Transcript of AE 1032 - Interview: How to Build a Career in Australia with Milene Sales | Part 1

G'day, you mob. How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone are wanting to learn as Australian English. Today is going to be an awesome episode. I harassed my friend Milene Sales to come back on the podcast for a second time, and that's how long the podcasts been around. We're getting guests who've come back 2, 3 or even 78 times, like my dad in the Goss' episodes.

Anyway, I got Milene to come back. She was on episode 637 where we talked about how she had come from Brazil to Australia and become an English teacher here in Australia, that was her full-time job and her career. Now Milene is an absolute machine. She is incredibly productive with her time. She has been a full time English teacher. She was a Zumba instructor.

She was a bodybuilder or is a bodybuilder as well, so she wears many different hats. She is a woman of many talents. I wanted to get her on the podcast today to hear about how she is upskilling and changing careers as a result of COVID.

So, this is much more a sort of interview about a migrant who's moved to Australia, built a life in Australia and has had to adapt to Australia because- And has had to adapt here as a result of COVID and change career paths. And you'll hear more about how she's had to change as a result of being an English teacher. And you'll hear more about how she's had to change from being an English teacher into where she's going in this episode.

Lastly, we also talk about how to really take your English to the next level. When you get to that intermediate sort of lower advanced stages, you've just reached basic fluency, you know, you can function in the country. But you start realising that it's harder and harder for you to keep improving.

Milene and I have a very long discussion here at the end about what you can do to push through that intermediate plateau and just keep getting better and better as time progresses. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how Milene has adapted her career as a result of COVID in Australia.

She hasn't been able to just keep doing the same thing, which was being an English teacher for obvious reasons. Many fewer students coming into Australia currently, so she's had to change things up. Let's find out more about that. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

G'day, Milene, what's going on?

All good in the hood. How about you?

Chugging along, chugging along. Man, so I wanted to get you back on. I sent you a message the other day and was like, Milene, your episode is one of the most popular that's ever been on the podcast. I need to get you back on here. So, here we are.

Thank you.

How have you been surviving? It's probably been a year or two now since you've been on. I should have looked up the exact date, but yes...

It was January. I did, I, you know, I just came across that information. Yeah, just scrolling my Instagram feed. And it was January 2020...

Yes. Yes.

...Within a year. Yeah.

It's been 18 months. Holy moly. Episode 637, man. So, this will probably come out in the thousands now. So, you'll be like episode 1000 and something.

I'm such a fan of yours. You're a legend.

Oh man. Stop, stop. This is my interview. So, man, lots has changed. How have you been surviving? I would- I guess I would have interviewed you, yeah, right at the start, as COVID was kind of just a thing overseas in China at that time and nothing had hit Australia.

We hadn't gone into lockdown by then. And yeah, everything was fine. I mean- Yeah, I get- Yeah, we were still like living life as it used to be.

But I mean, at the moment, how have you been? How have you been surviving lockdown? Because, I guess to give the listeners an idea if they didn't go and listen to that episode, we were talking about you migrating from Brazil, coming to Australia, setting up life here. You know, you're a very busy and talented person doing, I think you're a Zumba teacher at the time, you were doing bodybuilding, you were also teaching English full time.

So, you know, Jesus Christ. And then obviously COVID hit, and you've had to kind of reinvent yourself as a result, because obviously Zumba classes become a little harder and so have English classes, right. So, how's that process been for you?

I used to be a teacher at a language school, so I taught like about 40 hours a week and I didn't have much time left for anything apart from my Zumba classes in the evenings at the gym. And then when COVID hit no one was in the classes, we went online and then for obvious reasons, the number of hours had to be reduced. Because it's really, really difficult to keep students tuned in for over five hours of class- Four hours of classes a day.

So, yeah. So, I started teaching online to those students from the school. But yeah, because my husband had his hours reduced as well, he couldn't teach as much, he's a trainer. And he couldn't see his client because of the restrictions at the time. I had to find a way, you know, compensating for that, like making up for the income that was not coming in anymore.

And then I started teaching online, teaching English online to, you know, other students, other than the ones I was teaching at school. And yeah, turned out that, you know, that's what my life is now. The school closed unfortunately.

My sponsored visa expired, so yes, I lost my chance of becoming a resident in Australia. And the only alternative at that time, it was actually this year when my contract finished with the school, I applied for a student visa and that was the- That's the only way I can remain in Australia for at least another six years.

And yeah, it's been really tough. I'm studying online. So, now it's like this, I study from nine to four and then online, it's really, it's mind numbing. It's a real struggle. And then I teach my online classes from five to nine pm and I also teach on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays as well.

Jesus.

