Reverend Conehead
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I have a new job in phone tech support for an alarm company. I'm in the English language support division and there's a different Spanish division. I don't speak Spanish, but I do speak both French and German. French is my most recent language. I started learning it a little less than 4 years ago. I study and practice it every day. Every Thursday I Skype with a woman in a small town in Quebec and every Friday with a man in Montreal. They help me with my French and I help them with their English. I've been getting better little by little. One of my favorite TV shows is a hilarious comedy from Switzerland that I get via Youtube that's in French. I watch it all the time and it helps me to keep improving.
Recently a call came in to our call center from a man with an African-sounding name whose English was so broken that it was a struggle to understand him. I asked if he preferred to speak in French, and turns out he was from a country in western Africa where that's the language, so he gladly switched. I was able to do the tech support call in French. That's a milestone for me. I also did a call from Quebec in French. My French isn't perfect. I make some grammatical errors, but my pronunciation is good and I have a pretty good vocabulary for a 2nd language. I'm good enough now to take tech support calls in French.
So maybe I can use this to command higher pay. While there's no requirement to know French at my job, maybe they would be willing to up my pay for this skill or maybe another company my be looking for this skill set. I'm more experienced with,and better at, German, but I rarely run into anyone from Germany who doesn't speak excellent English. With French it's a different story. The immigrants from West Africa often aren't very good at English. A lot of them live here in Omaha. I meet people all the time from there who are surprised to meet an American who can speak French with them.
If this skill could help me earn more money, that would be great. More money is always welcome. If anyone has any tips on how I might use this to earn more, I would appreciate it.
Recently a call came in to our call center from a man with an African-sounding name whose English was so broken that it was a struggle to understand him. I asked if he preferred to speak in French, and turns out he was from a country in western Africa where that's the language, so he gladly switched. I was able to do the tech support call in French. That's a milestone for me. I also did a call from Quebec in French. My French isn't perfect. I make some grammatical errors, but my pronunciation is good and I have a pretty good vocabulary for a 2nd language. I'm good enough now to take tech support calls in French.
So maybe I can use this to command higher pay. While there's no requirement to know French at my job, maybe they would be willing to up my pay for this skill or maybe another company my be looking for this skill set. I'm more experienced with,and better at, German, but I rarely run into anyone from Germany who doesn't speak excellent English. With French it's a different story. The immigrants from West Africa often aren't very good at English. A lot of them live here in Omaha. I meet people all the time from there who are surprised to meet an American who can speak French with them.
If this skill could help me earn more money, that would be great. More money is always welcome. If anyone has any tips on how I might use this to earn more, I would appreciate it.
