Language coach optimises travel – Listen up Housesitters and Ex-pats!

When travelling abroad for extended periods, as in the case of housesitters and ex-pats, a little language coaching can go a long way.  A language coach gives you the tools for practical everyday activities, and it liberates you in a foreign country, encouraging a sense of participation. Learning to engage in a new language can give you the courage to join in. If you are home-siting or have emigrated, moving into a new country and neighbourhood for work, language skills open new doors. Language coach and housesitter Edward shows us how!

What’s the difference between studying a foreign language and speaking it? About the same difference as knowing how a bicycle works
and really being able to ride it. And for people with practical needs, whether they are house-sitters or expats, and things to accomplish in other languages, this distinction clearly evident in language coaching is certainly worth a closer look.

Whether, house-sitter, ex-pat or tourist, most of us have had the experience of taking a foreign language at school, studying for exams, forgetting all or most of it, and then sometime later… facing an experience where we wanted to order something, or make small talk with someone, and faced an absolute blank wall.

A language coach can help to pop the English-speaking bubble

The wall is an analogy for how we deal with our problems in life: and some prefer to avoid the wall completely. In our circles, how many expats
do we know who have created a self-contained English speaking bubble for themselves in places they have lived for even 10 or 20 years?
It can work for many, but for some, remaining in an English-speaking bubble is not an option.

There are many non-English speaking locals who have worthwhile things to say; points of view to exchange, cultural events to participate in. The mere ability to walk into a local café or bar and strike up a conversation in the local language, or speak with non-urbanised people, changes the way any of us experience that place, allowing us
fuller participation, self-discovery, independence, self-reliance, which for some defines true travel vs. tourism.

Another way to deal with the wall is to climb it. That’s where getting help comes in. But how does the busy, part-time resident really get the most from learning a local language for their own practical ends? There are numerous types of software, language promotion sites, online and local teachers that promise fluency. And that is where a less known alternative can shed some light on the subject.

Language Coaching for Travellers, Housesitters and Ex-pats

Language coaching is quickly replacing language instruction or software courses as a more dynamic, time-sensitive and focused alternative than many traditional and software-based learning. While there are many types of coaches, an immersion language coach that gets you functional or conversational in a local language in short
order, is a unique fit for the mid-term and long-term traveller.

A good language coach can offer several advantages:

1) A seasoned language coach is multi-lingual. They have the experience of successful communication and functionality -“Teach me how you ride the bike.”

2) Your immediate environment is taken into account: how can you best leverage the live-learning opportunities around you?

3) Coaches are performance and results-oriented professionals. They can make pacts with you to get certain results by certain deadlines, helping to set clear priorities and motivate you to accomplish more in shorter amounts of time.

4) A coach can help you to push past the doubts, vagueness and tendency to take on too much and overwhelm yourself, so that you have a clear personal learning plan, and the support to meet it.

5) Coaches are more time/content flexible than classrooms; and they are more personalised and dynamic than software or books. Personal relevance is a key for you to really learn a language. How can coaching be beneficial to a homeowner, an ex-pat or a house-sitter?

As a part-time resident and homeowner, between the times you actually spend at your different properties, work commitments, your social calendar, and fixing up the house, you might be pressed for time, or just want to relax. It’s important that any effort you make to learn the local language is matched with a real-world benefit. For example direct communication with your workers, your suppliers, and the conversations with the people that you care about in the language… that is where the coach can help you learn with focus and results.  The coach can help you apply what you are really feeling to the appropriate situation.

International Housesitters keep up a faster pace

As a house sitter, you are changing countries and languages at a faster rate than the usual traveler. It’s important to have tricks to understand how to go local sooner than the average traveler—and language hacking tricks are a great way to do this. Also, as house sitting has been made a media darling, the competition has gotten fierce. How better to distinguish yourself than being competent and useful to the house owner because you can be self-sufficient in the local language? How better to accelerate your ability to integrate better with locals, find out about opportunities and resources that can benefit you and your homeowner?

For ex pats, homeowners abroad, and professional housesitters, language coaching can provide a unique option for getting brushed up quickly and effectively at the local language, doing the things and having the conversations that matter to you the most.

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