Job Discussion Forums

[mobrien86]

So I am an American woman, 22, graduating in May with my BA in Poli Sci and I am trying to figure out the best path to teaching English in Asia. As a new teacher, I'd ideally like to have either a job with good training or take a TEFL course. Other priorities: I'd like to be able to save at least a little money to pay for those pesky college loans, although I can live quite cheaply, definitely would like to live a local as much as I can. Location: I'd prefer to be in a more tropical climate, which is why I'm looking at Southern China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Also prefer to be in a city near or on the water. I love the ocean most of all, and ideally a place where I can surf (although I'm not putting that as a top priority). As a sidenote I studied abroad in HK (loved it!), and have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, KL, and Cebu.

After my research, these are my possibilities:
1) No TEFL course: If I don't take a course I would like to get a job while in the US before I fly over. Taiwan seems good location wise and it seems reliable to get a job through a big company like Hess, which has lesson plans and all for newbies (I've read the negatives too but it seems like it might be a decent start up option). Also looking at getting something in Southern China. It seems that I should wait until I have my degree in hand though to apply for jobs in China, is that right? I like that I would be set up with an apartment in China though.
2) TEFL course: The advantage here seems to me to be that I could wait til I got there to look at jobs, while I was taking the course, interview in person, choose among several jobs. I am looking at TEFL international's courses, which look like they have a reasonable price and good reputation. Vietnam is probably my top choice here. I am also fascinated by Indonesia but worried I would not save money there (maybe should just travel there). Viet also seems like a good location for travel to Laos, Cambodia, Indo, HK, which I am interested in.

It seems also like there would be an advantage to taking a course of meeting other expat teachers, and also if I hated the place in which I took the course I'm not committed to teach there. Obvious disadvantage is shelling out a lot of cash for a course.

Here are my questions:
1) Do my possibilities seem accurate? Any suggestions or comments?
2) Did you have a similar struggle in deciding what to do? Which path did you choose and why?
3) Anyone taken TEFL international courses? thoughts?

[Tainan]

Hi,

Having lived and worked both in China and in Taiwan, I can say the following. In China there are university jobs which involve limited work hours (I worked 16 hours a week) and very low stress. Best of all there are very long paid vacations, and if you renew a contract for a second year you can have your flight back home and back to China paid for. These jobs are ideal if you are looking to do other things with your life than work all day: for a writer, for example, who wants lots of time to write, or someone who is trying to learn Chinese. The disadvantages are that one makes very little money and the life, quite frankly, can be boring. Also, be very careful that the city you end up in is not horribly polluted! In the end that can make all the difference. I can say that in my two years at a Chinese university I was treated very decently and, as long as you do a conscientious job and don't make any politically inopportune remarks you probably won't have many problems or much (or any) interference with your teaching.

Taiwan, by contrast, is a hundred times more interesting a place. The people I met there are actually much more actively nice (In China there was mostly a kind of benign neglect) and there is far more to do. Also, moving to Taiwan after two years in China I figured out that it really does make a huge difference to live in a free country. There's nothing quite like buying a copy of the Economist and finding that articles have been scissored out by a censor! The down-side in Taiwan, for me, was that jobs were far harder to find, overwhelmingly involved teaching children, and demanded far more hours of one's time.

If you are interested in having any kind of love life I strongly urge you to prefer Taiwan.

If you want to learn Chinese I very strongly urge you to prefer Taiwan.

[gajackson1]

Awww, I almost wish I had started out in ESL right after my own grad. (I was a Poli Sci major, too; 2nd major in Speech Comm - but I am also a cert. teacher in both fields, so it DID make it easier for me to make the transit).

Ok, first: I would agree with Tainan about it sounds like you would be a good 'fit' for Taiwan. I also have done looonngggg writeups on my experience (of both myself & my GF at the time) of our coursework with TEFL Int. in Phuket. If you have had no teaching courses/experience/exposure, you can 1) learn a lot from the course if you are willing to WORK at it while you are there, and 2) pretty much secure yourself a job in MOST places between that cert & your BA.

(No, regular DESLC hands - I don't mean uni. posts, those requiring MAs, or places/schools where you MUST be a certified, experienced 'real teacher' to be employed)

Trinity TESOL / RSA CELTA or DELTA / TEFL's 120-hr residency-based courses are all excellent choices each with their own pluses. For TEFL Intl, at the least, I know they offer additional Business English & ECH-type modules, as well.

It is a big, beautiful world, and if you are a good, dedicated teacher who researches & prepares (& with a dash of luck!), you will be able to surf, travel, explore, pay debts, and save. I wish you all the best!

Glen

PS - I have NO idea about now, but when I was starting out, I was pretty similar to you - have you considered something like JET Programme in Japan at all? You'd get to see a handful of places, surf, etc. No idea if Nippon is of any interest, but a maybe???

[mobrien86]

Thanks for the replies so far. Just for the record, I really enjoy working with children for the most part so I think I might really like teaching them English.
That said, will Chinese unis hire a recent grad with no experience/TEFL (if I don't opt for that)? Most of the offers I'm seeing on the web want one or both.
Gajackson, I did consider JET but it seemed to me that Japanese jobs are way more competitive than most others, and I thought since Southeast Asia/China/Taiwan appealed to me at least as much if not more than Japan that I would have a better chance in these countries.