Yes, it's crazy.

How- But that's- It's one of those things. This is why I wanted to get you on. I wanted to talk about that, you know, having the kind of the courage and the motivation and determination to reinvent yourself, even when you hit hard times.

But then also how you stay so motivated or, maybe not motivated but disciplined to keep that kind of a routine going for a prolonged period of time. And I can see you've got a cat in the background, hi-five for that. Very cute.

Yeah, I know. Yeah,

Yeah so, how- What was it like emotionally going through that sort of rollercoaster? And how did you keep, you know, keep the train on the rails? If I can ask.

Look, fake it until you make it, right. I had my ups and downs, but, you know, we never tell about the downs to anybody, you know. So, yeah. Yeah, what happens behind the camera no one needs to know.

Exactly, exactly.

...It's been really, really hard, especially recently. Yeah, lots with your personal problems on the top of, you know, your professional life going on, and things just get even harder. But you know what? In Brazil, we say something like, we are Brazilians. We never give up. Yeah. And the thing is, we don't actually have an alternative. I can't possibly give up, you know, and that's what, yeah, that's what keeps me going.

So, there's just you just don't give yourself the alternative of, you know, we can throw in the towel, and I can just go back to Brazil or whatever. You just consider things as well there's no other option but find a way to get enough money to put food on the table and keep moving forward.

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, before this talk with you, I was, you know, putting makeup on and getting all pumped and ready for this chat with you...

So, was I. As you can tell.

I was actually thinking about other ways I can- What else I could do to, you know, to make a living out of it like, because I can't teach my Zumba classes, you know. And that was my, you know, second source of income apart from my English classes. I was like, I don't know, fitness, but I can't even- I can barely work out with, you know, such little equipment that I have at home.

It's been hard to keep myself in shape. I was like, maybe I don't know, fitness model or something. Seriously, I've been thinking about everything you can imagine because it's been really, really hard and I couldn't get the subsidy from the government.

I forgot what that's called, disaster payment or something. It's been tough. It's been tough. But luckily, you know, yeah, yeah. We've been able to ride this wave, you know, in the best way possible.

Yeah, definitely. So...

I am not the only one. I think there are, you know, other foreigners, Brazilians, Colombians, yeah, students in general who are in as much difficulty as I am now. I'm not even in difficulty, to be honest. It's been hard, but I'd say more mentally to me...

Yeah.

...Rather than financially. And I know that there are students who are in much, much worse situation than me, you know, and I feel for them, and I totally sympathise.

Yeah, it is brutal, isn't it? Especially with all of the lockdowns here, at least in Victoria, and I know you're going through one currently in Sydney. But having, I think now we're past 210, 220 days of being in lockdown for the last year and a half. And it's just like, you don't realise, for me, at least I was thinking for so long, it's fine. It's fine.

But only in the last, you know, one or two lockdowns, I think we're up to like number seven now, am I realising this is starting to have a mental impact where, you know, you just miss the freedom to go and see people. And they're there and you can chat online as much as you like, but there is something that just doesn't make up for being able to talk to someone face to face. Yeah, that's it. Touching them. Yeah.

...Like especially being Brazilian, like, we touch people, we hug, we kiss like, it's oh my God, it's really depressing, to say the least. It's yeah, it's yeah.

How have you found that? Do you think you've been suffering more through at least this lockdown than if you were to have a neighbour who was Australian, Milene? Because of those cultural differences, do you think that that Brazilian culture where you are, you know, probably objectively a lot more physical with just friends and family and everything, do you think that Brazilians are having a harder time with this as a result in lockdown?

Yeah, I guess so. You know, if you can't see the people you love, like the people you're close to, of course, the people you love the most are in Brazil in our case. But if you can't even like see your friends, I do have friends here, my like, my Zumba clique.

They're all like, yeah, from all walks of life. There are Australians, there are people from Holland, South Africa, like it's a very mixed crowd. And we are very close-knit. We used to be, we are still, yeah, a close knit community. But we can't see each other because I'm in Mosman and they're in Dee Why, and we are further than five kilometres away from each other. And like- Like, it's yeah, it's devastating, it's heartbreaking, yeah.

So, how did you end up choosing what you were going to study? And was the process of signing up for study really easy? Was it difficult?

No, that was really easy because I hold a degree in primary education and primary education is on the list for the skilled occupations, skilled occupations list. And, you know, it would just make sense to just do the same as I did in Brazil again here. And since the education system here is different and the literacy system here is also different, I thought it would be worth it saying it all over again.

