Korean Job Discussion Forums

[GreatUnderachiever]

How well the collapse of European and American (everyone is saying it's gonna happen, probably within a few years?) economy effect the chances of getting into TEFL teaching?

I guess it will be impossible in few years , unless you have experience and/or advanced qualifications.

[RK12]

I imagine that jobs will be booming in China (more than it already is) and that the pay of English teachers will remain the same or even drop due to that some will try to get any job because back home there is none and thus some pay is better than no pay.

I'd also imagine that some countries would get a lot more picky and want people will real qualifications like at least a BA in education or linguistics if not paired with a TESOL certificate or a MA in TESOL.

Some countries could also be more picky that they want bilingual teachers and mostly choose from those in their own country either natives or English teachers that are already there to teach and no let new people in. They could also try to only have natives from their country teach English and expel all the foreigners to stop the invasion of westerns coming into the country for money.

[Stan Rogers]

[YTMND]

Rich people will decide what they want. Poor people won't. Move into any neighborhood, and you will see the upscale area (near downtown). This isn't about East vs. West. This is about getting funds differently.

For the typical office slacky, yea, it's gonna be tough. Better hit the books, sign up for some classes, and get the stars to make the rich imperialists happy.

[Modernist]

[goreality]

Isn't Korea's economy reliant on selling stuff to the west? I know they trade with China too, but isn't China's economy reliant on the west, too? To assume that if a collapse happened in the west, a resource poor Asian would somehow be much better off is a wacky theory. My theory is with the collapse of the west, English will die too. Best bet is to learn Chinese cause in a couple of years it will be all about CFL teaching.

[Weigookin74]

[comm]

[Julius]

[litebear]

Bloody hell. First live failure, now the collapse of the Western economies. What a week! You're not even due to arrive in Korea for a few years yet, god knows what else could go wrong in that time!

[english puppet]

While the question might have been framed a bit differently I think it's a very reasonable question.

English or ESL is hardly a sacred, untouchable field. Industries and markets of all types have been known to fold up and or fade to levels that make them untenable.

Consider the prior "infallibility" of buying a house and the current market int he US. There are still some 3 million homes in the US that have not made a mortgage payment in the last 12 months - also known as "shadow inventory". I recently saw a Bloomberg report that suggested the housing crisis could be as little as only half way through it's just been put on hold to avoid writing the housing to its actual market value. This doesn't even touch the issues around empty commercial real estate.

Clearly, there are budget and financial issues in Korea that have already impacted employment here on some level (could debate levels of this obviously).

As they say, the future's hard to predict but when you consider the number of other issues of western debt, environmental problems etc. it's hard to see ESL as somehow removed from things.

It's just speculation - I don't think you can measure this, but I think the "west" may have taken an image hit to say the least over the last few years with regard to the financial crisis. I don't think something of a shift to Chinese would be hard to imagine?

I've lived and taught in two other countries that were negatively affected by politics and financial problems that severely impacted people's pocket books. Small private schools, the tax base etc. shrink when people prioritize differently.

As others have pointed out here - pretty tied in together. Continued economic problems in the west mean reduced sales of electronics and autos in Asia. No simple formulas but easy to see financial problems here (continued problems in Japan) and even unrest in China.

[Matt_22]

[Matt_22]

FWIW, I really don't see Chinese ever replacing English as the international language. There are just too many factors working against it.

1) Inertia.
2) Only a few countries speak it (as an official language)
3) Characters are far less accessible than the Latin alphabet
4) Rejection of what's viewed as an ethnically-exclusive language
5) Increased internationalization of western countries (far exceeding that of China)
6) Distrust among the Asian powers
7) Rise of India

Increased globalization has certainly led more people into the field of ESL, but there are increasing millions of people in the developing world now able to afford luxuries such as language studies.

It'll be interesting to see how things are affected once western economies stabilize.

[ontheway]

[YTMND]

Stock up on water, guns, and duct tape. This one is going to be a doozy.