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Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
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ursus_rex
Joined: 20 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul, ROK
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 Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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Excuse me... I have to ask. Are you a native speaker?
... the O.P. that is... |
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schwa
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Location: Yap
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 3:08 am Post subject: |
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| The thing is, the OP asked a ream of major questions none of which can be answered accurately in short responses. She simply needs to do her homework first. One or two questions she cant find answers to, fine, & then I think she'd find this community can be quite helpful. |
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Guajiro
Joined: 04 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:28 am Post subject: |
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| Neozenha wrote: |
I don't like what I've read about private schools so if I was going to find a job, it would be a public school
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To teach English in Korea you need to be a citizen of US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, have studied in one of those countries since at least the 7th grade and have earned a bachelor's degree from a post-secondary institution in one of those countries.
To get a public school job nowadays your bachelor's degree, I believe, must be majoring in English or Education, or you must also have earned a 100-hour TESOL certification with at least 20 hours being earned in a classroom (not online), save for Busan, which requires 60 hours in-class instruction.
For more information on public school positions in Korea please see: http://epik.go.kr/
Not all public school positions are through EPIK (English Program in Korea), but most use EPIK contracts and have the same requirements.
Hope it helps... |
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tardisrider
Joined: 13 Mar 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:33 am Post subject: |
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| Neozenha wrote: |
Not like I really care, but I just summarized what I wanted to ask... I'm not writing an essay.
I am just looking for answers. |
Feel free to come here and ask almost any question.
There is one thing to remember, though. No one is obligated to provide any answers. The questions you ask, and the way you ask them, will always influence the decisions people make regarding how to respond to you. |
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Skippy
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Location: Daejeon
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:02 am Post subject: |
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| tardisrider wrote: |
| Neozenha wrote: |
Not like I really care, but I just summarized what I wanted to ask... I'm not writing an essay.
I am just looking for answers. |
Feel free to come here and ask almost any question.
There is one thing to remember, though. No one is obligated to provide any answers. The questions you ask, and the way you ask them, will always influence the decisions people make regarding how to respond to you. |
Yep. Spot on.
Like most people I do not like doing work for free. And all I see from you original post is LOTS of work and typing.
Really, read the FAQs and learn to search the forum. Use google instead
for example using your first question and paring some of the words out and googled
site:forums.eslcafe.com/korea Public school chance teaching alone Korean teacher
I got this thread.
site:forums.eslcafe.com/korea Public school chance teaching alone Korean teacher
Plus multiple others.
As people commented you ask one or two questions or even a specific question you will get help. But you ask a whole bunch of work and do not provide any gumption to do any of your own work. Sorry people will slag on you.
BUT.... Here is some quickm answers
1. Public schools, what are the chances of you teaching a course alone or with a main Korean teacher?
Subjective and unknowable. It ranges from many classes to none. To a helpful teacher to a non helpful teacher.
2. How are the teaching structure in Korea?
Like what are the schedules like, what do they learn each day... Is it a standard 5 days a week thing?
Once again too much typing. Really search some more. Public schools are now 5 days a week. Through hagwon/private academies can operate 6 or even 7 days a week. Foreigners are typically NOT required to work Sat or Sun.
3. Do you get like a guide plan on what you're suppose to learn about for the year etc... to prepare them for mid semester and end of year exams?
F*****CK. This is a loaded and subjective question. It can really depend. Some schools provide ready made plans and books. While others give you a marker and a white board.
4. Averagely how many would be in one class? (My questions are mainly based on elementary or kindergarten)
From 1 to 40+. I have taught from 1 student at a hagwon to 30 students at a public school. Still average for public school is 30 students plus per class. Until you get to after school classes......
5. How much money would you recommend bringing, to sustain yourself for a month (?) before your salary?
It really depends! This once has been calculated before. Ballpark I would say 1000 dollars. Others might say 500 dollars. See more variation.
6. Are TEFL or what not courses compulsory?, would you still be able to get a job without one?
No depending. Yes, hagwon.
7. When people say that... Your rent or your 1 year contract is done by your employer, is EPIK a employer? or is that a program? huh? Yea Epik is a program run by the government. Trying searching. Usually apartment rental is covered by employer. Well, if included in contract.
8. After 1 year, is it a easy process to renew it for another year and another etc...?
Yes, if you know what you are doing.
NOW BE a good little newbie and go read some more. Because if you are not bothered to read the FAQs or any of other thousand plus threads, you are going to get screwed. Really if you can not read a bit of the FAQs that contract some recruiter gives you will be harder. You did go to university right! You learned how to do research? |
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mayorhaggar
Joined: 01 Jan 2013
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| Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 9:37 pm Post subject: Re: What is teaching Eng in Korean really like? |
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I don't think the questions are bad or dumb. I did a ton of research before starting my current EPIK job and before I got here I wouldn't have known the answers, a lot of stuff depends on your school I think.
| Neozenha wrote: |
1. Public schools, what are the chances of you teaching a course alone or with a main Korean teacher?
Depends on your school/s really. I'm at one rural school on Mondays where the students' english level is low, and the teachers do about 90% of the lessons, and it's all in Korean. The other 4 days a week I'm at a bigger school in the main county town, and the students' levels are higher so I do about half and half with my co-teachers.
2. How are the teaching structure in Korea?
Like what are the schedules like, what do they learn each day... Is it a standard 5 days a week thing?
In public schools it's very structured, there's a few national textbook series that each school picks and you mainly teach from that. You can make your own powerpoint games and so on but it has to be based on the book lessons.
