Name: An Interview with ESTHER about Teaching English
Uploaded: 2022-10-26T17:40:10.000Z
Duration: 27 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Welcome to another edition of Speak English fluently.

My guest today is quite the celebrity in the English education field.

She started teaching English in Korea way back in 2008 after studying psychology for

And now she's actually studying to be a therapist.

We will talk about that a little bit today.

She is the top English teacher for Shaw Education.

She has over, I think if we count correctly, 160 videos on the website now.

Although that number might be a little bit higher, we'd have to count more accurately.

Those videos are there for your viewing pleasure and your education pleasure, of course.

She covers grammar, vocabulary, listening and conversation in her videos.

Welcome Esther, should I say Ester sonsangnim, Esther teacher, Miss Esther?

Welcome regardless to Speak English Fluently.

Well, thank you once again for joining today.

OK, so let's talk about your career then.

You are from the United States, and you are currently residing in the United States.

Did you move to Korea after university in America or was there a time period between?

Actually, I moved to Korea right after I graduated from university.

I was supposed to go there for a 15-day graduation trip and ended up staying for 9 years.

Let's… yeah, I mean everybody was surprised and yeah, it's… it was a wonderful time

That's such a common story though, isn't it?

You know, people move to Korea and then the plan is to stay for a short time.

People fall in love with Korea, don't they?

I can't wait to go back and visit sometime in the near future, and I've heard countless

stories and have many friends who had similar experiences.

When you moved to Korea, did you have plans of teaching English?

I guess not, because you were only planning on being here for a couple of weeks.

I had a friend from college who lived in Korea and was studying abroad in the US when we

met, and she heard of a job opportunity, asked me if I'd be interested in interviewing, and

And that's how I ended up staying for a lot longer than I had ever planned.

Wow, so what made you interested in teaching English then?

Because it came to you very suddenly, I guess in in your life, right?

Yeah, I have always really enjoyed working with young people and children.

When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher or an artist, but I think my teaching abilities

out… outway… are stronger than my artistic abilities, although I am very creative.

I have always been interested in teaching and this opportunity did fall in my lap and

I guess I seized the opportunity and never looked back.

So how did you become involved with Shaw education?

Um, so between teaching jobs, I had taken a little bit of a break to go back and visit

And when I came back to Korea, I didn't have another job lined up.

I wanted to do some part time jobs or some tutoring jobs.

I was looking for some jobs that would give me a little bit more freedom than working

at the kind of typical hagwon or English institution or Academy.

I was doing part time work, doing some research and development for some hagwons, and then

I came across an ad from Shaw English, looking for teachers to shoot some videos teaching

So another opportunity that just fell on my lap.

I'm curious to know where you saw the advertisement, because that's exactly how I came to Korea

It was a really small advertisement in the bottom right corner of the newspaper that

So where was your Shaw Education advertisement?

Well, my, uh, the ad that I saw was on Craigslist, I believe so, yeah, very funny 'cause I don't

really know anybody who used Craigslist in Korea maybe.

Yeah, maybe to buy a sofa or something like that, but not to start this amazingly successful,

you know, online English education career.

What year was that that you got started with Shaw?

OK, so it's been quite a long time, then, that you've been making videos for Shaw education.

You did that while you were here in Korea, but after moving back to the United States,

Was that in the plans or… because usually when people leave Korea, they kind of leave

perhaps, not always, but sometimes leave the English education part of their life behind.

Yeah, that was actually never part of the plan.

I didn't expect things to take off the way they did.

I worked for maybe two months, I think with Robin in 2012 and I thought that was the end

of it and I think we reconnected maybe around 2015.

Team and started talking about let's make some more videos and even though I've moved

to the states, Robin has come here and we've done some more content in the USA and I've…

Yeah, and I've flown back to Korea as well to make more videos.

So was that, does that mean then that the videos that you made in the beginning were

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An Interview with ESTHER about Teaching English

content

opportunity

vocabulary

realize