Job Discussion Forums

Longton · Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 148

This company is advertising for native Americans, Canadians, South Africans or Australians.

Brits need not apply! Are native Americans the same as Americans?

mishmumkin · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 929

camelrider · Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 4

Berlitz is not a company that offers much of a package. They pay whatever minimum wage they can get away with. I worked for them in Spain and while I liked the company, they never offered the opportunity for benes of any kind. And I did ask ! because I thought that since they were international, one could teach for them anywhere, moving from country to country when they had a job vacancy...which is true....if you want to sing 'dem spirituals. Smile

Also their methodology is what my students used to refer to as the, "hit you over the head" learning. It consists of endless repetition, ad nauseum replication (did i mention tiresome duplication??) of their pre-set format [sentences/ question-answer] with no expectation of grammar explanation and no room for creativity. Great if you are a new teacher with no ideas, but dreadfully dull otherwise. I think their idea is that anyone can teach with the Berlitz method! Why pay for a professional?

...and my apologies to anyone works for them and I've just royally offended you. ! Just my not-so-humble-opinion.

mishmumkin · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 929

I seem to recall threads on Dave's in the late 90s saying that Berlitz was known in some locations for recording teachers' classes as part of the routine. Something about a tape recorded stuck under the teacher's table....does this sound familiar to anyone?

Miyazaki · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 635 Location: My Father's Yacht

Yeah. There're microphones in the classrooms and the Head Instructor can turn on the microphones and listen to instructors' lessons at any time. They also record lessons on tape.

Instructors are "observed" this way at Berlitz and often, depending on the managment, instructors are not told when they will be listened to.

The instructors walk out after their lesson and the Head Teacher grabs them and hands them an evaluation form to read/sign and then they set up a lesson time where they both go over the avaluation.

Smeone mentioned something about cameras but I've never actually seen cameras in Berlitz classrooms.

At Nakano Berlitz in Tokyo, a Head Teacher would turn on the microphone installed in the teachers' break room. Teachers, for the longest time, didn't know that their conversations were being monitored.

I'm not going to get into all of it here but it truly is a crap company that ranks not much better than working for a place like NOVA.

My $0.02 - AVOID BERLITZ - Anywhere in the world! Laughing

mishmumkin · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 929

The word on the street is that they're offering 10,000 dirhams/month-no accommodation provided. Unless they've moved or expanded, they're located on Beach Road in Jumeirah...no low cost accommodation to be found in that area, though if one were single and didn't mind sharing a villa w/ other strangers, there are that option.