Job Discussion Forums

[BenE]

Right I posted on here a while back when I was making plans. Now my plans are made and I am looking to see if anyone has any more info or may just want to wish me well.

I have decided to leave the cold UK as I am fed up of hoovering carpets as a night porter in a hotel whilst waiting for a graduate job to emerge out of the woodwork. I have a BA in German and Economics and I have worked in Germany for 1 year as a translator.

In 2 weeks I will be flying to Hanoi where I will do a CELTA course with Apollo. They've been really good to me so far and have provided a flat and I'm working through the precourse task as well and buying a few books on grammar etc.
I then plan to get a job in either Hanoi or around Vietnam where I'll cut my teeth teaching English and get into the thick of it. (I've been told Apollo tend to employ their CELTA grads)

I have about $4000 and all flights, insurance and course fees are paid.

Some people recommended I teach first but I decided to get the course done so then I have the groundwork complete before I start looking for jobs.

I still wonder if I am insane running away from nice supportive England like this but then again I don't see much positive happening here at the moment. Is there any more advice people can offer me?

Also anyone going to be in Hanoi in the next few weeks? Would be nice to meet some people when I get there.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

it seems fine, but I wonder why you didn't decide to go to Germany to do the CELTA, then you'd be cutting your teeth by teaching people whose language is one you know (making life there a lot easier, and making teaching them easier).

Or doing the CELTA in teh UK and teaching immigrants, for that matter.

[BenE]

I've lived in Germany for long enough for it to feel like a 2nd home. I wanted to move on to somewhere completely different to broaden my experiences. If I really don't like Hanoi or SE Asia then I'll probably move back to Germany.

The reason I didn't take the CELTA in the UK was because I was told it was better to do the course in the country where you want to teach. I chose Vietnam and Apollo for these reasons so hopefully I could secure a job at the end of my course.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

But keep in mind, that although it may be better in some cases to get your training in the country in which you want to teach, that suggests that you will ALWAYS want to teach in that country. If you do training in Vietnam, and then decide to go to back to Germany, then it's possible that you will be at a disadvantage against the people who did their CELTA in Germany, AND also against those who did their's in the UK (assuming that they're British). It's because the theory working behind the idea of training in the country in which you want to work is that you're learning how to teach the people of that country at the same time as learning how to teach English language. So showing up to a third country might make some employers wonder if you'd be able to teach people from a country other than the one you trained in (it actually shouldn't really doesn't make a differece where you do it in terms of learning- you're using English all the time). If you do it in the UK, then your practice students aren't all from one culture and native language, so you end up with experience teaching people from all over the world (unless your area happens to be full of immigrants from really just one country). However, that in itself creates a different atmosphere because it means that there is a good chance that students HAVE to use English to communicate with each other, whereas in a foreign language teaching environment, often studetns will actually do everything they can to avoid actually using the language that they are paying to learn, and so they use their native language with the others.

I did my training in Canada (but it was a one year university program- like a PGDE (TESOL)) and taught English language to immigrants in Canada before coming to Japan. It's always had the effect coming across as a 'real' teacher as opposed to being a 'But we Japanese are different- can you really teach us, as well??????' situation.

[Madame J]

[denise]

[MikeySaid]

And considering that he speaks German and has experience in country, if he chooses to go back I imagine he has contacts and can navigate the job hunt just fine there.

[BenE]

Yeah I need a break from Germany. I can always go back there but to be honest it's not really the adventurous move I'm thinking of doing.

I'll bail out back to Germany if it all goes wrong and work in translation. That's not really what I want to do though. I really like the idea of going somewhere new.