It is a language student dream to travel abroad and finance their language travel adventure with a paid job at their dream destination while learning the new desired language.
Many language schools actually often offer you to connect you with local companies who are open-minded to hire language beginners. See also our article called Overlooked Language Jobs: Help Language Schools To Help You.
Sometimes those are small low-entry work positions that are not paid, sometimes you do get paid if you play your cards right. See also our article Does Working For Free Help Your Language Skills?
A smart way to start your next language study adventure is actually doing research and contacting companies in the desired travel destination even up to one year (!) before you actually planning to book your language school study break.
The key concept is this: you want to work with those companies before you travel to your destination and will look for paid work that can be done online remotely – so you have a good chance in financing your complete language travel trip.
Many companies need ongoing work to be completed and while some of them like to work with volunteers, they also know it is quite a pain to teach new employees and team members over and over with company procedures and such. So you will be surprised that there are a selected number of companies that are highly interested to work with you long-term – if the price is right.
It is also a trust-creating process. If you prove to be the valuable help they need and not just another language student \”on vacation\” that is just hanging around without much use – this increases that you get actually offered some payment.
If you plan a long time enough ahead you even can try to work with several companies in the same area to achieve the funding of your language travel.
Tell the local companies actually that you are doing this and that you are a language student planning to come to the city and that you would like to work with them – if you find the right person who feels they are very patriotic about their place and city, they will be all very supportive and very likely to create a win-win situation.
Another way to approach this is also to contact the city hall or the official tourism board if they know about any open positions.
There is of course also a “backward solution” to funding your travel. After you paid your language school trip and have connected with your desired language school to local companies that you can work with, show extraordinary commitment while you are there. Then ask if they would be interested to continue working with you online (after you leave their local offices) for additional payment.
All the above strategies work when you look to get in touch with companies in the foreign country you want to study the language with.
An additional overlooked strategy actually is that you can, of course, look for companies in your OWN area. Look for international companies in your area with the focus of finding natives from the country you want to travel with. The most obvious choice is restaurants with specialties coming from the country you have in mind, but do not limit your search to this industry only.
If you are successful in finding a work position with a local company, you can use that as work experience if you contact other companies in your desired travel location and increase your chances even further. And, if you are lucky, those local companies might just know someone in your travel destination they can recommend you to.
If you use all your options, have an open mind and become a truly valuable networker, you will see that it is actually easier than you think to get in touch and get started learning that desired language even long before you pack your suitcase and go for real.
