Job Discussion Forums

[whynotme]

31 Look what you did to me .... i forgot to use the quote function.

[31]

Turks in Saudi Arabia don`t dig drains. Drain diggers are typically Pakistani. Most unskilled and semi skilled construction workers are Pakistani. There are a lot of Turkish construction companies in KSA such as Tekfen. Turks in the building game are civil engineers or in management.

Collecting rubbish is done by Bangladeshis typically. Turks don`t do it.

What Saudi does crap jobs? You are behind the times. The good old days are slowly coming to an end. Saudis are slowly starting to do ''crap jobs.'' One of the Turkish newspapers had a story on its front page several years ago with a picture of a Saudi bell boy at a hotel in Jeddah. In Jizan which is the poorest province local councils do hire Saudi cleaners. Fair enough the salary is more than what they would pay a Bangladeshi but things have changed.

My point was that you cannot have it both ways. If milllions of Turks work abroad then you cannot say don`t employ foreigners here. Fair enough particularly in poor parts of Turkey such as Antakya it makes great economic sense to work abroad but perhaps for that Russian teacher it might make economic sense to pick up a thousand dollars a month at ET rather than (guessing) 2-300 dollars in Russia.

Azerbaijan has hopeless levels of unemployment and wages of 40-200 dollars for skilled workers such as teachers and engineers yet thousands of Turks are employed in building, restaurants, barbers, hotels and business management.

[31]

[molly farquharson]

We have a Russian, a couple of Romanians (dmb might know them, they've been at ET for a long time), a cople of iranians, at least one french person, a few belgians, a nigerian, a malaysian, south africans, brits, irish, american, canadian, aussies, NZers. If the person' accent is flawless (and truthfully some NNSs have clear speaking than some NSs), it is worth a try-- but no guarantee. Good for her for trying-- I hope she knows how difficult it will be being a Russian woman here.

[dmb]

31 I know you are correct about the unemployment problem in KSA . what is the actual figure-official and unofficial.
I know in Qatar it is 0% Everyone is either retired or forced to take english classes at QP.

[31]

The official unemployment rate is 9.6% but unofficial figures go up to 40%.

Qatar as far as I know can do as you said because of the tiny population but KSA cannot as the population is large and there is a vast gap between the rich and poor, not to mention the size of the country.

[dmb]

I am taking a guess here 31, but from things you wrote on the Saudi forum you are quite knowledgeable about KSA, so you used to work there. where did you work? was it a uni, industrial plant, military? Would you recommend it.

[31]

No, no, yes and yes with a lot of reservations.

[dmb]

So you worked for the military? how many students did you report to stand in the baking heat

[31]

None. The worst punishments a teacher could cause would be either to have a student confined to base for the weekend or extra duty which means spending a shift on guard or very very rarely a weekend in prison.

[justme]

Wish my school had a prison. It would be a way more effective threat than 10 points off participation...

[ardabay]

[31]

You have got her now.

[31]

The fraud at ET is this. Crass marketing sells English courses to young Turks by telling them that they will get qualified, experienced and degree educated native speaker teachers with the implication that they will learn English better with native speaker teachers than with Turkish teachers. My proof for the above is:
ET marketing-you can`t miss it
ET publicity material -you can`t miss it
The website
ET adverts
From taking to ET students

ET attract thousands of students who pay up. ET then have to get native speaker teachers by the hundred. They would like to get experienced native speaker teachers from the UK/Canada etc. with degrees and certs and dips and MAs but few native speaker teachers with those qualifications and experience will work for such low hourly pay and poor conditions. ET have a massive shortfall and have to find bodies to put in front of the students who have already paid. The result is they take non natives and natives with no experience, no degree and no certs, dips or MAs. They have no choice.

The Turkish teaching assistants ironically are qualified but are not allowed to teach because the students have been sold lessons by native speakers even though some of the so called natives are not really natives.

The nonsense about accents is just that. It is an excuse for the real reason that Turkish teachers cannot be employed instead of native speakers. The real reason being that ET makes its profit by conning students into buying courses taught by qualified experienced native speaker teachers yet being unable to deliver on its promise.

I suppose if ET had Turkish teachers then they wouldn`t be able to charge the rates they do and would lose students to rival bucket shops.

Private unis don`t seem to have any trouble finding Turkish teachers with great accents.

BTW has anybody read The Phonology of English as an International Language by Jennifer Jenkins? Very good if you are interested in the debate about native speaker vs. non native speaker pronunciation and accents. Perhaps ET will give us a workshop on this?

[whynotme]

i havent read the book but read her articles while i was at uni,she is great. A long time ago i was writing my dissertation about "teaching of pronunciation" and i was nearly lost ,couldnt finish ,prove or defend , but after reading J.Jenkins' article about pronunciation norms and models i managed to finish it.