Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

In the European countries where my friend works, you can't have a self-employment business license without a legitimate visa to be in the country as well. It's at least a 2-step process. I think that MO is essentially saying the same thing.

My friend does work also on-line and occasionally by telephone, but the websites are for paying customers. It wouldn't really be ethical for me to say that you can have access to his work for free.

[spiral78]

I think that basically, for Europe at least, you are highly unlikely to find any company that is willing to incur the expense of your travel and accomodation on top of the cost of a course.
I understand what you're saying about making sure that what I have to offer has to make up for the fact that I'm not willing to be there face-to-face for prolonged periods of time. I don't have a lot of experience teaching English, but I have 8 yrs. of experience teaching at the Canadian College level (in the Business department, teaching a variety of business and technical courses). The college that I teach in is very multi-cultural (over 65 different languages spoken in our hallways) and having a student who has english as their first language is actually the minority.

So, to sum up, I have a lot of teaching experience (teaching business and technical courses) to adults. I also have experience in curriculum development (a requirement of my current job), and experience administering courses online (we use a course management software to post a lot of announcements, course activities, assignments, discussion boards, tests, etc.). The only thing that I can think of that's really missing is the experience teaching English specifically. You mentioned setting everything up myself and basically being self-employed.....which is exactly what I had in mind....and yes, I agree it will take a lot of work and time, etc....


There are many highly qualified teachers based here with as much and more experience along with specific qualifications, and multitudes of language schools specifically focusing on this kind of business. My friend who is making the idea work has 15+ yeas, local language skills, contacts, reputation, and MA TESL/TEFL, for example.

Without local reputation, contacts, visas, and licenses, you're no competition in this particular market - though I can only speak for Europe. Other regions may offer more possibilities.

[MO39]

[spiral78]

Nice - no European-style red tape! Does it mean that, if you are ok to live in the country, you are also qualified automatically to work there as a self-employed teacher? What if you aren't living in Mexico full-time? Any checks on this?

[MO39]

[Glenski]

In Japan, you can get a business manager/investor work visa if you have a business with a certain number of Japanese employees. Obviously, yours won't, so that's not viable.

To set up what you seek (in Japan) is untenable. A fortnight to set yourself up, get enough clients, show them your lesson plans to hook them, etc.? Nope. Besides, as others have written, you need to have visa permission to work here, and your potential clients are already going to the competition, places like Simul, Phoenix Associates, ETEC, and Sumikin. Why go with an unknown whom they may have known for only a couple of days? What you're trying to set up takes a heckuva lot longer.

[cozcrew]

Thank you to everyone who has provided advice for me on this topic (even if it's not good news ). It has helped a lot in terms of me figuring out whether or not this idea of mine will work. It sounds like I need to do a lot of research now on the work visa/business license issue for a variety of different countries to see how that works.

As for the difficulty in establishing clients.....although it's a concern, it's not something that would necessarily stop me from continuing with my plan (I may decide at some point, especially over the next few years as the kids are little older, that I may be willing to be apart from my family for more than a couple of weeks).

I also need to do some research on other schools/businesses that provide private teaching of business english to professionals/organizations around the world.....to get some info on how that market works.....anyone have any suggestions or know of any organizations that provide this service?(country doesn't matter at this point)

[spiral78]

Google language schools for any major city. I can tell you that the European market for newbie teachers focuses almost entirely on business/corporate clients, though teaching children is a growing market sector in the region.

Prague, for example, to my certain personal knowledge, has more than 60 private language schools catering primarily to business clients. Check the Prague Post online for some contacts (www.praguepost.com).

You would have serious local competition throughout Europe, for certain. I can't speak for other regions.

[Glenski]

[Anda]

Here is an example: You pick a big city somewhere in the world and add expat to it and start to research.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=tokyo+expat+site&btnG=Search