Site Search:
 
Get TEFL Certified & Start Your Adventure Today!
Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!
Job Discussion Forums Forum Index Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!"
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

what can I do with my training?

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Japan
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
mendications



Joined: 02 Oct 2005
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:16 pm    Post subject: what can I do with my training? Reply with quote

Hi,

I am trying to get a handle on what opportunities for teaching abroad there are for me. My plan for some time has been to try getting to Japan through the JET Programme. However, when I was taking a TESL training course recently, the director said that someone with my credentials should be able to get a far more lucrative job, perhaps teaching in vocational colleges or universities, or doing curriculum development, or writing materials. My problem is, I do not know where to look for such jobs and am hoping someone here can offer advice!

I have two English degrees from two Canadian universities, a BA and an MA, both with top honours. They are in English literature rather than linguistics, but I�m told that doesn�t matter all that much as far as work overseas goes. I have a year of teaching experience in the school I did my MA, running two tutorial groups for first-year university students. Currently I�m a writing tutor in the university, and I work with a lot of ESL students. Both jobs have involved curriculum development. As mentioned, I have just completed a 60-hour TESL certificate course. I�ve also worked as a writer, editor, and researcher, and I�ve travelled around Asia a bit too. I am 25 years old.

I�m not looking for a long term career in Japan, but I would like to go for a year or two. Teaching is not my �calling� or anything like that, but I don�t mind doing it; I would however be more interested in develop materials and stuff like that. Basically I want the experience of living overseas, the means of paying off student loans, and the opportunity to save up enough cash to do some more travelling in Thailand, India, and Tibet before returning to live in Canada.

I see JET would pay approx. $3000CDN/month; I�m told I should expect with my qualifications $4000-$5000 per month. My main question is this: where do I look for the jobs I want? Any advice for me about this, or anything else I�ve said?

Thanks for reading.
M.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
PAULH



Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

PostPosted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:54 pm    Post subject: Re: what can I do with my training? Reply with quote

mendications wrote:
Hi,

I am trying to get a handle on what opportunities for teaching abroad there are for me. My plan for some time has been to try getting to Japan through the JET Programme. However, when I was taking a TESL training course recently, the director said that someone with my credentials should be able to get a far more lucrative job, perhaps teaching in vocational colleges or universities, or doing curriculum development, or writing materials. My problem is, I do not know where to look for such jobs and am hoping someone here can offer advice!

I have two English degrees from two Canadian universities, a BA and an MA, both with top honours. They are in English literature rather than linguistics, but I�m told that doesn�t matter all that much as far as work overseas goes. I have a year of teaching experience in the school I did my MA, running two tutorial groups for first-year university students. Currently I�m a writing tutor in the university, and I work with a lot of ESL students. Both jobs have involved curriculum development. As mentioned, I have just completed a 60-hour TESL certificate course. I�ve also worked as a writer, editor, and researcher, and I�ve travelled around Asia a bit too. I am 25 years old.
M.



Mendications

I work at a university here in Japan.

On paper you are qualified for university jobs and "in theory" you could probably earn more than what you could on the JET program or as a language teacher at NOVA. In practice its something different.

1. You need to be able to attend interviews and most universities only advertise in Japan. there is a large pool of teachers here already with Masters and in-Japan experience. You will be competing with people who are already here. The chances of you walking into a university job here with no experience teaching an EFL language classroom are pretty well zero.

2. Most universities will not actually require you to develop curriculums or write textbooks. Most universities already have dozens of foreign teachers on staff with texts and classes already in place. the best you could hope for is to make a curriculum for your own classes. I do teach some writing classes but its unlikely you would teach writing full time and even if you did you would be teaching ESL composition writing at a very low level, not teaching native speakers. Things like teaching punctuation and spellling and grammatical errors. Students dont learn even how to write a paragraph until much later.

