Job Discussion Forums

[eng]

Things are a bit different (I hope that also means better) at Berlitz Manila. We have regular students so we get to know them well and can tailor fit the courses to the students' needs (I don't know how this would fly at HQ but if we didn't employ this system, our clients would probably leave). Some students get so attached to their teachers. Some students are ok with substitutes but others would rather just wait for their teachers to come back. In some cases, the student might move heaven and earth just to schedule a make up session with the teacher...or even cancel the session altogether.

We also have regular schedules (more or less) so we have enough time to prepare for our classes. When a client walks in and says he wants to start ASAP, the student is scheduled for a class the next day, giving the instructor one night to panic...errr...prepare, that is. again, I don't think this would go down well at HQ but it just makes so much more sense to do things this way.

Even with our reworked systems, I personally question some of the practices at Berlitz. Ok, I've just been teaching for 5 years and I've only been at Berlitz for a little over a couple of years so who am I to question 135 years of experience? Man, I hate it when I get challenged that way. I know I'm no expert, but sometimes it's just a question of common sense

[quote="Deconstructor"]Let me tell you how bizarre it is to work at Berlitz. A friend of mine taught there without any qualifications and out of desperation and here's what she said: First you are always on call; they call you the night before and give you all the info. When you go to work, you check the files of the group you are supposed to teach, find out what�s been done up until then, �prepare� and head for class. What is bizarre is that you teach a different group every time you head for work. You never see the same group twice the way you never step into the same river twice

[wilsonslacker]

I have been working at Berlitz in USA for the past 3 months.

It has good points and bad points.

The good point is that I can keep doing a somewhat similar job to the one I had in Korea. They counted my overseas teaching experience as useful. It's been a fairly good experience in terms of meeting ESL students from various countries. The recently updated text books aren't too bad to work with. I think this is a good way to practise teaching and get a little more experience.

But honestly, the pay is not so great. It's $9.60 per 45 min unit which equals a bit less than $13 an hour. The schedule is wacky and students cancel at the last minute or sometimes don't show up. Some of the students that are sent by their company to learn are less than motivated.

They have some good teachers, especially the retired teachers who work there part-time. The main negative point about Berlitz USA is that they try to keep the teachers as part-timers to avoid having to offer medical insurance. But, just having a Bachelors degree your ESL teaching opportunities in USA are more limited than overseas.

So I plan to get a TEFL certificate while in the States then go overseas again. In the meantime, working part-time at Berlitz is just something to put on a resume and gain some experience. It's just ok, but not a job to make a lifelong career out of.

That's my experience anyway.

[TheLongWayHome]

Berlitz SLP (Mexico) wouldn't hire me because I had been here too long. Why would the (aforementioned corporate arse-kissing) supervisors want someone who wasn't exclusive to Berlitz, even before he had worked there? If only I had known that my lack of experience would have got me a job!!

The Berlitz hiring procedure goes something like this:
(Delete as appropriate)
Pulse: Yes/No
Native speaker: Yes/No
Less than 90 years old: Yes/No
Can be moulded like silly putty: Yes/No
Can speak standing up as well as sitting down: Yes/No
Can speak while opening and closing a book: Yes/No
Is available 24 hours a day: Yes/No

[Jetgirly]

I taught at Inlingua, which I understand has a similar methodology, and could see almost no advantages from the perspective of the student or teacher. From management's perspective, it's a gold mine. Hire teachers with no certification, hire teachers who don't speak a word of the local language (guilty), load up teacher's schedules with classes because your method "requires no preparation" and force your students to buy crappy company-produced resources from ten years ago. I made a decent salary at Inlingua, but the whole time I felt embarassed to be "teaching" using The Inlingua Method. What I don't understand is why anyone would even WANT to learn a language that way...

[Guy Courchesne]

[eng]

ok, after nearly 5 years at Berlitz Manila, I'm seriously considering calling it quits.

I'll miss my co-workers and my students. I'll miss teaching, but it's not like I can't do that elsewhere. It's just that I feel nothing much will happen to me if I choose to stay. I'm still deciding between resigning and filing an indefinite leave. Probably going to go w/ the latter and see how things are at Berlitz in a few years.

Though the company itself is growing, I don't feel it can offer me any more growth. Yes, I did grow a little from my experiences at the company, I got more years of teaching experience and I had to learn to deal with lots of different people. However, I feel though that most of my growth has been a result of my interaction with my students and co-teachers and not because the company helped me. And the few opportunities to learn and grow that were there have dwindled over the years. I was optimistic a few years back but I've grown a bit hopeless about the situation. It's not an evil company, but it just can't offer much

Don't get me wrong, for people who want to meet great co-teachers and students, for those who enjoy teaching and would even do it for free (not that they don't pay us! haha), please consider teaching at Berlitz Manila. Maybe I will do so again, after I've spread my wings and done other things. (ahhh...i'm a poet and i didn't know it!)

