Korean Job Discussion Forums

edwardcatflap · Joined: 22 Mar 2009

Fair enough, I've no intention to climb a greasy ladder myself either, just pointing out that when people talk about possibilities 'in TEFL' there's more to the picture than opportunities for North Americans in Asia

isitts · Joined: 25 Dec 2008 Location: Korea

edwardcatflap · Joined: 22 Mar 2009

TECO · Joined: 20 Jan 2003

lifeinkorea · Joined: 24 Jan 2009 Location: somewhere in China

In the end it's still the same.

1) Just because we are outside of some imaginary "country" we call home (yet empowered to call ourselves "expatriates" which is bizarre logic considering we still have to carry our passports and get visas) doesn't mean we are ruled under some different magical governing body of law.

2) Whatever experiences you have will further you. If you work with 10 year old Koreans or 10 year old Europeans (Puritan settlers or not), they are still kids. If you work with older university students and adults, same goes. Those experiences still matter.

3) If you are talking about the college graduate who is not PLANNING (key word "planning") on working a long time in Korea, then you have already defined YOUR boundaries. That doesn't mean others 40 years and older can't be happy working overseas doing a teaching job.

4) If networking is so important to you and working in a huge corporation where you help top executives get rich, I wonder why you would even consider a summer camp job let alone work a whole year teaching a language which you never had to study and were just born to speak.

5) The one I also miss because I am too wrapped up in the ESL world is that YOU CAN STUDY IN OTHER AREAS PEOPLE!!! You can study online, you can study at a college, and you can study privately.

austrian123 · Joined: 15 Oct 2010

ippy · Joined: 25 Aug 2009

Thats pretty much the basis of it. The skills are soft skills, and dont look all that great on a resume - unless of course you spend your time enhancing those skills by, i dunno, keeping up to date and familiarising yourself with new programmes, doing distance learning courses and maybe getting yourself some qualifications. Hell, learn the language and you have a new skill that is transferable.

And if the worst comes to the worst, the money you save if you stay here for a long time WITHOUT dependants, can and will provide you a nice secure foundation for retraining.

Assuming of course youre like me and do none of that (hey, hypocrisy is a luxury ive learned to indulge in), then coming back is tough. As i say, no one really cares that you were a teacher in Korea, it doesn't translate well unless you want to join one of the local ESL schools in your locale (they will expect qualifications by the way not just experience), so that kinda leaves the main job market, and lets be honest here, youre a graduate so you want a proper job and career. Well too bad because youre now about 6 or 7 years older than the people they normally employ for entry level and look like a bit of a dosser in comparison. Smile

Worse still, the graduate jobs kinda dried up anyway Smile

So now youre not fighting for those jobs (well you are, but its intense), youre also fighting against people with direct and relevant experience looking for work in those industries and willing to accept pay cuts to get back on tehir career ladder. At least that was the situation when i stupidly returned to the UK in March 2009.

Ah solipsism. Basically you CAN land on your feet fine so long as you keep your skills up to date and recognise that teaching english in korea doesnt translate to most of the jobs out there all that well. Just make sure you have savings to either see you into a retraining phase, or if you dont, and youre hitting a dry patch, do some volunteer work and try and get those skills. It will also look nice on your resume of course that you not only didnt sit on your ass while you were unemployed, but you were also helping an NPO, AND being smart enough to acquire those harder skills through FREE training.

Lots to do, its not all doom and gloom so long as you know not to sit on your ass and do nothing while youre here. Either save up, or keep on top of the skills you need and you should land on your feet.

austrian123 · Joined: 15 Oct 2010

[quote="austrian123"]

silkhighway · Joined: 24 Oct 2010 Location: Canada

Tippecanoe · Joined: 19 Jul 2010 Location: Hwaesong City Korea

Honestly I came to Korea with the main goal of learning Korean. So as long as I continue to learn then my time here is absolutely not wasted. Whatever you are doing you have to continually gain skills toward something to make your time worthwhile.

I believe that international job experience would be a good thing on a resume but not every HR director may agree with me. It is all context dependent.

silkhighway · Joined: 24 Oct 2010 Location: Canada

Whistleblower · Joined: 03 Feb 2007

I am going to weigh in my opinion here. I have noted a lot of people are talking about those teachers that have decided to make a career in the EFL industry and whether this experience is suitable for those that decide to teach 'short-term' in Korea. Obviously, there is going to be a perception about the EFL community that it is a backpackers job (ie. it is only people that are travelling around foreign countries during a gap year that decide to teach EFL). Unfortunately, this perception of the community needs to be refocused as this occupation is essentially language teaching.

One disadvantage for those that decide to teach long-term in South Korea is that L1 attrition could start to form. Language attrition is essentially "the gradual loss of a ... language ... where the person resides speaks a different language" (Porte, 1999). Language attrition, as Porte discovered, could affect language teachers and their ability to teach languages if they are resident in a particular country, in this case Korea, for a long period of time. Thus, the disadvantage for some teachers could be the gradual loss of their L1 and their gradual ability to communicate effectively in their native language. What happens to the teacher? Would the teacher end up teaching a suitable lingua franca in Korea? Will the teacher end up code-switching between Korean and English? All these questions are up to you to decide but Porte's findings are interesting particularly if native teachers are expected to teach a native version of English.

Further reading:
http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/53-1-4.pdf - English as a forgotten language (Porte' 1999)