3. You will need to be working here, develop some proper Japan-based experience, hear about jobs through networks and be able to apply for them. Often its about who you know, not what you know and often jobs are not advertised but you get through friends or people leaving a job. if you can read Japanese many university ads for jobs are in Japanese. the English language ads attract hundreds of applicants for one position, and it may not always be in a place like Tokyo or Osaka. Many openings are in junior colleges in far-flung places like Yamaguchi or Gumma or Niigata. Are you prepared to work in a provincial university where the population may be under a million people?

4. To get full time jobs here you need academic publications as well as teaching experience. With no publications you could apply for part time jobs and often it takes a while to build up a full slate of classes. You wont do it as soon as you walk off the plane. It took me two or three years to go from 2 to 3 days a week to the point where I was teaching at 4 or 5 different universities at once on different days. Again you will need a visa or a sponsor for your visa before you can spread yourself out like that.


5. Again what you 'expect' and what you are able to get are two different things. You have no experience teaching in Japan working with japanese students, have no way to attend interviews, have no contacts here and no way of knowing where the jobs are. I can post you some links of where to look for jobs, but in my experience (16 years university teaching, 6 full time) its a numbers game, you need to a pply to a LOT of different universities and have several applications on the boil at once. Expect 50-60 applications to a position and up to 100 if you want to work in Tokyo. Im not saying its impossible to find work but you have to be realistic, you have to pay your dues here first, network, develop the experience learn japanese. there is no way you can do all this from Canada or walk into a $5000 a month job straight off the plane.

6. Travelling around Asia wont help much as you are basically a tourist, and Koreans and Chinese and japanese are not the same just because they are Asians. I'm trying to help a guy whose current teaching in China get a job here and he has experience with Japanese students. hes trying to get a job while still in China and its not easy. Saying that you have met with Asian students and met some travelling is hardly much of a qualification for a full time job here.

7. Some teachers do write their own materials but many do it on the side of their teaching load. Who are you writing books for and where will it get published? Have you published any books so far? Most teachers here use commercially produced texts and it takes years to develop useable textbooks. Dont think that a university will print off hundreds of copies of your work, but you would have to be able to get it published through a commercial author and students buy i through the book store. I know guys who do that and it takes a long time to get anything into print.


Last edited by PAULH on Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:39 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Yahoo Messenger
Glenski



Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

PostPosted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd like to know where you are getting your inaccurate information.

JET pays 300,000 yen/month before deductions. At an average exchange rate for Canadian dollars of 80, that makes $3750. Close enough to $3000 if you like, but bear in mind that the exchange rate fluctuated daily, so your actual take home pay in Canadian dollars will vary with that.

Quote:
I�m told I should expect with my qualifications $4000-$5000 per month.

Who told you this, and what was this based on? That calculates to 320,000 to 400,000 yen/month, which is rather on the high side. Read on.

You have no teaching experience in Japan. This is your biggest weakness. Aside from having a master's degree and a smattering of experience at home, that all means pretty much nothing here unless you have some experience in Japan. So, expect entry level work at best, which pays 250,000 to 280,000 yen/month.

Paul wrote that you might land some PT work at universities. Maybe so, but all the ads I've seen still require some experience teaching in Japan, even at a conversation school, before they hire you. And, you have another problem with PT work -- it will not afford you a work visa. You will have to get a working holiday visa, which is good for only a year.

I agree with Paul's statements about getting hired just for curriculum or materials development. It is not a priority thing here, so you have to resign yourself to teaching or doing nothing else.

Quote:
Teaching is not my �calling� or anything like that, but I don�t mind doing it; I would however be more interested in develop materials and stuff like that.

Well, with degrees in literature, and no experience, how do you expect to have the knowledge to write curricula or develop materials? Pardon me for being so blunt, but how can an inexperienced person write the materials for teachers to use when he himself has never taught with them?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
canuck



Joined: 11 May 2003
Posts: 1921
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Glenski wrote:
JET pays 300,000 yen/month before deductions. At an average exchange rate for Canadian dollars of 80, that makes $3750. Close enough to $3000 if you like, but bear in mind that the exchange rate fluctuated daily, so your actual take home pay in Canadian dollars will vary with that.


