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

Hi all

i was wondering about your thoughts on how useful a foreign language is if teaching PADI and what level you need to be. I speak Spanish to what I would call an intermediate level (although others tell me my level is higher, but I am very self critical). Is this enough to be useful. I am not a PADI instructor, in fact I have logged less than 20 dives, but I am interested in the future of taking my PADI instructor qualifications and have read in a lot of threads that another language is one of the most useful things you can have. Anyone out there teaching with a similar level? What is required of you? Any thoughts or experiences would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

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.

The tough part is so many Europeans speak some English, it is mandatory in many schools, so being bilingual is almost the norm, not a bonus. It not like in the U.S. where most of use speak only 1 language.

If two instructors turn up in resort and they have pretty much the same quals, then the one who can speak more languages will get hired because they are so much more useful.

Speaking another language is an exceptionally useful skill. If you have the opportunity to improve, or even learn a third language, then I would.

If you're thinking of going the instructor route, to become a good instructor, you need to be a good diver. So go diving. Have fun, make mistakes, and learn to look after yourself before you think about looking after others.

I actually did my nitrox course in Egypt with an Italian instructor last week.
By chance he was also a marine biologist and had studied at NTNU in Norway so his norwegian was fluent and this very topic actually came up for some reason or other.
What he said was that youll need to be fluent and you also need to be covered on the "technical lingo" as well as everyday-speech to be able to efficiently teach in a foreign language.

Now having a fluent norwegian-speaking marinbiologist to myself all day and being able to conduct our dives as we saw fit..

Not so Blue:

Hi all

i was wondering about your thoughts on how useful a foreign language is if teaching PADI and what level you need to be. I speak Spanish to what I would call an intermediate level (although others tell me my level is higher, but I am very self critical). Is this enough to be useful. I am not a PADI instructor, in fact I have logged less than 20 dives, but I am interested in the future of taking my PADI instructor qualifications and have read in a lot of threads that another language is one of the most useful things you can have. Anyone out there teaching with a similar level? What is required of you? Any thoughts or experiences would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

Click to expand...

My quick answer would be YES.

In my experience in very tourist-dependent areas that cater to divers from many parts of the world, a second (sometimes a third) language was a strong asset. Obviously, it depends on what language the candidate speaks and what languages are in demand by the clientele.

It's especially the case if most of your work is going to be in teaching courses. Leading dives, many clients can follow in English - even if their knowledge of English is not brilliant. However, to master a course, it has to be taught in a language they're proficient with.

I've been in places where the first question for prospective instructors were not "how much experience..." or "how are your people skils..." but "what languages can you speak?" A bit disheartening for unilinguals like me.

Since you are in the kingdom, I would think that gulf-arabic would be very beneficial.

Agree with most of the above... I've posted a fair bit about this in the Instructor forum so apologies for any repeats.

Languages are the most important qualification in the recreational dive industry. Spanish will serve you well in the Caribbean and South America, but is not so essential in Thailand or here in Egypt. Here we need German, Russian and Italian speakers. The most highly prized instructors are those that can teach multilingually - so conversational language skills are not really enough but they will count for a great deal - after all, if you can keep a boat load of customers entertained and assist them in their own language, this is a good thing - being able to do a dive briefing, for example.

I'm not fluent in anything other than English, but I can communicate (to varying degrees) in French, German and Japanese (I can order beer fluently in 9 different languages!!) with a bit of other languages thrown in. Okay, it's not like I can ever teach in these languages, but last week I was working on a boat with a hungarian instructor who spoke German and Russian and English, and we had a Spanish customer who spoke only Spanish and French and well: so, an English speaking instructor (me) asked a spanish diver, in french, on behalf of a german speaking hungarian, whether or not he would like to visit a particular shipwreck the next day!

What I actually said was "voudrez-vous allez a la Dunraven au demain? La Dunraven est une ... errr... bateau sous la mer" which sort of means "would you like to go to the Dunraven tomorrow? The Dunraven is a 'boat under the sea'" (ie shipwreck!). Okay, was it pretty? No. Did it work? Yes!

Has it helped me!? YES! It puts me one notch above the freelancers who can't communicate in anything other than english.

Hope that helps

C.

*flipping through the sinai diving guide*
Naah, Ill pass on the Dunraven next time as well I think. Looks like its pretty much a pile of metal under the sea

Being able to get around in multiple languages is allways a good thing,being pretty fluent in Dutch.
teaching in English,American and German,helped to boost business.
Can save my but in Arabic and Indoneasian.Get food and drinks, some Frence and Italian,saved the day on some trips.Even in Polish I once could get around.

So Yes,speaking more then one lingo is good and helps.

And it's FUN.
Even here on SB,saying Hi in someones local lingo gets great responces