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Why?
About to graduate from college and don't know what the hell you're going to do after that? Got a sucky job? Want to travel and you're broke? Want to have a job where you can realistically save a decent bit to pay off students loans or save for a down payment on a house? Want to sink into the stews of drunken expat decedance? Want a job where you have every morning off? Want small children to sneak up behind you and attempt to stick their fingers up your butt? Maybe International english teaching is for you!
Work experience? Training of any sort? Rudimentary social skills? Basic hygene? These things are not necessary! All you need is an American, Canadian, Brit, South African, Aussie or Kiwi passport, a bachelor's degree diploma in basket weaving (or reasonably good fake) and shiny white skin and you're all set!
Just go over to www.eslcafe.com and hit the job boards and do a little resume spamming.
Where should I go?
First off, unless you have good qualifications (such as some of that useless stuff called "training") or want to live in poverty cross all of the world except East Asia off your list. There, that was pretty easy.
Japan: You'll get the highest pay here and all the perks of living in a first world country. And you get to see the homeland of spikey haired cartoon characters! However, the cost of living is scary. It makes small puppies cry. Don't expect to save too much. And you'll live in a tiny box, living in tiny boxes isn't fun.
China: The industry in China is expanding damn fast and the demand for teachers well outstrips supply. This means that you have a lot more bargaining power then in other places, for example my friend (hi Seeker!) got offered a uni job in China with ridiculous ease. Only problem is they pay you **** and the pollution is horrific (hell just being downwind from Chinese pollution in Seoul or Okinawa is bad enough, my friend in Okinawa gets coal dust blowing in from China on a regular basis). However, costs of living are low enough that you can live pretty well on what you're paid and pay is increasing at a decent pace while its stagnant elsewhere. Also if you're away from the coast your shiny white skin will probably make people treat you like a minor celebrity! And there's nothing quite as fun as having a bunch of kids follow you around yelling "alien."
Hong Kong: Don't know too much about the industry in Hong Kong, except that the expat scene being mostly composed of FILTH (Failed In London TRy Hongkong) and thatit'd probably be a bit easier to get by there due to more English being spoken
Taiwan: For some reason most South African English teachers seem to end up here, don't know why. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really want to be in a Chinese-speaking country and want to save a little money. Also the public transportation is apparently quite horrific by East Asian standards.
South Korea: My own personal preference. Seoul is a fun city and you get more people speaking English here than anywhere in Asia north of Hongkong, which certainly comes in handy sometimes. Also Korean people are cool if incredibly nerotic, they won't try to rip you off, they go out of their way to be nice to foreigners and are generous to a fault. How can you not love a country whose national sport is Starcraft?
Also if you want to save money, South Korea is FAR FAR FAR FAR the best country to be. If you're single and possess a little discipline, with the current exchange rate you should be able to save $1,000/month without THAT much effort. Very nice ratio of English teacher pay/standard of living, taxes are low (I pay 3% income/payroll tax), healthcare is dirt cheap (I paid $3/doctor visit and $20/month on health insurance) and the public transportation system is amazing, so you'll never feel in need of a car.
Also Korea is the only place where free airfare (coming over and going back) and housing are standard fare, which is very very nice if you're cash-strapped.
How Much Bargaining Power Do I Have?/What should I put in my resume?
What the schools are looking for: young, white, non-ugly, non-fat (at least in Korea EVERYONE wants photos attached to your resume), college graduate (you need a bachelor's degree for the visas) people from the right country (England in most places, North America in Korea, Aussies and Kiwis are not preferred since it is known that their degenerate accents will rub off on their students and impede their English education for ever and ever). If you get a few of the demographic categories right, you're probably all set.
Qualifications help a bit too and if there's anything about you that your boss could brag to parents about you've got to really really pimp that with abandon. For example the responce rate to my resumes doubled after I started shamelessly pimping my SAT score and the US News and World Report ranking of my college in my cover letter (yes I know how sad that is).
Anything else is junk. Remember that the people reading your resume often don't have the best English so any kind of crap about what a wonderful well-rounded person you are doen't mean ****. I've heard stories of school directors requesting photos from recruiters and making hiring decisions on the basis of those alone.
Also keep in mind what you want. Don't worry so much about pay, worry about hours, you don't want to end up working 20 more hours a month for $100 more a month. Also look out for split shifts and (their dread partner) places that have both kindy and elementary classes. Use whatever bargaining power you have to avoid those if you can. Also the farther away from big cities you are the less picky the schools are and the more you can demand.
What's the Work Like?