[gaijinalways]

[Jetgirly]

I felt that my students at Inlingua renewed because they liked me. It was no secret that 75% of the staff (myself included) were girls in their early twenties who were generally quite attractive and personable, while 75% of our students were sexually frustrated forty-something men who would bring us gifts and complain about their wives. I once took over a class with an individual student who was repeating the same level for the third time. He actually paid to repeat it three times! I don't think he was paying for the quality language instruction... I was then faced with either repeating the level the Inlingua way for a third time, or using some of my own precious time to secretly prepare non-Inlingual-approved materials (and time really is precious when you're scheduled for nine hours each day in the classroom with an additional two hours per day of travel time for in-company classes... because "The Inlingua Method doesn't require prep!").

I'm now extremely fortunate to be teaching in the Canadian K-12 system, where I have freedom to structure lessons to actually meet the needs of my learners. I also have a lot more personal time, as our lovely teachers' union has made it very clear that teachers need prep time!

[william wallace]

nil

[fraup]

I actually worked for McMillan Publishing (parent co. of Berlitz back in the 70s) when they were developing their cassette program. I had to go through the two weeks' "training" before I started work. I also worked for Berlitz in Warsaw about 15 years ago.

For me, the benefits of Berlitz are a) they know how to take adults from zero to a certain level using a kind of stimulus-response method, and b) if you have any kind of teaching experience and are in a country short-term, you can usually pick up something at Berlitz, providing you're a native speaker, and not have to spend much, if any, prep time. Just grab the manual and go to class.

The negatives: teacher salaries, and bad schedules in many cases, i.e. before-work, lunch hour, and after-work. Of course, if you only want to teach part-time this may be fine. I also have heard that the classrooms are monitored and that administrators will periodically listen in to make sure the teachers are staying with the program. (If I were a Berlitz owner/manager I might be tempted to do the same.)

Berlitz is a BUSINESS. Their success depends on keeping their customers satisfied, and they do charge a lot--not that teachers get a fair share!--so I'd say they must be doing something right.

[harry the hobbit]

[fraup]

It's not "hoodwinking" if the teacher knows what he/she is getting into, and Berlitz has been around long enough for anyone to research the method and the salaries. Also, students DO learn something--if they didn't, they'd spread the word (and if their employers were paying, the word would spread even faster).

I've noticed, in my periodic lurking here, that a fair number of teachers are so committed to their particular way of teaching--"The One Way"--that they're not able to pick up ideas from other methods. One of the things I appreciated at Berlitz, for example, was the teacher manual. I've been places where teachers had nothing to work with except some badly Xeroxed copies and their own imaginations--and on a day-in, day-out basis, that can get exhausting.

[soapdodger]

For lack of anything better to do one day a couple of years ago, I wandered into the local Berlitz, fully aware of what they're all about in pedagogical terms having had a colleague who had endured them some time before, just to see what they were going to offer me as a qualified teacher with rather alot of experience. The unpaid training to be pistolwhipped into the corporate ethos was a given...but on to the main course.... they expected me to have a private business licence ( which I do ), or get one at my own expense, and bill them every month, which would mean paying my own tax and insurance. Fine, so on to the hourly rate...well, it was a miracle I didn't burst out laughing... they were offering 179 of the local life tokens - I think ( I hope!!!) for 45 mins not 60. Most schools are going to offer about 300 to 350 to a native and it is possible to get 500 + off your own bat. I had to run it past the corporate monkey again just to be sure I'd heard right....AND I would have to pay tax and insurance myself off that ? Yep. Bringing it down to somewhere like 120. I asked what kind of so-called teachers they expected to get for that, then politely told them to stick it where the sun doesn't shine!

I'm staggered that some posters have actually risen to the defence of Berlitz. Their success is purely down to stupidity and slavish attraction to brand name.

Just a point about companies being dissatisfied..... in my experience most companies don't give a hoot about what kind of English lessons their staff are getting as it is all tax deductible. In the case of ones that do, it is usually not "the company" that complains but some tiresome a***wipe in HR who thinks they have a real job and gets pleasure in worrying anything like a terrier, and who would complain about a lesson given by Prof Crystal using the Queen and Prince Charles in person as realia.

And finally, business English does not exist.

[Stephen Jones]

Berlitz in Jeddah was supposed to be a neat place to work. Mainly because the DOS announced Berlitz materials were a load of crap and dumped them from day one. Why the owners bothered to pay for the franchise is another matter, but I have been told that none of their postillions have been hit by lightening.

[soapdodger]

Or even lightning.