Job Discussion Forums

[kachimama]

Hello,

I've searched for posts re this institute but haven't found anything particularly relevant.

I was wondering if any of you would kindly put me in touch with either someone who has recently worked there - actually, even someone who has ever worked there would do - or someone who is currently still employed at SBC/SBI.

Specifically, I'd like to know if:

1) the current director/manager is the same Palestinian/Jordanian who was there about 4 years ago (I'm unsure whether I can mention his name on these boards...BUT his last name more or less rhymes with Lajee or Wajee or Najee - you get the point)

2) what the pay scale is like for teachers from western countries ($8000 SAR/per month seems terribly low to offer such a teacher)

[trapezius]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Believe it or not, I got into the ME for less that than that in the mid-90's. It has, however, led me to my current employment that makes more than twice that much. I'm not defending that amount, which is low, but sometimes those kinds of jobs lead to greener pastures.

NCTBA

[kachimama]

Trapezius, my thoughts exactly (nice avatar, by the way).

NCTBA, thanks for your meaningful reply. You may have a point, but keep in mind that a riyal in the mid 90s was worth more than a riyal today. So I do wonder whether the salary you made then is historically equivalent in value to the admittedly paltry 8000 today. Honestly, I don't believe a self-respecting ESL instructor with teaching experience should accept that low a salary in Saudi unless he's a a glutton for punishment.

Incidentally, I was recently informed that SBC/SBI would likely offer in the mid-8000 range. So things haven't changed much, apparently.

[freesoul]

Well well, let's see!
A Greek American died with cancer after doing their gig in Yanbu. Another Brit was LITERARY DEPORTED overnight after having a casual chat with one of his students over some Islamic points. That same British is now spending his best personal and professional times in Oman.
Another Danish teacher went through the Labor Office to get Final exit from them, Google for 'Saudi-British Centre' and you will look his name up.
Two Aussies' contract were terminated a couple of months after recruiting them. One turned to have 'Fake' TEFL certificate. The list goes on and on and on����..
Old management or new one! It really doesn�t make a real difference, all you need to do is to balance their low pay and their split shift load; and if you can take, go for it. But I would really advise that you think twice for stepping in there.
By the way, as for the Jordanian/Palestinian manger is no longer working there, but he is still in town though. The management is now firmly controlled by Egyptians, which is enough as a hint, isn�t it!

[Mia Xanthi]

[sheikh radlinrol]

[freesoul]

i think u need 2 read a bit about discourse analysis an' genre. u probably need 2 focus on z content rather than shallow stuff.

Oh! Yeah an' b4 I 4get, 'an' is an indefinite article pre-modifying a singular count noun, so I'm just wondering if (an 8-year old) is ok!!!!

Grammar tip: When you want to refer to an eight-year-old boy, the hyphens should follow the rule for one-thought adjectives. You also need to learn that there are no hyphens used when you position the phrase differently : "The boy is eight years old." You can, however, use hyphens when you want to make the hyphenated phrase a noun, e.g., "He is an eight-year-old." So, the noun boy is understood.

[johnslat]

Dear free-soul.

" . . . so I'm just wondering if (an 8-year old) is ok!!!!"

"So, the noun boy is understood."

Right, so there's no problem.

Regards,
John

[sheikh radlinrol]

[freesoul]

Since our meticulous Shiekh is such a punctuation 'Shiekh', he should have noticed the difference: (an 8-year old) should be (an 8-year-old).

'an 8-year old' ( without a hyphen between year and old) is just wrong in terms of punctuation and GRAMMAR.

[Stephen Jones]

[freesoul]

In hyphenated compound adjectives containing a cardinal or ordinal number and the other noun "8-year period", the adjectival compound should be hyphenated and followed by a count noun. However, having no noun functioning as a head noun ( remember 'old' is not a noun), the whole structure (adjectival phrase ' 8-year-old') functions as noun when ONLY it is ALL hyphenated.

You could use an adjective as a word whose primary function is to describe a noun, or as a word in order to refer to the whole group such as " the rich & the poor", but we definitely cannot say "a ��..rich or a(n) ������..old"

[Stephen Jones]

The BNC doesn't let us distinguish between hyphenated and unhyphenated phrases, so the best corpus we can use is Google. We see both 'eight-year-olds' and 'eight year olds'.

I think it is best to consider 'eight-year-old' as the head noun, rather than 'eight-year' being the modifier and 'old' the head noun.

You are wrong to say that 'eight year old' doesn't function as the head noun unhyphenated. There are simply too many examples of it for us to consider it ungrammatical.

Hyphenation is a field where even the die-hard fanatics are not consistent. Those who insist that 'zero-tolerance approach' must have a hyphen still don't use one in a 'high school teacher', because 'high' can't modify school, and thus there is no ambiguity. And the avoidance of ambiguity is the main reason for the use of a hyphen here.

[sheikh radlinrol]