Job Discussion Forums

[bbeye]

Well, yes haller_79 go ahead and apply to teach Shakespeare and etymology - that would be absolutely hilarious because no one teaches that at any uni in Vietnam. What's the matter with you? Why the facetious response? You that disappointed that you may be overqualified to work in a language school?

Those with advanced degrees can and should apply for lecturer positions to teach academic courses in Communications or Marketing or other Business courses where the focus is on the students acquiring competence in understanding and developing appropriate business/financial documentation and communications for an international audience where the lingua franca is English. That is a great job for experienced EFL professionals with advanced degrees and business/corporate experience.

If you have an undergrad degree and some kind of ESL certificate and a few years experience at language schools then apply to the RMIT English department - You will fit right in and that's exactly who they like to hire. Of course, you'll work 2X as hard as a lecturer for the same pay and that's because the English department is a language school inside RMIT and not subject to university regulations or HR procedures etc. (But I've explained all that...)

Those with more experience and qualifications and professional/academic preferences are unlikely to get hired by the English department at RMIT and would be better off applying to the university, not the language school. The lecturer positions require an MA and offer certain career opportunities; the English language teacher positions just require an undergraduate degree and offer a bare minimum of career advancement opportunities. It's that simple, no need to get in a huff about it.

[haller_79]

Ok guy no hard feelings, but what you described doesn't sound like the English dept but the Commerce dept of a uni, in my experience Asian students are brilliant at the numbers and business side of things, it's the speaking of English they have the most problem with and I don't see the difference between academic support and a language mill in giving them that practise.

[bbeye]

I don't understand where you're coming from on this. What the heck are you annoyed about? This thread is about RMIT. The synopsis provided explains what the English department in the Centre of Language and Learning located at RMIT in Vietnam is all about - and it is accurate. It also explains why so many highly qualified EFL job applicants rarely receive a follow-up (that's a telling refection on the English dept's management and admin style as well).

You don't want to believe that's the way things are? You annoyed at RMIT because their English program that contracts "teachers" is equivalent to a language mill and has no relation whatsoever to RMIT university's academic undergrad programs that contract "lecturers" to deliver sessions in Bachelor of Business (Accountancy), Bachelor of Business (Business Information Systems), Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Communication (Professional Communication), Bachelor of Design (Multimedia Systems), and Bachelor of Information Technology?

RMIT lecturers spend inordinate amounts of time teaching those undergrad students how to analyse/research/compose appropriate business resources/materials in English for those academic courses. RMIT also provides university skills workshops (not part of the English department) for the undergrad students that are specially designed to give them the business and appropriate academic English skills they need to succeed in their academic courses. The English department doesn't prepare students for that - it teaches students how to speak about/listen to Aussi restaurant menu selections, what to say when visiting the doctor, and where to go on vacation. The English program also teaches them to write 500-word essays complete with 1-sentence simplified thesis statements and the formulaic 3-5 paragraph structure for heaven's sake. Nothing to do with the university's undergrad courses.

A better job for any EFL/ESL professional with the right qualifications is in the academic side of the university as a "lecturer" - a much better job than those "teacher" positions offered in the Centre's English language school program.

I don't know if you just don't like to hear what RMIT is up to, but I think your annoyance/frustration would be better directed at RMIT, not here.

[londo]

'bbye' do you still work there?....doesn't SHE still work there?
hope SHE doesn't read this board

[bbeye]

MOD EDIT
It's of no consequence if SHE (and there are 2 "SHEs" - 1 for each city) works there and SHE(s) does read this board.

What can SHE(s) possibly do that hasn't already been done (and is being done) as part the language centre's modus operandi? Forward and circulate all this among admin/management staff as part of the preamble to blindsiding (err... bullying) the usual and not-so-usual suspects? Hmmm, no surprises there mate.

It all just makes room for one more new hire. And here we all are full circle - back to the real point of this thread

[govietnamgo]

I am currently working in the English program RMIT, and have been teaching here for nearly 4 years. I find RMIT Vietnam to be an excellent place to work. In fact, I would say it is one the best if not the best places to teach in Vietnam in terms of pay and benefits, working conditions, support for teachers, and career development. So, I take it personally when �bbeye� disparages the teachers working here, as well as the students. The �information� put forth by bbeye is, to put it bluntly, a bunch of BS, posted by what appears to be a negative, vindictive individual (who may or may not have ever worked at RMIT) and who seems to have a need make himself feel better by trashing others.
As a teacher who actually works at RMIT right now, I would like to address a few of the issues raised:

