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[Mark Loyd]

Ghost on the Asia forum:





Joined: 30 Jan 2003
Posts: 594

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 9:31 am Post subject: Worst and best in Asia

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It depends on what your criteria are. But from an overall perspective, Taiwan does not win a lot of kudos from this poster - and the money is not the factor, but rather the quality of life, or the lack thereof, which can make Taiwan a boring place outside (and inside) of class.

The problem with Taiwan is that (in this poster's case) most of the students dealt with lack imagination, curiosity and basic spark and this makes teaching most students in Taiwan a rather dull affair.

Whether it is teaching in the Buxibans where students only learn in the rote memorization way, to the High Schools where most of the students are burnt out and sleep in class, to adult conversation classes, this teacher has found that teaching was a drag compared to most other locales.

So in Taiwan - the money earned is very decent, and one can save, but the students and the general atmosphere is dull/boring/uninspiring...

Vietnamese students are brighter, more curious about the world, and are culturally more aware of what is going on. In Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, you can teach some interesting adult classes and most of the students are bright, and certainly more animated than many of the human robots one encounters in Taiwan.

In Cambodia/Laos/Thailand - if you teach adults, they tend to come from a middle to upper middle class background, and they are quite interesting to teach, but less so than the Vietnamese.

In Thailand, if you teach children, they tend to come from wealthy families, and are often rather spoiled, blase and unenthusiastic.....like most other children. However, if you teach in a public school system, the Thai children are more interesting and dynamic.

Have not taught in Korea or Japan, but would guess that Japan would be better than Korea.

Ghost in Taichung, Taiwan.

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