I mean, not again, it would be something new. There are a lot of things like topics such as human development, and all the topics related to psychology, children's psychology. What else? A lot of the theory relates to human development. I've already studied, so I am quite familiar with that. It's not difficult for me. But teaching children how to read and write in English is a little bit of a novelty to me.

Although I worked in bilingual schools back home and we did that, it's different because I have Australian, you know, we're dealing with native speakers of the language here, not just Australian kids, but, you know, since the kids were born here, they're going to learn English as a first language. So, it's different. It's really- It's- I'm super excited, it's a different experience.

Do you feel like you're at a disadvantage because English is a second language of yours, obviously? Or do you feel like it gives you an advantage when teaching small children, especially children that are working on literacy skills or whatever?

I think I actually have some kind of advantage over, you know, some other educators because we receive children from a very diverse background and being able to speak- I may, you know, have Brazilian children in the service I'll be working at, hopefully.

And then I think it's another way of connecting with children, you know, I don't know, it may feel like home speaking in Portuguese to that child if they need something, you know. Because it's their- The language, their mother and their father probably speak at home.

Yeah.

So, I think actually bilingual educators tend to have a slight advantage over, slightly bigger advantage over monolingual educators.

Well, this is one of the things I think we spoke about, right, in the last episode, where there are a lot of English teachers who seem to have never actually learnt a foreign language, and yet they teach a foreign language, you know, to anyone that's in their class. And so, it always for me, it seemed like a weird position to be in where, you know, it would be like teaching people how to run a marathon, but you've never run a marathon.

You know, you would just be like, I'm sort of confused as to why I'm taking advice from this person.

It's interesting because it's not just about the knowledge of the language, but the skills you need to learn a language, like or the discipline that you have to have to learn a language or...

Well, people don't realise that, right. You're learning two things simultaneously; you're learning how to learn and you're learning a foreign language or whatever other skill it is. If you're learning guitar or you're learning jujitsu, at least if you're doing it efficiently. And as an adult in particular, you're not just acquiring it as a child, you tend to be learning those two things side by side, right.

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of things about learning a skill, you learn as you go. Like, I'll give you an example. Something I know that would help me a great deal, you know, learning English back when I was a child, you know, at around 13 years of age was the fact that I wrote in English in my diary every night. You know, I didn't think that what I was doing at that time was studying.

Yeah.

So, the only- When I did that look, I loved writing in English, but that was also a way I found to hide my feelings from anybody else who, you know, happened to get my diary...

So, you just left your diary out. You were just like, go for it, guys. Have fun with Google Translate.

Yeah, exactly. Now, in hindsight, I notice that like, that was the best thing I could do for myself. Because I remember having to look words up to write about what happened in my day and, you know, like struggling to construct a sentence. Like, let's say, for example, in the third conditional, I didn't even have this knowledge of grammar, but I wanted to write more complex sentences to try and express my feelings.

And I didn't have all the tools, not even the knowledge of the language. So, I use dictionaries, and then I- We didn't have internet back then. It was just a pocket dictionary. Yeah. So, all of that contributed to my excellent writing skills.

Nowadays, I do have great writing skills and I think that, you know, comparing what I do at school now, for example, as you know, I'm studying, we were talking about that. We compare what we do in class and sometimes I notice that my writing happens to be a little bit better than, you know...

I'm like, yeah. I know I'm not that, not wishing to blow my own trumpet. Hold on. It's just that.

Man, you've earned it. Go for it. Feel free to toot away, toot toot.

I think it benefited me in a way that I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't, you know, like, yeah, yeah.

But we forget that though so often, right. I remember going through high school and sucking shit at writing, like being so horrible. And, you know, like you're a 17-year-old boy and you would look at someone like if I was learning another langua- Okay Portuguese, I go to Brazil and I see a 17-year-old Brazilian at school, I'm going to think, put them on a pedestal and be like, oh my God, you know, I am not worthy.

This person must be so good in their native language. And you forget that the average person, unless they've specifically worked on a skill past a certain age or point at development there, then they're not going to be very good at it, you know, if you come across an...

Or for a certain length.

Yeah.

That's important too. Not just the age, but like how intensively and how long you've done that for also matters.

Yeah, it's just so funny, isn't it? Right? And it happens to me all the time because I've gone through, I did 11 years of university studying biology, I also just forget how little other people know about biology. Because I've been in that world constantly, and I've just- Everyone that I interact with is like, there's this assumption of shared knowledge where you talk about concepts that you think are basic and everyone knows them.

And then you go out and chat with the average person and you're like, this person has no idea what the hell I'm talking about. You know, and they're not dumb, but they've just never pursued that area at all, right. And so, it's the same sort of thing you shouldn't expect to be good at any skill, whether it's writing or, you know, in English, if you've haven't applied yourself and really tried to work at it.

