Job Discussion Forums

[furiousmilksheikali]

Well, I take it the ad should be taken literally but I completely agree with dmb and tedkarma's comments. I know teachers who brag about the length of time they have spent teaching and use it as an excuse for incorrigibility:

"Don't tell me how to teach I've been teaching this way for 83 years and I know what I'm doing..."

These teachers are invariably awful at their job.

[rusmeister]

To clarify my earlier comments:
1) Most teachers find teaching beginners more difficult for the first couple of years that they do it (How many teachers stay in overseas TEFL more than a few years?). Understanding the problems of beginners requires a clear understanding of beginning foreign language acquisition, which means they should understand what a person needs to learn FIRST - understanding the structure of English is mandatory and having had at least some experience learning a second language is almost as important.

However, I can agree that the problems of advanced learners are much broader, primarily in terms of detail, as you branch out from grammar into stylistics, whereas within a couple of years even a beginning teacher who perserveres with beginning students should have worked out many of the most important things to be taught and have developed some ideas of how to teach them.
IOW, the teacher of beginners must understand how the tree and main branches are formed; the ToAS must know how to draw the twigs and the leaves.

To the OP:
I solved the problem of classroom hours by thoroughly learning the curriculums I was teaching; once I knew what was to be taught well, I was able to cut out most lesson-planning. (Let's see, we're in unit 6, comparison of present tenses and topic of shopping, or whatever...)
When you're paid by the hour for contact time only, you are strongly encouraged to get real results without wasting a lot of time outside of the classroom. That said, it does take a few years of (FT) exp, working with good materials and colleagues to reach that point. Hopefully, you are developing your own shticks to cover whatever the material isn't covering...

Agree with FMSA that any teacher that is closed to learning something new is likely to be a terrible teacher. The assumptions of teachers who brag like that is that they have nothing more to learn. But I would still insist that all other things being equal, more experience is better.

[fluffyhamster]

Yup, the 'experience' figure is just ballpark to whittle down the number of initial applicants - there are usually more detailed questions later, such as what type and/or level of learners one's taught, using what textbooks etc.

[furiousmilksheikali]

rusmeister:

JTE is Japanese teacher of English.
ALT is assistant language teacher who co-teaches with a JTE in a subordinate role.
Eikaiwa literally means "English conversation" and in this case refers to the chain schools in Japan such as NOVA, GEOS, ECC etc that often have a low reputation for quality teaching. I believe that in Korea the equivalent is a hagwan (or hogwan?)

[rusmeister]