Yesterday I started my new job here in Istanbul, working as private ESL tutor to the owner of a textile and clothing manufacturing company. It’s by far the strangest and least structured job I’ve ever had, but has the potential to be very very interesting…

The Interview

I was introduced to my ‘student’ on Friday afternoon and spoke with him for about 2 minutes before he decided I was hired. No CV, no credentials, no discussion of the specifics of the job… just hired. Normally that would throw up a red flag, but since I’d been told that he rejected the previous candidate after 2 minutes, on the grounds that ‘he was a crook’, I was already expecting it to be a strange interview process. It seems that this guy has already tried every method possible to learn English: classes, computer programs, flash cards, living in London, etc., and hiring a full time private tutor is his last resort. Rob described it best as being an ESL version of Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons. My job is to follow him around all day and work on his English at every available moment. If he takes a drive to a client, I take a drive to a client, if he has to fly to Germany on business, I fly to Germany on business. He even went so far as to mention that ‘if I drink Ayran, you drink Ayran’, which may be my least favorite part of the job description. (For those of you who don’t know, Ayran is a really popular drink here in Turkey made from watered down yogurt and salt… yum!) Still, it’s a job, and I won’t complain if I get a free trip to Germany out of it!

Day 1

My first day on the job came with almost as little instruction as the interview had. His former tutor had given me a thumb drive full of pirated ESL textbook PDFs and mentioned that the next lesson was supposed to be on Superlatives. I arrived at the non-descript (and rather decrepit) building and went upstairs to meet the man I’ll be tutoring for the next 3 months. We sat around for about two hours discussing the textile industry, fabric swatches, color fastness, rude French people, and the Russian mafia. All the while I attempted to note any grammatical mistakes he was making frequently or vocabulary he seemed to lack, but it’s pretty difficult to hold a conversation while taking notes on a parallel topic. I probably learned more about the process of producing a shirt than what I needed to teach him. Finally I asked him if he had a place for me to plug my laptop in so that I could pull up some worksheets to test him with. He lead me to a spare office and then just left me there for the rest of the day. I wasn’t sure if he was expecting me to come back at any specific time, and every time I checked in with him he was busy, so I sat around the rest of the day googling for advice on things like ‘correcting missing articles’ or ‘ESL student dropping prepositions’.  Some professional I am!

Day 2

I arrived on my second day expecting to dive head first into the private ESL tutoring world, feeling a bit unprepared and mostly just hoping that I wouldn’t run out of topics for us to discuss over the next 8 hours. The day has turned out to be a lot less eventful than expected. When I walked into the owners office this morning, the only person there was his young son, who just shook his head ‘no’ when I asked for his father by name. I took up residence in the empty office again and have been writing lesson plans, preparing quizzes, and generally researching ESL topics for the last 7 hours. About an hour ago the owner finally showed up and told me that he may or may not call me into his office in about 30 minutes for a lesson. Since there’s about two minutes left until my day ends, I have a feeling that the only person learning a thing about the English language today will be me. On the up side, his son has been bringing me drinks all day long so at least I leave here hydrated!