�the materials and teaching methodology is (sic) so archaic and poorly designed that you still need to extensively supplement your classes from countless other resources

I�m not sure how you can have an archaic and poorly designed teaching methodology, so I will assume this refers solely to the course material. Have any of us every worked with course material that did not have to be supplemented? I don�t think so. It would be nice if someone would develop the perfect set of course books in which all material could be used in all contexts with no need to supplement. I have not come across this as of yet. Also consider the fact that it is positive to have the flexibility (and time) to be able to supplement a core text with outside material that fits our own style of teaching, but still meets objectives.
The course books at RMIT Vietnam come from Melbourne, and yes some of the material is outdated and not as internationalized as it could be ( the teachers know this, the management know this --- nobody is denying it). However, I have an MA in TESOL and 10 years teaching experience in Australia and Asia, and the course material at RMIT is as good as any place I have taught. In addition, over the past 2 years the course material for RMIT Vietnam has been renewed, and by early next year, there will be a new curriculum at all levels, created jointly by a team from Melbourne and RMIT Vietnam. This should address some of the shortcomings in the present curriculum.

Is there good support � in short no, not from the department and certainly not from the university itself.

The English program sits within the Centre of Communication and Design at RMIT Vietnam. All English teachers on a salaried contract receive EXACTLY the same pay and benefits as the lecturers in the degree programs. Those who are paid at an hourly rate receive all the benefits given to salaried English teachers (and the lecturers), but are obviously paid by the hour rather than given a salary. All the information regarding pay and benefits is available on the website. You need a relevant MA or DELTA to get a contract with a salary, and those without an MA, or with less experience teaching Academic English are paid on an hourly rate. Also consider that at RMIT all of your hours are at the same school and there are no classes on weekends or at night. Bbeye maintains that there are other �foreign universities and language schools in Vietnam�, that can �match and exceed� what is offered at RMIT. Please let us all know where these places are bbeye, as they appear to simply be a figment of your imagination. What if offered at RMIT Vietnam is as good as it gets in Vietnam.
And, again, I repeat, there is no difference in support between English teachers and Lecturers in the degree program. All of us are employees of RMIT Vietnam and we all get the same support from the HR department should there be any issues at work/outside of work that need to be addressed. Any notion that the English teachers are at the bottom of the pecking order is simply false. At every university that contains an English program there will be some esteem issues on the part of some English teachers (feeling slighted by the fact that they are called teachers rather than lecturers). This is unfortunate, as we should all take pride in the jobs we are doing realize the positive impact we have on our students.
In terms of professional development, bbye seems incensed that the lecturers in the degree programs get �a two week training period in HCM and have the opportunity to take many professional and career developing courses over time�. This two week �training period� consists of a basic induction to the university, time for course preparation, and some basic teacher training(they are not required to have a teaching qualification). The teacher training part would be completely unnecessary for English teachers who already have a CELTA. New teachers in the English program receive a three day (paid) induction period, which is completely adequate given they do not need teacher training and would not need much preparation time.
As for the �opportunity to take many professional and career developing courses over time� which bbye seems to think English teachers are missing out on, this is simply nonsense. All English teachers and lecturers have the opportunity to take the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning for free (4 courses over 4 semesters). This is the only for credit teaching credential offered at RMIT Vietnam, and again it is offered to everyone. All English teachers and lecturers can apply for $4000 a year in profession development funds to support further education, short courses, conferences, etc.. There is nothing available to a lecturer that is not available to English teachers.

Notoriously poor and contentious management styles in both Hanoi and HCMC/dictatorial coordinators and managers/acerbic management style

Once again, this is complete nonsense. There are approximately 110 teachers working in Hanoi and HCMC, teaching around 1200 to 1500 students. It takes good management to keep a program this size running smoothly and effectively. Yes, as in any organization, there are some issues with management, but to me they seem relatively minor. There will always be room for improvement, no management team is perfect. But, the managers I deal with are all professional, and the program is run efficiently and effectively, which is no small feat for a relatively large organization.
There will always be people who grumble about having to teach early morning classes/not being able to take leave at exactly the time they wish to/having to tuck in their shirt /not being able to wear flip flops to class. There will always be people who complain for one reason or another. However, if you are a dedicated, responsible teacher who cares about your students, works hard, works well in a team oriented environment, works to continuously improve your teaching, then you will thrive at RMIT Vietnam. If you do just the minimum to prepare for classes, often call in sick/arrive late with a hangover, don�t care to work on a team/ with other people, don�t really take an interest in your students and their needs, then you might run into problems with the managers at RMIT Vietnam. The tone of bbeye's post makes me think he fell/falls into the latter group.