Nice try on 80. Hasn't been that for a long time. Try 99.47 through Lloyds TSB. That makes 300,000 yen close to $3016.

In reality, JET is the best you could do in the beginning. My suggestion is to try to find a good job before coming here, if possible, and line it up that way. If you're not willing to wait and go through the JET process, you're going to be stuck taking a job just like most people with a BA.

Glenski wrote:
Quote:
Teaching is not my �calling� or anything like that, but I don�t mind doing it; I would however be more interested in develop materials and stuff like that.

Well, with degrees in literature, and no experience, how do you expect to have the knowledge to write curricula or develop materials? Pardon me for being so blunt, but how can an inexperienced person write the materials for teachers to use when he himself has never taught with them?


I do agree with this.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
PAULH



Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A couple of other things:

Even though you have a Masters degree you are barely out of university yourself and you are not much older than your students. You will likely teach freshmen and second years (18-19 year olds) but you will have seniors in your classes. Pretty hard to get them to take you seriously when you are virtually the same age.

The average uni teacher here is late 20's, early 30's and you want to put some emotional and physical distance between you and your students. You are not their friend and buddy but their university teacher. Lots of teachers here worry about trying to be popular and liked by their students as they think that good teaching means being popular.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Yahoo Messenger
pnksweater



Joined: 24 Mar 2005
Posts: 173
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PAULH wrote:
A couple of other things:

Even though you have a Masters degree you are barely out of university yourself and you are not much older than your students. You will likely teach freshmen and second years (18-19 year olds) but you will have seniors in your classes. Pretty hard to get them to take you seriously when you are virtually the same age.


Paul, I know you don't mean any personal offense, but as a young full time member of my university's staff I have to disagree. A good teacher should be able to maintain classroom control regardless of age. I started student teaching university level when I was 21. I got my job here in Japan at 24. I still have students much older than me in my classes, though I doubt they realize it. While I agree that the OP needs more classroom experience at the university level I don't think that his age is the problem.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wintersweet



Joined: 18 Jan 2005
Posts: 345
Location: San Francisco Bay Area

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Based on what I've heard from friends and read about JET, it's not a good choice for serious/career teachers.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
canuck



Joined: 11 May 2003
Posts: 1921
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 6:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mendications wrote:
I�m not looking for a long term career in Japan, but I would like to go for a year or two. Teaching is not my �calling� or anything like that, but I don�t mind doing it; I would however be more interested in develop materials and stuff like that. Basically I want the experience of living overseas, the means of paying off student loans, and the opportunity to save up enough cash to do some more travelling in Thailand, India, and Tibet before returning to live in Canada.


wintersweet wrote:
Based on what I've heard from friends and read about JET, it's not a good choice for serious/career teachers.


Sounds like JET is the obvious choice here.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mendications



Joined: 02 Oct 2005
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for all the advice, everybody.

I got some of my inaccurate information from xe.com, the universal currency converter:

300,000.00 JPY Japan Yen = 3,066.93 CAD Canada Dollars

As to the hostile responses: chill out, please. I'm new to this, I'm trying to get an idea of what is available out there. I have experience developing curriculums here in Canada. Even though what goes on in a Japanese ESL classroom is surely much different than a Canadian university classroom, it is still EDUCATION, and I therefore have transferrable skills. Therefore, I do have experience doing the things I've stated an interest in doing. Most of what has been said here has been very helpful, and so once again, I thank all who have responded.

Looks like it is JET for me!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
PAULH



Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mendications wrote:
Thanks for all the advice, everybody.

I got some of my inaccurate information from xe.com, the universal currency converter:

300,000.00 JPY Japan Yen = 3,066.93 CAD Canada Dollars

As to the hostile responses: chill out, please. I'm new to this, I'm trying to get an idea of what is available out there. I have experience developing curriculums here in Canada. Even though what goes on in a Japanese ESL classroom is surely much different than a Canadian university classroom, it is still EDUCATION, and I therefore have transferrable skills. Therefore, I do have experience doing the things I've stated an interest in doing. Most of what has been said here has been very helpful, and so once again, I thank all who have responded.

