How Useful is a foreign language and what level is required?

[Scared Silly]

Pure "supply and demand" economics, nothing mysterious.

If there are lots of people who speak Spanish looking to get certified where you are it's very useful. However if you are in a Spanish speaking country and every other instructor is perfectly fluent, being of "intermediate level" fluency probably won't cut it.

But in places like Honduras being able to speak to the locals as well as tourists, many of whom speak English will put you on the plus side of a native Spanish speaker who has english as a second language.

But really the bottomline is learning a second language fluently is worth while.

 

[Not so Blue]

Well thanks for the replies. My current company is a big Spanish multinational so I do the majority of my job in Spanish, although the formal documentation is in English. I write the majority of my mails in Spanish and the majority of the engineering office is Spanish or Spanish speaking. Could I entertain a group of only Spanish speaking divers - no problem. Could I teach in Spanish- wouldn't like to in case there is some misunderstanding, but with some vocabulary and a bit of practice, eventually I don't see why not. The problem I have is time at the mo - or lack thereof. If you are teaching Spanish, are all of the manuals in Spanish or English? If they were in english, with just vocab I could do it.

Thanks again for the replies!

 

[Tigerman]

If youre already using spanish in your everyday situation I would imagine getting up to speed on the diving specific lingo wouldnt take you all that long and if you intend to go the instructor route it would probably be well worth it..