The program does not have a good reputation among the Vietnamese

What is the basis for this statement? Has there been a reputable survey done to back up this �general feeling� that RMIT does not have a good reputation? Or is it just bbeye�s opinion? If this is in fact the case, then how has the university (degree programs) managed to grow from 70 students in 2001 to the current 5000 students in 2010. How has the English program managed to grow to nearly 1200 students in Hanoi and HCMC?
The fact is that RMIT Vietnam is not cheap (for Vietnamese people), with tuition around $20,000 for an undergraduate degree. So, it has, understandably, been labelled as a university for wealthy students. It would also be understandable for people who have neither the money nor the English skills to attend the university to label the university as a place for rich/not to smart. However, this unfair reputation has little to do with the actual quality of the programs.

The Vietnamese do not consider RMIT a top ranking university in Vietnam

I thought this discussion was about the English program. What is the point of talking about top ranking universities in Vietnam?
If you want to have a discussion about the overall reputation of RMIT Vietnam, once again, there has not been an objective study on how the Vietnamese public view RMIT Vietnam. So, bbeye�s view is just one person�s (not Vietnamese) view about how Vietnamese people view the university. If I were to say that Vietnamese people view RMIT Vietnam as the best university in Vietnam, then that statement would be equally valid.
What I would be interested in knowing is how the HR managers of multinational companies doing business in Vietnam (Toyota, Unilever, Intel, Saatchi &Saatchi, Colgate Palmolive) view RMIT Vietnam graduates. Who would they rather hire, students graduating from a Vietnamese university or graduates of RMIT Vietnam?

Teachers are berated if anyone fails their course, and it is the department�s published plan to raise the pass rate and ensure that no one fails.

Once again, this is just plain false. The pass rates are generally 75-80% across all of the levels. Every class I teacher is different. Sometimes the pass rate is 90%, sometimes it is 60%. There is never any push by management to massage these numbers in any way, and never any blame or �berating� if the pass rate is low. As would be the case in any well run institution, a class with a very low pass rate might raise some red flags, so if this is the case, it will be looked into.
As for some �published plan� to raise the pass rate, this is simply another falsehood. If there is a �published plan� why not put it in your [post bbeye, or show us link? You won�t/can�t , because it does not exist. Students are assessed in all four skill areas at mid course and end of course. If they get over 60% across every skill area, then they pass the course and move on to the next level. If they don�t pass in all four skill areas, they don�t move on. This is the way the program operates ------ very straightforward. The purpose of the English program is to thoroughly prepare students to enter the degree programs at RMIT Vietnam. That is the goal we all work towards, and there is never any talk of speeding this process up by passing students that have not achieved a passsing mark.

You should take note that RMIT�s 5-year plan includes a reduction of these English courses and a phasing out of the department in Vietnam-you can find these documents through the Internet if you know where to look.

Why don�t you just show us where to look, or give us the link? The answer is because this information is once again complete nonsense. Why would RMIT do this? Why would it give up the revenue that comes from the English programs?

If you are an academic and have an MA or many years experience, take this warning and go elsewhere as you will not survive in this non-academic venue.

A significant percentage of the English teaching staff have a Master�s degree, and many have �many years of experience�. I�m not sure what is meant by �if you are an academic�. RMIT Vietnam does not offer teachers the opportunity to do research, and nobody here is working on their PhD. If you want to teach linguistics, then RMIT Vietnam is certainly not the right place to work.

Those of you with professional or academic qualifications, experience, or designations won�t have much luck getting a job in the English department because they don�t really want you, contrary to what their advertisements might claim. As I said, they hire young and inexperienced and minimally qualified ESL teachers. The more malleable and hungry you are, the better.

Again, complete nonsense. Like any quality program, people are hired based on the quality/suitability of their resume and their ability to get through an interview. The program looks to hire they best people that it can possibly (not everyone is jumping to head off to a 3rd world country to teach ESL!). It is absolutely ludicrous to think there is some sort of sinister plot at RMIT Vietnam to hire young inexperienced, minimally qualified teachers that can be controlled like puppets. What kind of program would such a thing?????
The program looks to hire they best people that it can, period. Like any large ESL program, among the 80 teachers I work with in Ho Chi Minh City there is a mix of younger people who may have completed their CELTA a few years back( but have experience in an Academic English environment), as well as people in their 40�s and 50�s with an MA + CELTA and many years of teaching experience teaching all over the world. Many people on this site complain about not being able to get an interview with RMIT Vietnam. It might be convenient for these people to think that this is because RMIT only hires young and inexperienced teachers. But, consider the fact that the opposite may be true, that RMIT Vietnam is only interested in interviewing people who have a solid background teaching Academic English ----- those with the theoretical underpinnings of an MA, in addition to the solid background in Academic English, this is even better (an MA in TESOL or applied linguistics does little to prepare people for teaching Academic English at a university). If you have only taught listening/speaking in Japan or Korea, if you have been in some dodgy language centre in China, if you have spent 5 years teaching conversational English in Thailand ----- then you most likely will not get an interview.