Looks like it is JET for me!


mendications:

Your curriculum training will be pretty well useless here as there is little demand for invention of new curriculums. Not unless someone wants you to build a school from the ground up. I have an MEd in TESOL and have probably used very little of my curriculum training especially to find work.


I might add there is a big difference between teaching a multicultural and multilingual ESl class in Canada with a monocultural population such as in Japan with a set and defined education system where student and teacher needs and expectations are very different from Canada.

I would suggest you do some reading up on the JET programme before you dive into that. Everyones experience is different depending on where you are sent and what you get out of the experience. Like Forest Gump says "Its like a box of chocolates you never know what you are going to get".
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Yahoo Messenger
abufletcher



Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 779
Location: Shikoku Japan (for now)

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mendications wrote:
Even though what goes on in a Japanese ESL classroom is surely much different than a Canadian university classroom, it is still EDUCATION, and I therefore have transferrable skills.


Personally having come to Japan by way of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Mexico I'd have to say that the situation with EFL in Japan is really not so very different from the situation in a great many other countries. Sure each student population (and national educational culture) has its own habits and traditions but as you say "it's still education." I find my own experiences with other non-Japanese students has only strengthened my abilities to cope in the classroom here -- and yes to bring a wider perspective to curriculum issues.

That having been said, an attempt to impose a US or Canadian or Australian style multicultural ESL curriculum on a Japanese teaching environment will likely be a frustrating experience. Also to be realistic, speaking about "curriculum design" is rather ridiculous in the Japanese context -- particularly at the university level. I've been teaching full-time at a univeristy here for almost 10 years. During that time we have run through at least 7 different curricula (not "curriculums") and never once were these changes based on anything that approximated rational reasoned thought -- let along curriculum design theory. Attempts to specify course content (and insist on ideas such that sections of the same course should cover the roughly the same topics or actually cover the same topics from year to year) were regularly met with dismissive remarks which boiled down to "Yes, but this is Japan."

Now of course you will likely have complete GODLIKE control over the syllabus of your own course. In fact you're almost like a zen master here; you can have your students doing the most outragous stuff and no one will ever bat an eye ("Wax on, wax off, grasshopper").

Also I think you will find, like I did initially, that people here (both Japanese administrators as well as fellow expats) can be very disparaging of anything other than Japan experience. Many years ago I applied for a job at a (low level) conversation school in Japan. At that time I had an MA and BA in Applied Linguistics and a California TESL certificate as well as 4 years of university level overseas teaching experience. I got back a politely worded letter suggesting that it might first be a good idea if I were to get some experience teaching in Japan.

I think this is to some degree just another of a thousand realizatons of the "nihonjinron" ("Theory of Japanese" or "Japanology") myth of Japanese uniqueness. Obvious no other teaching is anything like teaching in Japan. Confused A great many people seem to feel that what works for the rest of the world simply doesn't work in Japan. I remember reading about a German firm that was trying to sell its ski area equipment in Japan being told that their equipment was unsuitable because "Japanese snow is different than German snow."
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Glenski



Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I have experience developing curriculums here in Canada. Even though what goes on in a Japanese ESL classroom is surely much different than a Canadian university classroom, it is still EDUCATION, and I therefore have transferrable skills. Therefore, I do have experience doing the things I've stated an interest in doing.

This is not hostile. It is practical advice from someone who has taught in high school in Japan and in conversation school in Japan for over 7 years.

Your skills are mostly NOT transferrable here. Not only do employers not really care about curriculum design, but if you have not taught in Japan, you are most likely going to be eligible only for entry level conversation school jobs or JET program. In all my time here, I've only seen about 2 ads specifically and exclusively for curriculum design. Also, even if you apply to JET, with a master's degree and your other credentials, you may be considered OVERqualified for JET, so beware and be aware of that potential weakness. Know what a JET ALT does, too. You might not really want that sort of work with your credentials.

