Well, the Super Bowl and America may have their moment once a year, but I think one of England's greatest exports of recent times, the Premier League, has a much wider and more profound impact around the world. The video below is shown on Fox Sports and ESPN all over South America, and I imagine further afield too, before the start of the games and really does paint the country in a fantastic light. Beautiful, iconic landmarks, both old and new, lovely weather (!), brilliant English music and some of the most historic clubs in the game make our 'football' look much cooler and more exciting than that American version over the pond. With end to end games like 4-4 draws and 5-3 wins last weekend, you can see why.
You only have to walk around any city centre in South America and see the hundreds of people wearing and selling counterfeit Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal tshirts to realise the incredible reach the Premier League has, much more so than the traditional American sports, and that despite America's dominance of TV in Latin America. More English games are broadcast live here than back home, and the main broadcasters, ESPN and Fox, are included in standard cable TV packages that most homes have across the continent, rather than an expensive Sky package.
It's easy to see how our 'big' teams can so easily claim to have millions of fans across the globe, and how that plays such an influence on potential future stars of the game. Hugo Rodallega at Wigan is the one current Colombian schoolboys look up to, but Faustino Asprilla's Champions League hat-trick for Newcastle against Barcelona is what is constantly brought up in conversations with Colombians. The rags to riches stories of Brazilian players using football as a way out of the favelas to the grounds of top European clubs is a dream of many young men here, and even though it will remain just that, a dream, for the vast majority of them, that is more than enough motivation to spend a childhood devoted to football in the park. The hopes and dreams being to escape lives where drug gangs and poverty are much more prominent than social provision and education.
On a slightly different note, the new Coca-Cola commercial for South America is also introducing the masses over here to English culture. Oasis' "Whatever" is the song for the "Reasons to Believe" advert, basically telling us the world is not all bad, we should buy a coke and be happy. Very clever advertising, getting a load of kids to sing Liam Gallagher's words in a less Mancunian accent appears to work wonders. My kids at school are all asking me if we can sing along to it, so a great excuse to introduce them to not just that, but all the other magnificent Oasis tunes too, and then the Manchester music scene aswell, The Smiths, Happy Mondays et al - a lesson planned like that! Maybe Oasis should strike whilst the iron's hot, get back together and do a South American tour on the back of this? On the other hand, I'm sure the royalties from that advert will be more than sufficient for a few more years before the inevitable reunion tour.
I'm such a marketer's dream... that brought a wee tear to my eye!!
ReplyDeleteHi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI recently read your piece in the Guardian, and was hoping you could please answer a question I had.
I have been thinking about teaching English in South America. I speak decent Spanish (I was a Rotary Youth exchange student to Venezuela at 16). Now a college grad, I'm looking into more interesting options, as the office bores me terribly.
I wanted to ask you if the TEFL courses are necessary? Can I just show up in, say, Columbia, walk into a school and say, "hola?" That's obviously a stretch, but do I really need at TEFL? Are there any programs you recommend?
I live in the States.
Cheers,
Ben
Hi Ben,
ReplyDeleteWell, this is a tricky one. I wouldn´t say a TEFL course is absolutely necessary, but it´s definitely much harder without one. Some places will employ you if there is a lack of native speakers, but the better ones generally won´t, so your earning prospects won´t be as good.
I´ve got a CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) which is administed by Cambridge University. The other main one from England is the Trinity scheme which I´m told is more or less the same. Both one month intensive courses and recognised around the world, although some places here won´t have heard of them which sort of reflects the quality of the institution in my opinion. The States will have similar schemes under different names I imagine, TKT (Teacher Knowledge Test) I think is their equivalent.
Schemes - I´ve been in South America twice with the British Council Language Assistant Scheme, and the equivalent American scheme is the Fullbright scheme, although it´s slightly different in a few aspects.
Generally though, if you want to teach in South America the best thing to do is get here and put yourself about. You don´t get very far emailing people here, it´s about meeting managers and teachers in person and stuff should come up. It´s hardwork, but if you stick to it, it´ll pay off. Visas can be complicated and vary from country to country. Teaching in Asia, although I´ve never done it, is much easier to sort out over the internet apparently.
Hope that helps.
It sure does! Thanks for the help. I've actually recently come across a program with the Peace Corps that looks promising. I have a few friends in the Corps and they have nothing but good things to say about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd wicked trip you did crossing the US! I just recently chickened out DRIVING across!
FYI, I'd like to know more about that trip, as I'm sure it's a rare club to be in. However, as a new visitor to your blog, it's not very easy to find, let alone easy to find the time and patience to read it all.
Do you have, or have you considered creating, a photojournal? If you took a lot of pictures on your journey, maybe you could compile them chronologically to chronicle your journey in a quicker and easily accessible story. Because, quite frankly, as a new visitor to your blog, it is a hook to tell that story about your journey across the States, but a lot of investment to read all your posts. Not to mention that they're difficult to find with the layout.
Forgive the unsolicited advice.
But it's just my recommendation to place some sort of photojournal at the top, maybe with a caption of the picture and maybe even a more descriptive paragraph alongside. That way it's like the back of a book...if one finds it interesting enough, they may invest the time to read back posts or follow your posts in the future.
Anyways, good luck in Colombia. Dusfrute las arepas jaja :D
Hi Ben,
ReplyDeleteThe cycling posts are in the blog archive, a bit down the page on the right hand side. Entries are between July and September 2010, I generally wrote a post every week or so throughout the trip, and there's a few pics there too when we got chance to upload them. The links to the main albums on facebook are integrated into a few posts, and I've just put a small slideshow on the side too of the pics that have been posted on this blog. Blogspot's a bit restrictive on what you can do, but I hope you can find your way around.
Dave