You�ll be entitled to 20 days paid vacation in addition to standard Vietnamese holidays, but you will not be permitted to take all 20 days vacation at one time and certainly not during the busy summer period when all the high school students are �.

English courses at RMIT Vietnam run 10 weeks, 20 hours a week. Teachers will have one or two weeks of down time before they begin each new course. That is how the program runs. So, it is best if teachers take their leave during the down weeks. Teachers are asked to work within that system if at all possible, and, with up to 100 teachers, you can understand it is extremely hard to schedule everyone�s leave if people are wanting to take leave in the middle of a 10 week course that they are teaching. It is possible for teachers to take longer blocks of leave, in the summertime for example. Contrary to what bbeye says, the summertime is in fact the slow time. The fall is the busy time of year (as is the case in most countries) when high school students start entering university. If people want to take extended leave, this is certainly possible, and I see it happen frequently. But, it is important for the school and the individual to work together to find a way to do this.

As for the incessant advertising: both HCM and Hanoi have had notoriously high turnover rates for years, and the need to advertise every week or month is not simply attributable to an increase in student enrolment.

When I started teaching at RMIT Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City about 4 years ago there were about 25 teachers in HCMC. Now there about 80 teachers here in HCMC and this will most likely grow to about 120 teachers in the fall when the high school students start to enrol. The reason you have seen RMIT advertising on Dave�s ESL Caf� for so long has nothing to do with high turnover. The turnover rate is in fact very low, with most teachers staying for several years, because, to be honest, this is a very good place to work. The advertising is required because the English program will need to hire something like 50-60 teachers between Hanoi and HCMC in the period from July to October. To get that many high quality teachers requires a lot of advertising and a lot of interviewing.

Well, I have written half a novel and have not even fully addressed all of the nonsense written by bbeye. However, I am going to stop here.
What is written here comes from someone who presently works at RMIT Vietnam and not a disgruntle individual with an axe to grind. I like my present job, and I have learned a lot about teaching Academic English in the time I have spent at RMIT Vietnam. The English Program at RMIT has some issues, like every place you will ever work in, and you can be sure that living in Vietnam will be a challenging, thought generally rewarding experience. But, the bottom line is the English program at RMIT Vietnam is a high quality, professionally run program that cares about the quality of teaching and learning.

[silvery]

Thanks to those who have commented.

"Govietnamgo", I have a question, if you wouldn't mind.

The RMIT website states, "All students who complete the Academic English Program to Advanced 2 ... meet the English requirements for entry to all RMIT University Bachelors and Masters Degree programs."

and

"Students who have achieved an IELTS 6.5 with no band < 6.0 are also eligible to gain direct entry into Undergraduate Degree programs."

(http://www.rmit.org.au/browse;ID=t7xkgeamkwgg)

In your view, do all the students who complete the Academic English program have an IELTS level of 6.5 with no band < 6?

[bbeye]

Good question Silvery. I�m just going to interrupt here with a response to the emotional diatribe from �go-vietnam-go�- a person (or is it �SHE� herself?) so in love with HCM and Vietnam and his perceived position of power that he attempts to refute my statements by not only personally attacking a ghost on a forum, but by playing the �I challenge the ghost� i.e., the �prove it� game � Ah, you can�t imagine how pleased I am to see the familiar RMIT admin/management strategies applied in a forum. But let me point out where our friend�s rhetoric has gone wrong:

�the materials and teaching methodology is (sic) so archaic and poorly designed that you still need to extensively supplement your classes from countless other resources

And our friend�s answer confirms what I stated:

[deadlift]

[bbeye]

Well it isn't worth much, but so be it. Neverthess what I've stated is accurate and govietnamgo hasn't been at all honest in his rebuttal. He has to defend his job, and that's fine, but he's ad homineam approach and his lack of honesty (or perhaps his knowledge) of how the university runs puts him squarely in a very weak position. Let's face it, RMIT Vietnam now has to compete with the new foreign universities entering the Vietnamese market. Wait and see what happens.