will already know that each of them likes a different approach. Among my own practice partners who are learning English, some strictly want to talk and be corrected. Others want the occasional structure of reading out loud to practice pronunciation. Advanced speakers may like translating articles and paraphrasing them.

The cons of English certification programs 

Getting certifications in my past professions always fired me up and I achieved certifications in both me prior careers. While the certifications never got me a job, they were validating. 

Thinking that a little part-time work in Mexico teaching English might complement my solitary hours writing, I dove right into investigating getting an ELS certificate (English as a Second Language). What I discovered was discouraging. 

Certification programs run between $1,200 and $2,500 dollars. While the tuition is not outrageous by American standards, if you are planning to teach in a Spanish-speaking country like Mexico, you will only make around 200 pesos an hour when starting out. That means it will take 40 hours a week of teaching for three months to recoup your investment, not counting the minimum four weeks you will spend completing the program.

You probably don’t aspire to teaching in a university classroom, nor will you likely to be up for eye-rolling, slouching middle-school students. But what about teaching four or five classes a week? What would be the fastest way to earn good money without the expense of effort of certification?

A clever and inexpensive alternative to language certification

Fabiola Rodriguez Licona lives in a suburb of Mexico City called Texcoco. Before obtaining her own ELS certification, she came up with ingenious ways to get teaching experience and students. While she no longer teaches, she shared the process she developed to get her into the teaching game without the steep initial outlay of money and time.

Mexican students seeking to go to graduate schools in the United States and Europe are required to take a language proficiency test, called the TOEFL exam (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Similar tests are the  IELTS exam (International English Language Testing System). The tests are administered on-line at testing centers and take about four and a half hours to complete.

The standardized test measures speaking, writing, listening and reading skills. Like LSATs for law schools, students often take preparatory courses for these exams. Fabiola downloaded and studied the preparatory course materials, took the test herself and developed her own syllabus for teaching clients how to prepare for the exams. 

Taking the exam costs around $200 dollars (Surprisingly, it cost just a much to take the exam in Mexico as it does in a testing center in the U.S). “By taking it myself,  I knew both the material and the experience of taking the test,” she said. You can download materials for free.

Teaching English is gratifying and fun.

There are many courses and methods of teaching but in the end, you have to adapt to the needs of the students.” Fabiola advised. Sometimes you have to throw those books and methods out the window. You may have your plan and students don’t respond to it, so you have to change things completely and improvise.

What luck to be born a native English speaker! You have a skill in huge demand all over the world. A number of people young and old travel the world teaching English.

If you are a potential expat wondering how you might contribute to your new host country and make some money, teaching your mother tongue undoubtedly can be a gratifying, flexible option.

 Related Links:

These undiscovered gems are great tools for helping students or Mexican friends learning English. - Ventanas Mexico

Next up: 

Is it time to cut bait in your search for a job in the U.S.? [blog]

About the author:

Hola, I'm Kerry Baker, a partner with Ventanas Mexico and the author of three books. "If Only I Had a Place" is a book on renting longer-term in Mexico,  explaining the cultural advantages and dangers or being an expat renting in a foreign country.

The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico” is a practical guide that (I’ve been told) is fun to read. Lastly, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico is a cookbook for travelers, snowbirds and expats trying to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico. (spoiler: You must cook.)