Job Discussion Forums

[LarueLarry]

http://www.eslcafe.com/joblist/index.cgi?read=36795

$8.75/hour IF you have a Masters!

[ExpatLuke]

$1,000 per month to live in an obscure place like Quang Ngai is pretty decent actually. The cost of living there will be peanuts. Most teachers in Danang only make about $1000 per month, but that's on about 15 hours a week, and the price of living here is a lot higher than Quang Ngai. I'd imagine the teachers working there are saving more than half their salary each month.

But all that to say, you don't go to tiny little town like that for the money. You're probably going because you want to live in a tiny beach town in the middle of nowhere.

I'm honestly more surprised there's enough students for so many teachers to work 30 hours a week.

[cb400]

Its not worth it in my opinion. If you are stuck out in the boondocks you better be getting more money than that.

[TRH]

$1000 a month is probably plenty for Quang Ngai. We lived comfortably on that much in HCMC but we didn't live in Q1 or Q7. The problem is who wants to work 30 hours for it. I used to have to cajole my school to keep me below 20 hours. I know teachers who did 30 plus hours but I am sure quality suffered. I made about $1200 a month including Tet and summers and my wife banked at least $500 of it.

I have never been to Quang Ngai but I have been down the coast to Quy Nhon, which appears to be a significantly larger town. Living in such a place would be lovely but difficult. Finding things like medical providers who speak English could be tough. It's maybe a better place for the young and mobile, or someone with local connections.

[I'm With Stupid]

I thought you generally got paid more to live in an obscure place, not less.

Anyway, $1000 might be enough to live there, but that's just thinking about day-to-day living costs. Plenty of stuff doesn't change depending on where you live, like student debts, flights home, health insurance, saving for the future, etc.

[skarper]

Hmmn.

The deal breaker for me is 30 hours a week.

If it were 15 hours a week I might have been interested. Classes of
12-14 are not small - but about as large as it is possible to actually 'teach' language.

I think the money is enough for 15 hours a week but 30 hours a week is far too much. And six days is too many. 15 hours over 4-5 days would be OK.

I'm not sure I'd want to live in such a remote place but it might suit some people.

They will find people - I don't doubt it - they claim to already have 13 teachers already.

A big issue is should it not work out you cannot just go across town and work for the competition.

[TRH]

[ExpatLuke]

[schwa]

[skarper]

In my opinion and experience 12 is about as large a class size as feasible.

I prefer 8-10.

You can still do something with larger classes but it is far from ideal, specially in Vietnam were the learners only have experience of largely passive learning styles.

Another issue is large classes consume enormous amounts of admin time and organizational effort. If you get the students to form pairs then you must spread yourself rather thin to get round and monitor. With six pairs you can quickly get round and check they are on task and then give each pair a minute or so of careful attention and feedback all in about 10 minutes. With 10 pairs that'd take more like 20 minutes. This loss of efficiency repeats with every activity. If you are setting homework then marking becomes laborious with less time available to make it effective.

Bottom line is too much work for too little return both in terms of pay and teacher satisfaction.

I'm all for 'being positive' if you are faced with 20-30 students but it's not something I plan on doing again.

[ExpatLuke]

I just saw this on the Danang facebook group...

[skarper]

Spam. Pretty sure it's spam of some sort. Should we click the ! and alert the mods?

[ExpatLuke]

Looks like it was taken care of.