Job Discussion Forums

[cormac]

I've been scanning the Japan forums a lot recently, and I noticed that most comments said that experience gained outside of Japan wasn't really considered useful by employers. I was wondering if its common in other countries also?

I guess its just that I'm starting my ESL career and while i have a year in China, I'd like to make sure that further experience i gain can be used anywhere. I'm assuming that experience gained in Japan is useful regardless of where you end up, more so than say experience gained in China.

Thanks for any info.
[I did try the search function, but only got blank pages each time I attempted.]

[denise]

It depends on what kind of jobs you look for. If you go for university courses, for example, then conversation classes (in any other country) likely won't help. If you're sticking with similar jobs but just moving countries, then your experience should help.

And then there are the countries that want to know that you can handle their cultures. Previous experience in the Middle East looks good on your CV if you want to apply for other Middle East jobs.

d

[spiral78]

Approaches and methods and students in Asia are quite different to those in many other parts of the world. One of the least effective teachers I worked with at a Canadian uni was a woman who'd taught (presumably successfully) at a Japanese uni for 15 years. She was unable to shift styles.

In a practical sense, experience earned in Asia may (or may not) be seen as a big plus by employers in other parts of the world.

It's interesting that experience gained in one Asian country may not be so useful in another....that's new info to me (I've never purported to know much about the region).

[fluffyhamster]

As Denise says, it depends on the job - private high schools and unis will tend to want people who have experienced Japan already, whilst eikaiwa (conversation schools) and some AET dispatch agencies have seemed (at least up until to the ongoing recession - can't really say since) quite willing to take on people with little or no experience, probably because they are likely to be more malleable.

Anyway, regardless of the exact sort of job, I would say from my experience of teaching in both China and Japan that the Japanese are less linguistically able than the Chinese, and less interested in being pushed to genuinely learn, so they do then rather insist on having more provisos (i.e. 'Use kid gloves') in place generally, which could account for the slight 'You must understand and appreciate Japanese students, and thus have experience of teaching them' that you seem to be encountering.

I must say however that regardless of what some Japanese employers might demand, I myself am not too sure about how much approaches and methods in Asia are SO different to those in many other parts of the world (I mean, most EFL teachers are steeped in and roughly following, if not explicitly trained in, broadly communicative methods nowadays), and I can see no real reason why one could not develop professionally in Asia as much as elsewhere (in fact, I have argued previously that ELT in places like the UK is no great shakes and often quite inimical to any "reinventing the wheel", any deviation from "approved" materials and methods, no matter how justified or helpful such reinvention or deviation could be for the teacher if not the students too). Teaching in Asia certainly never stopped me from giving various things a fair bit of thought, but returning to the UK certainly did!

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

It's a major problem in Canada (and probably also the US). Getting prior experience and education recognized is one of the major hurtles of immigrants in Canada (think of the stereotype of doctors driving cabs). It is also faced by people who have been overseas to teach when they return to Canada.

That's why in the EFL area, people usually fall under one of two broad categories: those who have been teaching in the same country for years, and have hopefully moved up the EFL ladder; and those who have worked for a year or two in country A, then a year or two in country B etc for many years- each time sort of 'starting over' [though in reality they aren't newbies, and after being in the country for a year or two can often jumped ahead of other people, if they decide to stay]. Neither path is 'better' than the other, and both have advantages and disadvantages. It depends what you want. Some people go by region, like 'Southeast Asia', as well (but that doesn't fly in Japan, where there is a 'we Japanese are different' stereotype among many Japanese people) .

[Glenski]

[fluffyhamster]

"The culture is different" - yes, and some inherent contradictions show it to be so: 'Communication' is a buzzword de jour, but rote learning (and grammar-translation etc) is what actually rules the roost. Not that there'd necessarily be a contradiction in rote learning that truly prepared for communication, but the Japanese usually don't even get the facts/norms of usage right, which makes one realize that they aren't actually really that interested in communicating (at least, not so much in English)! Ultimately there is a desire in all that for isolation, IMHO.