And, do you realize that to get on JET, you have only one shot per year? Applications will be available soon, due in December, and if you pass that stage of the hiring process, you will have to wait until February before you get interviewed. Pay your own expenses to get to the interview, which will likely be in a hotel and which will have a few dozen to a few hundred applicants herded in and out of the 15-20 minute interviews like cattle. Pass this, and you will be told whether you are accepted as an ALT or as an alternate; the news comes out in April or May. If you are an ALT, you still have to wait until July or August because that's when they fly you to Japan for a couple of days of "training" and orientation. If you are an alternate, the wait is longer and more nebulous.

I say, come here and tough it out with an eikaiwa for a year, make contacts, and try to get into a private high school. Stringing together PT work won't get you a work visa, but after a year or so of working conversation schools, you might be able to renew your work visa as self-sponsored status if you can get enough PT work. Initially, though, you can't.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
taikibansei



Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Posts: 811
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

abufletcher wrote:
I've been teaching full-time at a univeristy here for almost 10 years. During that time we have run through at least 7 different curricula (not "curriculums") and never once were these changes based on anything that approximated rational reasoned thought -- let along curriculum design theory. Attempts to specify course content (and insist on ideas such that sections of the same course should cover the roughly the same topics or actually cover the same topics from year to year) were regularly met with dismissive remarks which boiled down to "Yes, but this is Japan."


I had to laugh at your comments here--funny stuff (and very true). However, I believe I have you beat for best Japanese excuse not to institute a well-founded, educationally viable curriculum--such things are, apparently, "illegal at national universities in Japan." Shocked

The speaker? My former department head, in response to my humble suggestion that reaching consensus on level/course content and goals and then requiring students to take (and pass) those courses/levels in progression (i.e., beginning, intermediate, and then advanced) might just possibly be a good idea.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
abufletcher



Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 779
Location: Shikoku Japan (for now)

PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"It can't be done." This seems like the most commonly given reason for any substantive change. At our university there is no way to establish pre-requisites because the software being used to register for classes is not designed for it.

Thus I have students in my fourth year (second semester) "Teaching Foreign Language to Children" course that have not taken either the third year "Second Language Teaching" course or the fourth year (first semester) "Materials Development Workshop" course. In a similar bit of sillyness we used to have year long courses on the European model but several years ago switched over to an American semester system. This resulted in many year courses simply being split into two semestes with titles like "Cross cultural awareness I" and "Cross cultural awareness II" -- but then there was no system in place to prevent students who hadn't taken part I from signing up for part II.

As far as specifying course content, at least a third of our current courses still have empty titles like "Area Studies", "Special seminar", "Enshu A", etc.

The department recently decided it wanted to specific the "course contents" for the Cross-cultural Awareness course that I personally brought into the world, having transformed it out of a fuzzy "Communication Arts A" course that was here when I arrived. Anyway, instead of asking me to do this, they asked another teacher (a Hungarian Professor of Linguistics) who had never even taught the course to find a suitable textbook. I tried and tried to explain that were was little point in looking for a textbook if we had not yet specified the goals or content of the course. Actually I HAD specified these in a 5 page document I provided to anyone teaching this course for the first time. This document provided an overall orientation to the course, the general and specific goals in several areas, as well as a detailed possible syllabus. But my Japanese colleagues only looked at this document in puzzlement. No book, no course.

I took a long time to realize that was was really driving this discussion was FEAR pure and simple. Fear on the part of my Japanese colleagues, with no background in either culture studies or even EFL, that they might be assigned to teach this supposedly English-medium course in the future.

I told them in no uncertain terms that they could discuss it all they wanted but that I would never abide by any of their decisions regarding this course and would continue to teach it exactly as I had for the past 5 years. So much for department "wa."
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Japan All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling.
Contact Dave's ESL Cafe
Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group

Teaching Jobs in China
Teaching Jobs in China