3. Do you get like a guide plan on what you're suppose to learn about for the year etc... to prepare them for mid semester and end of year exams?
Depends on your school again probably...I think for EPIK you generally aren't in charge of grades and tests, though you supposedly can ask to be, and your co-teacher in any case will be in charge of grades and tests.
4. Averagely how many would be in one class? (My questions are mainly based on elementary or kindergarten)
In my rural school the classes are like 6 kids...in the bigger school it's 20 to 30.
5. How much money would you recommend bringing, to sustain yourself for a month (?) before your salary?
I'd bring the equivalent of about $1000 USD and exchange it for won either at a bank in your country or exchange it at Incheon airport (there's an exchange counter there with a fairly decent rate)...contrary to what people might tell you, it's very hard to get money from a western bank account here because the banking system is just totally different. Maybe in Seoul or Busan you can use Visa and Mastercard, but here in my small Chungbuk town I can't, even if I go to a major bank office with a "global ATM" with a Visa logo on it. I had to do a wire transfer which is taking forever...I really wish I'd just brought $1000 USD instead of $500.
6. Are TEFL or what not courses compulsory?, would you still be able to get a job without one?
For EPIK, yeah, either a TEFL cert of some kind or an education degree. This is easy to research and there's some recent threads about the change in EPIK's requirements.
7. When people say that... Your rent or your 1 year contract is done by your employer, is EPIK a employer? or is that a program?
Your school is your employer, really...EPIK is a national program to basically recruit and assign teachers, is I guess the way to explain it.
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Scorpion
Joined: 15 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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"How are the teaching structure in Korea?" 
OP, your writing is atrocious. |
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fionnjameson
Joined: 11 Mar 2013
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| Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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Is it wrong that I want OP to go to Korea and then get totally f-ed over by some terrible hagwon because she couldn't bother to research things herself?
Mea culpa. Mea culpa. |
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NYC_Gal 2.0
Joined: 10 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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| One doesn't have to write an essay to write well. |
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ursus_rex
Joined: 20 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul, ROK
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| Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Subject-verb agreement is fairly basic... we are not talking grammar-Nazi here. It is a common error with non-native speakers and somewhat uncommon with native speakers. If done multiple times, it is a bad sign for one's future as an English teacher. |
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Mw182006
Joined: 13 Feb 2013
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| Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:25 am Post subject: |
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| I think we lost him/her (op)...saw the exact same thread on waygook. It's pretty clear he/she's looking to be spoon-fed information based on the topics posted so far. |
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ippy
Joined: 25 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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1. Public schools, what are the chances of you teaching a course alone or with a main Korean teacher?
---Taught in a middle school 2009-2011 so maybe out of date info... Teachers were always present. Some were actively present, others... well, they were honestly only there because the vice principal would knack them if they stayed in the teachers room. So theyd sit in the class and do marking or something. Suited me fine though since one of those teachers was universally hated by the students and had a propensity to burst into a fit over nothing completely crippling the atmosphere in the class.
2. How are the teaching structure in Korea?
Like what are the schedules like, what do they learn each day... Is it a standard 5 days a week thing?
for Nets it was 5 days a week. For korean teachers it WAS (not sure if they finally changed it) one saturday in two on top of it. Coming from Japan prior to korea, i was genuinely ASTONSIHED to see teachers leaving on the dot at 5. The whole lot of them. GET OUT!!!  Oh, and classes were 45 minutes long which i like more than the 50 minute classes in japan.
3. Do you get like a guide plan on what you're suppose to learn about for the year etc... to prepare them for mid semester and end of year exams?
Hells no. You get a text book and the occasional conversation on lesson plans if and when your coteachers can find time on it. They might even tell you where the students actually ARE in the textbook! Yay! More than likely youd have an English elective class or a rotating 7 and 8th period english class. They used to be optional, but i think that all switched the year i arrived and they became part of your 23 teaching hours or less, a week. Which seemed... fair to be honest. I was amazed at some of the perks my predecessors got! paid camps, massive vacations, overtime pay for 7 and 8 classes... Camps were even voluntary! You didnt even have to do the damn things if you didnt want to. That was literally my predecessors contract.
4. Averagely how many would be in one class? (My questions are mainly based on elementary or kindergarten)
25-35.
5. How much money would you recommend bringing, to sustain yourself for a month (?) before your salary?
Dont honestly remember. I do however know i didnt have enough. There as a point in my third or fourth week where i was literally choosing between pasta to cook with or a few 2 liter bottles of drinking water.
6. Are TEFL or what not courses compulsory?, would you still be able to get a job without one?
I just read somewhere about people talking about Tefls. Sounds like theyre compulsory for the main programme intake on epik. Cant say for sure, they werent when i was around (they just bumped your pay up by 100,000 won per month). Without doing ANY RESEARCH ON THE MATTER AT ALL AND THUS WITHOUT ANY ACTUAL RELEVANT INFORMATION ON THE MATTER, i think this might be one of those situations where if youre willing to go through a recruiter in a slightly less popular part of the country (ie. rural), and you have the rest of your stuff ready to go, the tefl wont be all that big of an issue.
7. When people say that... Your rent or your 1 year contract is done by your employer, is EPIK a employer? or is that a program?
No idea. I assume epik places you in your boe, who then place you in your school and the house associated with it. Youre kinda sorta the property of your school though once youre placed. Though i beleive a lot of the changes teh years i was there were deliberately enacted to make consistent contracts and claw pback teh power that headteachers had routinely enjoyed up until the year my lot turned up.
There we go. Three years out of date information! use it wisely! :p |
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