ESL teacher
Studying language teaching helped Johnny Kim connect with teenagers and citizens from other cultures.
Key facts
Career: ESL teacher
Programme: Postgraduate Diploma in Language Teaching
Subjects: TESOL; Language teaching and learning
"Teaching English to teenagers has always been rewarding for me. It's great to see them improving their English as well as their social skills while they study at our school.
"I've also learnt that teaching a language doesn't mean only helping international students to develop their linguistic knowledge, but also their understanding of other cultures. Seeing my students become more tolerant of others is always the best part of my job.
"TESOL jobs usually require any bachelors degree or a Cambridge CELTA qualification. Both my BA and PGDipLT have provided me an opportunity to explore a variety of different areas in this field such as material design, course and syllabus design, task-based language teaching, English grammar and communicative language teaching. Without my degrees from the University of Auckland, I wouldn't have learnt any of this.
"Studying in the Faculty of Arts gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of different people from different backgrounds. I've made many friends from different countries such as China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, England, Japan, Australia, the US, Fiji, and New Zealand.
"Communicating with these friends through lectures and tutorials has taught me a lot of different lessons on cultural differences, teaching and learning methodologies and their beliefs as language teachers. From this valuable experience, I have learnt to deal with people with different cultures and beliefs more easily than before. This has definitely enhanced the quality of my career as a language teacher because I'm able to accept differences and also handle any difficulty that arises from different multinational working environments."
"All jobs require human interaction and learning how to work together. If we don't know about each other, how could we possibly understand the differences among us? Studying arts and humanities will enable you to learn about different people and different stories."