Korean Job Discussion Forums

[weatherman]

RR, this quote from the article is for you!

[newteacher]

Why not just start hiring high-school drop-outs? Most of them have at least rudimentary language skills, which is more than I can say for a lot of the Korean English teachers out there. I've met some Koreans who have four year degrees in English language who can barely communicate at a 3rd grade level.

[TexasPete]

Man...anything but the obvious, eh? Pay people enough and they'll show up. OR, hire Koreans who actually can speak English for the school system.

[TexasPete]

[jjk]

Does this mean that they will stop asking to see our degrees every second day? Or that they will want to see them more often, to make sure we are people who should be paid more than those with 2 year diplomas?

A lot of information coming out in the last couple of days from the Edu. ministry- dropping the drug tests, lowering to diplomas or even students if they are willing to work for free, thoughts on letting non E2 '7s' in....I can see the new pay scale:

'Students'-zero
Indians etc- 1-1.3million
Diploma-1.5-1.7million
Degree-'We can get someone with a diploma for 1.7, why do you want 2.3/4/5+ I am not a rich man/woman etc....

[yingwenlaoshi]

I think Korea should start hiring Mexicans and Central Americans.

[newteacher]

[Suwoner10]

This will make for some high comedy. Cuz if they start bringing in guys that I can remember from high school that didn't go to college...to teach language...oh man!

[TheChickenLover]

This is a huge step backwards when you could teach in Korea with a college diploma. The quality of people back then was pretty horrific. Alot of these people created so many problems socially that the gov't raised the standard to become a teacher here to those only with a 4yr uni degree.

There was a huge outcry of the unfairness about it (mostly from the tech college teachers) and alot of people had left. What I did notice though was the quality of the people coming to this country got better. The exceptions though were those college people who were coming here on fake degrees since they couldn't get a job legally on their own merits.

After that, proving to immigration you graduated, criminal checks & other crap started to be needed to show we really did have a proper education.

I don't see this happening. Those who are educated will always be first pick. What this suggests (and I sincerely hope not) is that the wild days of teaching in Korea without a degree legally may be coming back. If that's the case, we are going to be in for a serious salary shock, more bad behaviour from uneducated dimwits in here for an easy buck and the profession will be going downhill.

Not a good sign. I seriously hope the parents nip this one in the butt right away.

Chicken

[mrsquirrel]

^ Why does one need a degree in for example Medieval French History to teach English?

The only reason that we the degreed like the idea of the non-degreed not being hired is that we get to keep the market closed.

[aarontendo]

It's important to have a degree because we work in academia. It would set a piss poor example to students to allow a high school degree holder to be their teacher.

[weatherman]

I say media/government is floating a balloon to see which way it blows, or to see if it just pops.

[idonojacs]

A) If Korea, its government, schools, people, treated FTs better, it would have a better reputation and find it easier to hire good teachers.

B) If Korea used a better recruiter system that did a better job of screening applicants for English skills, it would get better teachers. Using a Korean who can barely speak English to evaluate a potential English teacher is a non-starter. So the erratic quality of native speakers is largely Korea's fault. This problem will be greatly exacerbated if they lower standards. But with intelligent recruitment, decent two-year grads could be found.

C) The same problems in B) apply to hiring teachers from countries like the Phillipines or India. Without recruiters who can screen for English skills, Korea is going to get English teachers who can do little more than punch mouse buttons, which, of course, the Korean English teachers already can do.

With competent recruiters, decent English teachers could be hired from these secondary countries. But probably 99 percent of the time they will have strong accents.

I have talked to some of these Phillipine FTs. Some speak English quite well, but several I have met can't carry on a conversation in English. And they work for public schools.

Those insulting, discriminatory E-2 regulations should never have been enacted in the first place. Simply easing the rules is not going to undo the damage to Korea's reputation overnight. That could take years.

The bottom line:

Korea, if you treated foreigner English teachers with respect, you would get better teachers.

[mnhnhyouh]

So far I have found these countries that have English listed as their official language in the Wikipedia

Singapore (there is no listing for their official language but it is the administrative language)
Kenya
Nigeria
The Philipines
India

I can't, off the top of my head, think of any others that are not already allowed to get E2 visas.

h

[mnhnhyouh]