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fluffyhamster · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 12:52 am Post subject:

They think they're making things easier ('Japanese doesn't have articles, nor therefore should the lesson's English!'), but that isn't true even in the short term. There comes a point at which language as this sort of JTE presents it just stops making any functional sense and becomes very difficult for students to process or care about. And their picking and choosing of forms for "whatever" meaning inevitably leads to dodgy rules of thumb, exceptions, and on and on and on it snowballs into a deadly knee-deep pedagogical avalanche of brain-freezing slush. Very Happy

Real language is actually as often easy as it is difficult, except of course to those who want a completely untroubled life (why teach then, especially foreign languages?! LOL).

marley'sghost · Joined: 04 Oct 2010 Posts: 255

zues · Joined: 24 Mar 2013 Posts: 32

edited into the original post... read carefully:

3. AUGUST... it's a great time of year to maybe?? or maybe not?? call you in for "work days" so to try to confound you (and ourselves) we are listing summer as "Work Days" AND now..... introducing.... "TBA" (ooohhhhh, ahhhhhh gasps the crowd) for your summer break.. TBA >> sounds official huh?! we figure, we are gonna try to get your money no matter and TBA sounds like there is actually something happening during those dates.. but really it's a scare tactic for us to try to get you to tell us ALLLLLLLLL your travel plans for summer so we DO NOT HAVE TO PAY YOU for those days.... in the past everything was listed as "Summer Holiday" or "Work Days".. and we asked that you tell us all your travel plans for work days while your summer holidays were yours alone. we realized we weren't capturing enough of your summer travel plans which we can deduct from your pay. so now, we think you will suddenly up and tell us your travel plans for the entire summer because "TBA" really puts you in a spot doesn't it! what we are trying to do is 1. make more money and 2. penalize you for making ANY plans at all during summer... so, no more "summer holidays" for you!! later in the year, before summer, we will send you an email requesting you to tell us ALLLL your travel plans for the entire summer.. we think you are just dumb enough to do that!! (please don't call our bluff by not telling us, up front, when you are not available for work because of your travel plans. we are bluffing. you basically will have no assignments during this time period.. and what we really don't want you to do is: when we contact you for an unspecified assignment for a future date (unspecified because it likely doesn't exist), which we throw out to try and catch your unreported travel plans, ignore them up until that very date, because we will likely not contact you for work that day. so please, PLEASE tell us immediately, all your travel plans even if we have no intention of calling you in that day).

4. Christmas Break!!! tis the season to dock your pay in anyway possible!
if you read our changes for August (#3), it's more of the same for the winter break. we have done away with "Winter Holiday" and replaced that with TBA... we expect you will not have learned from how we gauged you during summer so we are trying the same play from our new playbook in the same year on you! we think you are stupid enough to tell us, voluntarily, all your holiday travel plans for the whole year! so we don't have to pay you for that time... man, you alt's look stupid!!!

fat_chris · Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 3198 Location: Beijing

^^^Oh!

Sneaky Interwack folks!

Warm regards,
fat_chris

rxk22 · Joined: 19 May 2010 Posts: 1629

Yeah, Inter just propelled themselves into being a firmly bad company. Boo on them.

And as for JTs, they aren't all bad, but their training does seem to be bad. It is rare to have a class that they teach, that isn't super boring.

But Japan doesn't believe in short hours and high productivity per hour worked. So, you end up with semi-zombi teachers just reading from the book

marley'sghost · Joined: 04 Oct 2010 Posts: 255

[quote="zues"]edited into the original post... read carefully:

3. AUGUST... it's a great time of year to maybe?? ...... TBA sounds like there is actually something happening during those dates.. but really it's a scare tactic for us to try to get you to tell us ALLLLLLLLL your travel plans for summer so we DO NOT HAVE TO PAY YOU for those days.... in the past everything was listed as "Summer Holiday" or "Work Days".. and we asked that you tell us all your travel plans for work days while your summer holidays were yours alone. ......(please don't call our bluff by not telling us, up front, when you are not available for work because of your travel plans. we are bluffing. you basically will have no assignments during this time period.. /quote]

Snipped quite a bit out there. I have "training" and "English Camp" on my schedule. Of course what the "training" will be (or if it actually materializes) is, as you say dah,dah daaaah! TBA..... The summer camp is real though. Local BOE has started them and a few/half dozen of us got drafted last year.
"Training" could be a bluff, like you say. But, then remember there are new owners. This new company is a bigger outfit than the old one, they might have manpower to waste time on training meetings and "managing" us during breaks.
We'll just have to see how it pans out.