Korean Job Discussion Forums

[davehere22]

just about every recruitment agency that contacted me said that a certificate is not required. just my degree is all i need

why?

[Crowzone]

Because there's about a million positions and no one to fill them.


As for the "Why" there is no one to fill them, well that will depend on many many factors.

[davehere22]

yeah i have been reading some good stories and some bad ones.

Does teaching work, having no course done, and no experience?

[twg]

Only better than not having a teacher in the room.

Let me tell you about Korea:

Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where George discovered a great way to be lazy at work? All he had to do is look very busy and no one bothered him to do the harder things he didn't want to do.

ESL in Korea is to keep folks looking real busy. The serious ESL students go live in the west for a couple of years.

[Unposter]

Originally, supposedly, there weren't any qualifications. Koreans would just offer some white faced person who just happened to find himself on the peninsula and hand him some cash if he would ztalk in English with them.

Then someone got the bright idea to bring that white face into their hakwon and charge admission for the honor.

Why would such a person need certification? All this person has to do is bring in the crowds.

But, eventually the government looked at this situation and thought you know something isn't quite right here. We shouldn't just let the hakwons parade white faced people in front of the Korean population and charge admission.

So, they said there have to be rules! There have to be limits! There have to be qualifications! So, the Korean government declared from above though shall have a college degree or else you cannot talk to Koreans for money. And, so it was and would be.

Now, of course, white faced people are not so rare in Korea. It has become harder and harder to get Koreans to part with their precious won to see a white person. So, they started teaching and hiring white faced people who knew all sorts of tricks. Now, that was different, and some Koreans would pay a won or two to see such a thing. But, then all white people started doing tricks and the competition became difficult.

So, someone had a good idea: it was called globalization. Of course, globalization actually was a good idea but globalization is something that many Koreans don't really want. Anyway, someone decided that if they yelled globalization loud enough the Korean people would let their won fly and talk to some white people again.

Now, Koreans once again want to talk to white people again but this time it is because it is good for them like a chocolate covered well-being muffin. Now people are complaining that their chocolate covered well being muffin is making them fat.

So, someone decided to tell the Korean people, whoa! Wait a second. It is a good idea; its just that whitey is not doing his job. If whitey did his job then everything will be OK. We will give them co-teachers who will look after the situation and we will have Englishtopia. Now...

The idea is that whtiey should not jeopardize Korean jobs and actually teach but convince the Korean people that they are here to help. So, whitey should do all the jobs that Koreans don't do you know like 3-D jobs. So, whitey does things like talk and play with the students , occassionally cleaning a classroom while the Korean teachers do the heavy lifting of teaching grammar; concepts that no hakwon monkey could possibly understand.

Now, unbeknownst to the average Korean teacher there is actually a secret cababl in charge of all of this. Now, Korea has always had an aristocracy also knowns as the Yangban. But because of the pesky North Korean communists, there was a huge push to make Korea a meritocracy, fair to all. But then the Yangban would lose thier privledged status. So, they decided the only way to keep the masses down would be to create a competition the Yangban could not loose. The game they chose was English.

Here is what they would do. They would make grammar the focus of study for the masses and they created a legion of eager educators obsessed with enlightening the masses with obscure grammar rules while the Yangban hired private white tutors to come to their house to instruct them how to use the language and then later send their kids off to foreign schools where they could get a real education. And, just to make sure that the masses didn't accidently find out about this situation, they made private tutoring illegal and they discouraged anyone but the rich from going to foreign schools citing costs, cultural disintegration etc...all at the same time demanding that they have these skills.

So, many Koreans heads exploded trying to figure out why they should have these skills yet accquiring these skills is wrong. And, the modern day Korean Yangban were happy.

And, that is why credentials are so low for ESL/EFL teachers in Korea.

[Cerriowen]

OMG...

OMG...

That's ...

so sad.

I was going to say funny, but I think it struck a little too close to home.

My students can run circles around me with obscure grammar rules, but can't string 5 words together without putting them in the wrong order. One said to me the other day he has such a hard time reading long sentences because he has a hard time keeping track of which words were the adverbial clauses, noun modifiers, supre-segmentals... blah blah blah. I just stared at him and said "omg dude do you seriously try to read that way?"

Anyway, to answer the OP's question, the reason you don't need any skills is that you just have to pronounce the words and string them together in a sentence. Then argue with your co-workers and adult students that, while you can't exactly prove the grammar rules behind something, you know that the sentence they just wrote is wrong, or why you can't use that word that way.

[falco]

[some waygug-in]

I've actually met some foreign teachers who taught that way. (making sure the students knew the grammatical terms for every part of a sentence)

But the student's couldn't answer the question,"How old are you?"



To the OP; as you may have gathered, much of the EFL industry in Korea is scammish in both its design and implementation. Many of the "schools" are not schools at all, but baby-sitting/day-care centers for Korean kids.

In short, it's all about money.

If you want to really teach, go to someplace like Mexico or Thailand. If you want to be a show monkey/zoo-creature/foreign clown....Korea is waiting.

[bosintang]

[some waygug-in]

The industry in those countries is a joke as well, but your chances of finding a school that will let you have some control of what you're teaching are much greater.

I was much happier as a teacher in Mexico.....although I never had enough to live on.

[bosintang]

OP: The theory along here is that foreign teachers don't "teach". They provide conversation practice. This breaks down in reality when you realise your 6-yr old kids who've never studied English before aren't quite ready for conversation practice, but it's a convenient little white lie that keeps Korean educators from having to analyze their own teaching skills too much.

[Saxiif]

[Freaka]

[cbclark4]

I nominate Unposters post as post of the year.

That post may have more influence than Rain.

cbc

[falco]

Here here. Gets my vote too. Definitely post of the year.

Well done that man!.......