Job Discussion Forums

[seattlite137]

Hello everyone! I live in Seattle and I'm looking for any additional information about my chances for teaching English in Russia generally, and more specifically Siberia, especially Irkutsk. I have a BA in Linguistics with a double major in Russian, and a graduate level seminar in TESL. Have a TINY amount of temp teaching experience, but have extensive training background.
BUT, that was back in early '80s and I've been busy running my own small (unrelated) businesses in the interim. Now, though, I've closed up everything and want to spend the rest of my career life (next 10-15 yrs) teaching English. I'm 55 years old, but in very good health.

I've been reading lots of posts, but see very little on TESL/TEFL in eastern Russia. I spent several years in Alaska (year-round) so am not worried about conditions in Siberia.

I've applied only to EF for now but haven't heard back from them (it's been about 6 wks) and am thinking I need to apply to several different places. I'm seriious enough about this that I'd go just about anywhere (except middle east) to get started.

How about it??

[jpvanderwerf2001]

I'm not so sure there's an EF in Irkutsk; or if there was, it was long ago. I have been there a number of times in the past three years and never heard of one.
Irkutsk has a highly reputable Foreign Languages Institute, supposedly the best of its kind west of Moscow. You might want to see if you can look them up.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

http://www.islu.ru/
That's their web site. Email: [email protected]
Good luck!

[seattlite137]

Thank you for the info & I will look them up. I had applied to EF just to start looking for jobs anywhere in Russia, since I guess they have the largest number of schools. By the way, in the hundreds of posts I've read so far their name doesn't come up very often it seems to me - is there a reason for that?? And is it better for these Russia-specific questions to be here or on the newbie-board? I do appreciate any information anyone might have.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

As far as I understand it, EF has reduced the number of its school significantly in the Russian market. The word on the street is that they are going to focus only on larger cities (1 million plus).
Therefore, I would think Novosibirsk would be the best possibility for an EF position in Siberia.
Good luck!

[seattlite137]

Thanks, jp.

[coledavis]

No guarantees but if you translate a search term into Russian and look up language schools in Irkutsk on a search engine, you might find the names of some language schools there.

[seattlite137]

Thanks, CD, I'll definitely follow up.