And it's the same- I keep trying to write some right content for Aussie English and, you know, formatted as an essay, and it just it even takes me a lot of effort and reviewing it and, you know, getting other people to read it and be like, this sucks or this is good, do more of this. So, it's a process that continues.

What advice would you have, though, for people listening to this podcast? Because this is a question I get all the time, and I'm probably not nowhere near as qualified as you to answer. Do you need to pause?

You mentioned a key word, it's a process.

Yeah. But the question- Sorry, the question I was going to ask was about writing specifically. What kind of advice would you have for people asking about, how do I improve my writing skills? Because my default is always like, do more of it? But...

That's one of the things they have to do. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to English, well, it depends on what kind of writing you are talking about. Are you talking about some kind of more informal writing, such as blogs, magazine articles? Or are we talking about essays, you know, academic English, which is more, you know, more of my thing?

Yep.

Well, you have to read academic articles. You have to read more of that. You have to read people who write about those things. You are going to have to write about or you intend to write about. So, that's very important. And then expanding your vocabulary.

So, by reading, you'll be expanding your vocabulary and you'll see you get in contact with more advanced grammar structures. Yeah, polishing up your grammar is as important as, you know, vocabulary. Because if you repeat the same grammar structures throughout the text, it gets very monotonous, and you may not be able to express complex ideas.

I remember getting that sort of smack on the knuckles when I was at school, not literally, figuratively, but they would be like, Pete, you said, however, like 20 times. Like, look up some fricking synonyms and you're like, oh yeah, okay. However.

But it is so funny how much when you do something like output like that, right, like if you're- Something I've been doing recently is there's a channel on YouTube called Matt versus Japan, and he is a very, very smart, astute learner of languages, specifically Japanese.

And he has an exercise where he gets you to just get your camera out and speak to yourself for five minutes in your foreign language without having thought about what you're going to talk about. There's no rehearsing or planning it. And it really lays bare your issues and your problems.

I forgot where I was sort of going with this point, but I think it's, yeah, it's the more I've done that, the more the problems that I need to fix have been made bare. The repetition of certain structures have been shown to myself where I'm like, oh, I say that all the time, or oh, I have this fossilised pronunciation mistake or grammatical error that I'm doing all the time.

And I think it's the same, probably with writing, the more you do, you're going to be like, I'm always saying, however, all the time, so I need to try and find other ways of doing the same thing to kind of expand the- Use different colours whilst painting, right, to just broaden it out.

I think the process is kind of similar when it comes to writing and speaking because we call them productive skills. So, it's you producing language and, yeah, so you need to try doing the same thing over and over again to see how much you improved after some time. So, you can have some kind of- You can measure your progress.

I was teaching a class this week, a miles class and was teaching, I was helping a student with an essay. And she had written just one essay. And, you know, like overnight, she expected to have improved, you know, writing her essay.

Yeah.

And like, look, in full classes, you're not going to improve your writing a great deal. It's a process, yeah. And not to mention that when it comes to exams, writing for exams, you don't know what to expect. You may be asked to write about sustainability, enviro- Social issues. You have to be ready for anything. Yeah.

So, that's another thing as well. So, you need to have a little bit of knowledge like minimal, minimal, minimal general knowledge on the topic you're going to write about. And then what I did was I- We did a makeover to her writing together. So, I- What I tried to do with students when we do this, writing their work together is to draw their attention to things like... Say again?

You there? Sorry. It may be my internet; it may not be you. Just let me test it quickly because it goes up and down. Sorry, I love that afterwards it's like, your internet connection is unstable, and you're like, you reckon? Yeah, sorry. My internet's gone to trash. Yeah, sorry. What were you saying? Please continue.

Yeah, so when we go through a piece of writing with a student, and we draw their attention to things that sometimes they won't notice. Because they don't even know what's important and what's not.

Yeah.

So yeah, we tell them things like, oh, be careful with the repetition of words, try to find a synonym. Or maybe if you restructure your sentence in this way, it's going to sound more logical, it's easier to understand, it's easier to follow. And then doing that over and over again will help you, you know, come to grips with the writing process. Like it is a skill. You will develop that skill. Like, what do I need to be more cohesive?

What does this writing need to be more advanced, for example? It is a process and you do need somebody to help you in general to give you feedback, even like even native speakers, they need to proofread what they write.

Yeah, sometimes, you know, we've been immersed in that for such a long time that we can't see sometimes our own mistakes, we can't- We won't notice that because we are tired. And yeah, so having someone to- Having someone read what you wrote and, you know, giving you honest feedback is the best way to improve and same with speaking.