Job Discussion Forums

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

I have an online Master's in Writing and work in curriculum development. Can I get a job in the United Arab Emirates with those qualifications? I have an American passport.

It's Scary! · Joined: 17 Apr 2011 Posts: 823

No. Stick to Far East Asia. Hate to be abrupt, but facts be facts.

It's Scary!

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

It depends on the rest of your qualifications, I'd say... in particular your classroom experience. If you've got some good years teaching writing... like first year comp in US universities, you might have a chance at the American University in Sharjah. They have a large writing program.

With good experience, you might also look at the American University in Kuwait and American University in Cairo. Personally I would choose AUC because it is the most interesting country to live in... especially right now. Cool

But if it is a new online MA and none of your experience is in teaching basic Academic writing, I'd agree with It's Scary.

VS

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

No, but I have professional experience as a writer. Would professional writing samples with an online degree in writing get me anywhere?

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

Not really... they don't care if you can write well or not. What they want is a teacher who knows how to teach very low level students how to write an academic essay and do a research paper without just cutting and pasting off the net. It is a specific skill - particularly in the Middle East with Arabic speakers, and to be honest, the teacher's writing ability is irrelevant. Crying or Very sad

Sorry...

VS

Maria Redwine · Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 13

The students are not short of personal charm and they communicate well but generally show no interest in reading, writing or accuracy. Are they like students all over the world?

At HCT, I remember that students struggled with grammar mistakes in every sentence, couldn't spell a lot of even basic words (pleas, plaise, plaic, becus, bekose,) no matter how much they needed to use these words, or how many times you corrrected them. As for ideas, coherence, paragraphing, punctuation,....

HCT made up for this by rewarding them double, I think, the marks for communication, adding on another big chunk for doing the task more or less, so that by the time you got to looking at their actual language, you had a set-up where they could pass. Semi literate messages got a student through foundations as long as the reader could kinda guess the meaning. An elementary school student elsewhere in the world would have been disgraced for producing such garbled garbage. These successful students exit foundations and go on to take diplomas or so called higher (than what?) diplomas, and now they tell me degrees. I even heard of masters and doctors programs! What next? Aviation?

From friends and from my reading: I keep hearing bad stories about how things have gone from bad to worse to worst since I left. Things could be a whole lot better if they invested more wisely in teachers and education and saw through the charlatan consultants and managers who cash in on the UAE educational system and milk it dry while contributing nothing to it.

Please don't go there. It may turn you against students, against writing, against realistic goals in education. Go and enjoy teaching in a place where you and your students love to learn and write. You and your skills will be much more valued elsewhere.

Middle East Beast · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 836 Location: Up a tree

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

I want to leave Taiwan. I will see what I come up with. I may take a one year tour of China.

helenl · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 1202

But don't the students have to pass either the PET or IELTS at a certain level before they can graduate from HCT - both those exams are assessed outside the HCT system and therefore can't be artificially inflated right? Or has it changed in the past few years?

adorabilly · Joined: 20 May 2006 Posts: 430 Location: Ras Al Khaimah

eha · Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 355 Location: ME

'Things could be a whole lot better if they invested more wisely in teachers and education and saw through the charlatan consultants and managers who cash in on the UAE educational system and milk it dry while contributing nothing to it'

You mean the charlatans who have undermined education everywhere... not only in the Gulf; it had to come from somewhere... and substituted soulless, mindless, tick-box checklists for achievement, & 'objectives' for 'educational vision'? Those charlatans? Well, don't blame the Gulf; we let them get away with it where it all started, and now it's all beyond redemption...