Job Discussion Forums

[malcoml]

I'm thinking of teaching in Japan with Nova. I'll tell you why. There is an add in our local paper asking for want to be teachers with no experience. The only requirement is 12 years of English schooling. The add then goes on to say you will be paid $37 000- $49 000 Australian dollars. This depends on location and hours worked. It says the max hours worked would be 35 hours.
I need to know can you live in Japan on this much money and is this really what they offer. I have read a lot on the school and quite like it because it seems to be more of a conversation school rather than a hard grammer school. This would suit me as I'm terrible at spelling but come across well in conversations and I'm usually the first one at the pub who is talking to the foreign tourists.

[Glenski]

Read what I wrote in the thread asking for "positive experiences", to give you an idea of how much money you'll have to play around with after paying for basic necessities. Basically, you'll have 125,000 yen/month for anything else. If you are loose with your money, you can easily spend it all. If you are a money-efficient person, you may be able to save 100,000 of that. Most people are probably dead in the middle of that amount for savings. It also depends on whether you have outstanding debts back home (student loans, car payments, mortgage, etc.).

NOVA is the largest conversation school in Japan. Study its web site to learn just what classes are like. Basically, you sit in a cubicle next to other teachers in cubicles, and you have about 4-5 students per class. From what I gather, you don't get the same students in that time slot because they are allowed to sign up for whatever day and time they can make (or like). You follow the company's prescribed teaching format (which was just changed this year for most classes), which pretty much just tries to elicit speaking from students, and in the process you reinforce or reteach some grammar they may have learned. Japanese study English for 6 years in junior and senior high school, but there is very little oral communication focus there, so conversation schools try to pick up the slack on that (and make money in the process).

[PAULH]