Job Discussion Forums

[Ai]

I�d like to put a question out there to those of you who have university jobs. I�m currently working in an eikaiwa and I really want get out of that line of teaching and get a university position. I realize that it may be too late to get a position for April 2007, so I�d like to get one for April 2008. I was wondering if anyone could give advice for how to improve my chances and beef up my CV.

Here�s a bit of background on me:

I�m in my mid 20s. I have a BA in foreign languages (French and Spanish) and more importantly an MA in TEFL.
I have two years of teaching experience one in Japan (at an eikaiwa) and the other year in Europe (part time in a university and part time at a high school).
I have no publications. I did write an MA thesis but it was not published.
My Japanese is limited. (But I�m working on it!)

Here�s what I�ve done so far to try to improve my chances:

I�m studying Japanese, taking 2 classes a week.
I joined JALT in hope to make connections and hopefully to motivate me to write something publishable.
I�ve attended a few workshops/conferences on teaching/research methods.

Also it seems that there is a bit of a catch-22 when I look at the university job listings. I found that many jobs require that you already have experience teaching at a university in Japan as a basic requirement. So how do you get the experience if you don�t have experience?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[taikibansei]

[Gordon]

I think you are aware of some of your deficiencies and seem to be doing the right things. Your lack of teaching experience is one drawback.

I can't emphasize enough about how important connections are and you will still have to apply for tons of job openings. Go to the Jalt conference in Fukuoka in 2 weeks time.

Try to get some p/t jobs as that will get your foot in the door and give you that uni expereince you need for a f/t job.

[Glenski]

I don't recall seeing university experience as part of the teaching experience necessary when I got my job this year. Perhaps I overlooked that, but I would say that 2 things to help you out, aside from learning more Japanese, would be...

1. publish anything and everything you can (get at least 3 publications out soon!), and
2. get better experience than at eikaiwa. You might want to see if you can get a private HS job and/or some PT work at universities, junior colleges, technical schools, or private HS's. Not sure how you would manage all of that timewise or visa-wise. Perhaps going on self-sponsorship would be the ticket.

Also, I think it is a good idea to use organizations such as JALT to network. Many university jobs are not widely advertised.

May I ask how you completed an MA degree without writing a thesis?

[Ai]

Thanks for the advice. I�ll try to apply for some part-time uni jobs for April (if it�s not too late). I still have about 2 years left on my visa so I won�t have to worry about finding someone to sponsor me.

[Chris21]

The Temple library in their Azabu building has plenty of TEFL materials. You might also try online... GoogleBook has a lot of useful stuff digitized and available online for free.

Probably the two things you'll need to do are get PT experience and at least 3 publications (as has been pointed out). The publications don't need to be great... simple book reviews and lesson plans published in The Language Teacher or an in-house university magazine will suffice. For starting out, I'd say quantity (3-5 publications) is much more important than quality.

[wintersweet]

I'm not sure if non-members can view it, but TESOL has a page on professional development that includes suggestions of places to try getting published:

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/seccss.asp?CID=277&DID=1766

Of course, joining TESOL is a good idea, too.

And here is a list of online applied linguistics/TESOL journals and collections of articles:
http://englishstudydirect.com/OSAC/ebookappling.htm

[Gordon]