Job Discussion Forums

[Scott in Incheon]

I am in Korea and supporting my wife (who just now starting to do some tutoring and add to the household income) , two kids and handing a fair chunk to the inlaws. In my case, I had the experience and paper on the wall to get a fairly good job.

Your best bet if you can afford would be to get a job that offers some sort of housing allowance and then get a place of your own. The problem is that you will have to put down a hefty piece of change for the deposit on the apartment...or what they call key money....can be anywhere from 15 million won to 50 million won.

I know of two single mothers that are raising their kids here. Both have gotten places of their own but one did start out in a job supplied apartment. They can be quite small and many jobs don't make allowances for teaches with families.

I am not sure why Glenski is bringing up a language barrier between you and your son. Our first daugher spent her early years in Hong Kong. My wife stayed home...our daughter was in a home with Korean and English...experience a lot of Cantonese outside the home and we didn't have any language problems except for a complaint by my wife that her English was stronger than her Korean. My wife spoke Korean to her during the day but she watched a lot of English DVD's and when I came home English became the language of the home (as my Korean is terrible).

[Glenski]

[Scott in Incheon]

I am still not sure how this barrier would arise. If your family speaks English at home as that is the language you and your wife use...then your child should speak English and there would be no barrier...

If you use Japanese as the main language at home, then I would assume you know enough Japanese to hold a convesation with your wife so why couldn't you talk to your child.

Are you not doing enough to create an English environment at home?

I did a lot of research into bilingualism and bilingual families and I don't remember coming across any cases where a child and parent couldn't communicate. Plenty of cases where children refuse to use a language but that was usaually just short term.

I don't discount what you are saying...it is happening to you..but I honestly can't understand why it would be.

[schwa]

I detect some wit & flexibility on Rolander's part which continues to suggest to me that Korea might be a good choice. Not sure why the Japan guys are endeavoring to own this thread after they have already chased the OP away from that option.

I also like the fact that Rolander is responsive -- far too many newbies post their inquiries here never to be heard from again.

Korea approached with eyes open offers the advantages of minimal start-up costs & savings potential from the get-go. Suitable housing for a family is an understandable primary concern & is certainly possible, but needs to be insisted on upfront. Some jobs will be simply unable to provide it, but a fair percentage of teachers here have generous housing space. Especially outside the big cities, a point I mentioned before.

EPIK is not a bad consideration. I work for them (4 years on now) & their mandate is putting people in public school positions & often in less populous areas. Their hiring policy is transparent & nondiscriminatory. Some postings are remote (think cultural immersion!) but public school teachers do get a bit of extra local respect & a family would certainly be treated kindly.

Type epik into any search engine & you'll find their homepage. The main annual intake is in august but its possible to get taken on at other times of the year.

Small friendly honest hagwons also exist in smaller towns & with a bit of hunting you could certainly find a happy situation. If youre as smart as I take you to be, you'd figure out the teaching side of things pretty quick.

Yeh, theres potential for your wife to find specialized tutoring. Once youre established, if youre liked, opportunity will present itself.

Rolander, if you decide to focus on Korea, do start inquiring around that board. There are hardasses & cynics there, but you'll find good advice & support as well.

Again, best luck.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Glenski]

Scott,
My Japanese wife and I speak as much English at home as possible, but since I work 11-12 hours a day, she sees him far more than I do and immerses him in Japanese, despite various TV programs that he watches regularly. He knows some things only in English, and many things in both languages, and some things only in Japanese. That last part is growing faster than the others for obvious reasons.

When she talks to him in Japanese, it is of course a form of baby-talk, and that becomes part of the communication barrier. I don't know Japanese fluently, and what I know is not baby-talk, so there is a line of communication between him and her that loses me. He also gets words and expressions from her and her family (and everything else that he learns from his environment) that are not baby-talk but are sometimes still beyond my vocabulary. That's going to continue as he grows, and so will the barrier.

I, too, have read studies on bilingualism, but until you experience it yourself, all the studies in the world do little except to reinforce a situation you may already be in, or to contradict it with what I feel is an obvious thing -- namely, that there are so many types of situations that it is hard to state specifics.

I'm not overly concerned because I know this is only temporary, but I mentioned it for the sake of the OP because I felt it would happen to him.

[rolander]

Schwa, thanks for the kind words and advice. I wrote a long post with some particulars, pointed observations, and a good lashing of death-inducing humour, but something went screwy when I tried to post and it disappeared. The gist of it was that I was happy to think of going somewhere with lost start-up costs and the possibility of generous living space. The former is not crucial insofar as we could before leaving here patch together enough to live for a while. When considering Korea--and that's what we've been doing lately--we thought three or four grand, outside of travel costs, would suffice to begin. But, it's definitely nice to think that this money might prove unnecessary. Korea does sound doable. I notice that EPIK has garnered its own privileged space on the Korea forum, and that's what I'll be looking at for the next little while. Hopefull your experiences generalize to the wider TEFL community. It's not easy teasing apart reality--whatever that may be--from the random (subjective) experiences of some teachers. We're going to approach everything cautiously.

Merci Canadienne,
Rol