[Tainan]

If you like teaching children and are good at it, the ESL world will be your oyster. The vast majority of jobs, and I think the most stable and,-- outside of very high-level jobs in univs and the business world--the best-paying jobs are all in teaching children. In Taiwan in particular teaching children accounts for such a vast majority of the jobs that when you mention teaching, even though you don't say whom you teach, people will say something like "how are the kids?" simply assuming that it's kids you are teaching.

For what it's worth I've had beautiful experiences teaching small children both in Korea and in China--in the children's homes. In the presence of their mothers the children are well-behaved, the mothers give us snacks and sometimes get involved in the lesson, the home atmosphere is inducive to comfort and familiarity and the whole lesson goes well. Unfortunately in Korea this charming sort of activity is illegal and they deport people for it. The legal system--teaching in an "academy" is what for me was a nightmare: in the classroom the children were unruly, I was totally incapable of imposing discipline, and nothing got done. The parents incidentally pay far more for this than they paid me for coming to their home; I got paid far less; and the children had to trudge to yet another school--this system was legal.

Anyway.....About Chinese univs. The year I first went was the year of the SARS scare and I think they were grateful to get anyone, but my impression even now is that if you have a Bachelor's you'll be able to find something. I don't think there was a single teacher there who had a TESOL license, and there were a few who didn't have any prior experience either. In fact this university--a very good one by the way--has a program with Princeton in which that establishment sends them two or three new graduates every year.

About JET--a good friend of mine from university did JET for two years, he loved it, and I've often wondered whether I ought to have done something similar myself. The great thing about it seems to be, that it gives you a chance to be in Japan without competing for jobs at the various academies. It willl definitely give you that golden thing, experience, which, except in a few places, counts for far more on a resume than any certificate. And, since a Chinese univ. will not give any support or involvement at all, something like JET which, I assume, does give some structure and guidance might be a good place to start.

[Tainan]

Clarification--It is only in Korea and, possibly, Taiwan, that the experience I described of teaching children in their homes "illegally" is subject to real risk of deportation. I cannot imagine anyone being deported from China for doing such work--every foreign teacher whom I knew in China was doing such jobs on the side and I never heard half a syllable to suggest that there was any danger in it.

[englishmaster]

For a CELTA, you could try ECC Bangkok, which runs a decent training program, and, I believe, is some help in getting a job in Thailand.

For Indonesia, why don't you try English First, which offers training as well as lots of jobs in that country (see international job board)?

Sorry I don't know the web addresses of the above outfits offhand, but they are both certainly worth a google.

Good luck.

[gajackson1]

obviously, the job *is* the priority - but just in case you were thinking about Korea, I ran across a cool thread re: surfing in Jeju.

I visited there several times, did some scuba diving, too. I have NO idea what it would be like to live/work there for a year, but a maybe???

http://www.globalsurfers.com/read_thread.cfm?ForumID=Japan&ThreadID=2627&Thread=697

[Carll101]

[mobrien86]

Japan interests me but I am a bit put off by the expensive cost of living- and mainly I mean food. In HK and the other places I visited, I loved being able to eat out every meal for just as cheap as staying in. I'm a huge fan of street food. Korea might be better on that front- and Jeju does look quite beautiful, so I'll try to check that out. Surfing in Japan and Korea actually looks more viable than I thought originally!

I think you all are right in suggesting things with a bit of structure for me. I want an adventure but I do worry about being a lonely young foreigner with no companions...

As for Thailand, I guess I didn't include it on my list of preferred places to teach because I did not really like Bangkok when I went. I was only there for a few days but it felt very seedy to me, as well as touristy. As opposed to my preferred cities of HK and Kuala Lumpur, both of which I really enjoyed and felt very safe within, but at the same time felt exciting to me. Also the Bangkok locals seemed very jaded by the tourism, whereas I found locals in KL, for example, extremely friendly. I also had a horrible visit to Pattaya in which my female friends and I, in our naivete, thought we were going to a nice beach town and were disgusted by sex tourism when we got there (but that's another story)...

I am only listing my personal tastes in the hopes that people can help me determine places that might be a good fit.

[Jati]

I can vouch for Kuala Lumpur as an interesting place to live and work provided you can avoid commuter hell as much as possible. Choosing to live downtown, close to work, or at least within walking distance of mass transit (Monorail, LRT), can make a big difference in one's outlook on life and work.

If you want the tropics, you may be hard-pressed to find someplace better than Malaysia, save the surfing. (There is some smallish surf off the east coast: Kemaman, Kerteh).

All else considered, you can avoid the pitfalls of Thailand (sex tourism), Indonesia (bombings), and the Philippines (low pay). Of the other countries, perhaps only Laos and Vietnam would give Malaysia competition for overall quality of life.

[malu]

[fat_chris]

[jahson4]

I'm currently teaching in Korea and will probably stay an additional year so I can continue my Korean classes. I'm interested in studying Chinese to a degree of fluency, but I'd also like to make enough money to save some. If I wanted to learn Mandarin, should I go to Taiwan or China? I know Taiwan has their own dialect, but I've read you could still study standard Mandarin.

[dharma86]

I think most of the population of Taiwan speak Mandarin, with a very large proportation being able to speak Taiwanese aswel!