Job Discussion Forums

kahilm · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 43

Now I just need to just graduate next month. No problem Laughing

I can't wait. GEOS was my top choice of the eikaiwa companies mainly for its benefits. Any former GEOS employees have tips for a new comer? I know that the job involves selling, but how often do you actually have to try to convince your students to renew?

Anyway, I'm just in disbelief right now. Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

furiousmilksheikali · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:38 am Post subject: Re: GEOS accepted me

Angelfish · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 131

A great piece of advice my friend got when she started.

Just remember it's a job and not your life. They'll try to make you believe that Geos is your entire life. It's not. Remember that and you'll be fine. Very Happy

Willy_In_Japan · Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 329

southofreality · Joined: 12 Feb 2007 Posts: 579 Location: Tokyo

Congrats, K

Hope you enjoy your time here in Japan and can make the most of your job. Just remember, English conversation schools are businesses (I know that's been said a million times here before) and your job, at best, will be a combination of teaching and customer service. Here, the customer is a god. You'll be expected to do just about anything to please your customers. From the managerial side, you'll be expected to be very concerned with new student sign-ups, student retention, and sales.

It won't be horrible (and may be fun) if your manager has realistic expections of his/her teachers and is fair in general. If you don't like it at the end of your first contract, you will have other options, such as ALT work.

Anyway, congrats again, and good luck.

kahilm · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 43

Thanks for all the replies.

To be honest, it sounds like more selling than I was expecting. But a job is a job... and I get to live in Japan and make my own day which is really all I care about. Of course, if I have students that actually learn something from me, that'll be nice too Laughing

As for not making GEOS my life, I'm not too worried about that. I intend to enjoy my free time as much as possible Wink

Willy_In_Japan · Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 329

Just some advice from someone who was once new to ESL too.

Don't forget that the best way to teach at first is to take the focus off of you the teacher, and get the students talking. I felt very nervous at first with the whole class looking at me with a 'teach me English' look. If they don't get enough time to talk, they will complain. So, get them talking!

It will make your job easier too. Have them look at the picture, in the text book lesson, and ask them basic questions about it. Where are they? What are they doing? What time is it? Are they friends? How many people are in the picture? etc.

In my opinion, this does two things. It gets them talking, and practices making basic sentences. If they have trouble making the sentences, you help them and they feel they are getting talk time AND making progress. This is in addition to the point of the lesson.

In group lessons, they sometimes want 'games'. One that I like is a vocabulary game called 'Smart Mouth' that I ripped off from AVON. My Sister in Law bought it for her kids, and I adapted it for use in the classroom. Basically, make a bunch of cards with two letters......for example 'BX'. The first person to say a word that starts with 'B' and ends with 'X' gets the card. The person/team with the most cards wins the game. If you don't understand the word, they don't get the point....in my class I let them use dictionaries which practices dictionary use. The student's really love the game too. I wish I had been prepared a bit better when I went to Japan with activities like that. At GEOS, in training, they seemed really keen on cutting pictures out of magazines and mounting them on cardboard. Although having a few pictures in certain cases might be useful, I found that I wasted a lot of my time making these things when I should have been concentrating on getting a few good fun warm up activities.

Also, come up with a cool 'mini lesson' for your demonstration lesson. Somthing that will convince the prospective customers that you are a good teacher and can teach them something useful.

A good one I find is to teach them the difference between using 'will' and 'going to'. If you can come up with a quick lesson to show that we use 'going to' for things that have already been decided, and 'will' for things that you decide at the moment of speaking, you will be golden. They will think you are great, and sign up, and the manager will love you.

Good luck. Geos isn't the best, but it is a good start in Japan.

madeira · Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 182 Location: Oppama

Don't worry about the selling unless you want to... I think I sold about 20 books/Listening no Tatsujin packs in the 3 years I worked there. Maybe more, as I bought a bunch myself... some stuff they have is pretty good! Overpriced, but good. Unless things have changed recently, most of the books are primarily in Japanese... and the students already own most of them by the time they get to you.

Renewals tend to happen on their own. Depends on your school, but for loads of people, GEOS is like a health club. They think they should go... and sometimes they do. They think they should be improving... and sometimes they don't, especially if they rarely show up. They feel guilty and sign themselves up again, for the most part. I often advised students to quit, as they were wasting their money on lessons they never attended... but I never cared too much about my renewal rate.

If your managers give you a hard time about sales, use this time-tested method: Say yes to any request, then do whatever you want. (Make a poster about a book you mostly can't read? Sure!) You'll get a new manager soon.. That said, I liked working there.