Unless you sign up with JET (the Japanese government program) in which you get to do the demanding and fulfilling job of being a tape-recorder with legs, you'll probably end up at a hagwon (or the local equivalent).
Hagwons are private (and very very much for-profit) schools where poor little kids get sent after a full day at their public school for extra lurnin'. Some kids go to as many as five different hagwon and take classes until as late as 11 PM (although 10 PM is the legal limit in Korea). Generally you'll get 5-10 kids (nice small classes) and a textbook and told to teach it without too much support or management oversight. It generally isn't too hard and you generally don't have to do any kind of lesson planning or grading or whatnot. In a lot of the places you can get away with playing games all the time with the kids without anyone complaining. Not too hard, just gotta dodge the kids when they try to stick their fingers up your butt.
There are more serious places but they're not the majority.
How can I tell which schools are good?
Well you've got to be careful, most English cram-school directors are the scum of the earth, who pimp out their mothers to syphilitic gorillas to make a dime. Here's a rough break-down of trustworthyness:
-Corporate jobs: they pay very very very well to teach execs.
-Universities.
-Being directly hired by an individual public school.
-Some government-run programs. JET in Japan is isn't going to screw with you (just bore you to death via "team teaching") but other country's equivalents are much more shady. Korea's EPIK is notoriously corrupt, mis-managed and generally annoying.
-Big name hagwons. Every country has a few ones, in Korea there's Chungdamn and Pagada...
-SAT hagwons. They usually pay you by the hour to teach SAT tutoring class (and whatever they can come up with in the off season) and don't give you much of anything in the way of benefits but the pay is very very nice. Since they've got kids you expect to go to college in the states the students are much older and have much better English than is normal (for example I teach an adult-level novel in my high level reading class) and the classes are tiny. I'm working at one of these now and I'm really enjoying it.
-A big hagwon. The bigger the better, more security and sanity that way.
-A hagwon owned by an owner that owns more than one hagwon. Don't get this confused with franchise chains, franchise status means ****.
-A hagwon with no kindy. Kind is evil and results in evil schedules.
-A small hagwon in the sticks with just one foreign teacher and lots of kindy classes with a boss that barely speaks English and who's so strapped for cash that he drives the hagwon bus himself and pays all his employees a month late (my first job when I was too stupid to know better).
Other things to look for:
-Your boss speaking English is a good sign, although it is sometimes fun to pretend you don't understand when your boss asks you to do something you don't like, the communication hassles aren't worth it.
-Look at the contract. Contracts aren't worth to much, but if there's weasel clauses in your contract that's a bad sign.
-Try to figure out the turnover rate. Ask specific questions about how long people have stayed from the boss and then confirm those exact specifics with a potential future coworker. Bosses have been known to lie in order to make their turnover look lower. High turnover is ALWAYS a bad sign.
-If your school is giving you strange-sounding or in any way non-standard reasons to work there, that's a bad sign. These include free language classes for you, a "boss that really cares about the students" etc. etc. etc. Places that sound at all desperate are usually to be avoided.
-Avoid the K-Mart hagwons. They're usually cheaper for the students and have the students in there for a shorter time, try to figure out their names (such as Wonderland in Korea) and avoid them.
-Ask for advice. Seeker and I are good Korea resources as are the www.eslcafe.com english boards and there's plenty of people teaching English in China on 'poly.
-www.efl-law.com is your god, worship it.
Quick note about recruiters: a lot of people will tell you to avoid recruiters and only deal directly with schools. While most of the top-notch schools don't bother with recruiters and while it is true that recruiters are the scum of the earth, they can be useful. Most of their evil from the teacher point of view comes from the fact that they're hired by the schools to find teachers not vice versa (never EVER forget that fact), so most of their evil is just school evil passed on to you. In most cases they won't lie to you any more than schools will.
Any questions?
About to graduate from college and don't know what the hell you're going to do after that? Got a sucky job? Want to travel and you're broke? Want to have a job where you can realistically save a decent bit to pay off students loans or save for a down payment on a house? Want to sink into the stews of drunken expat decedance? Want a job where you have every morning off? Want small children to sneak up behind you and attempt to stick their fingers up your butt? Maybe International english teaching is for you!
Work experience? Training of any sort? Rudimentary social skills? Basic hygene? These things are not necessary! All you need is an American, Canadian, Brit, South African, Aussie or Kiwi passport, a bachelor's degree diploma in basket weaving (or reasonably good fake) and shiny white skin and you're all set!
Just go over to www.eslcafe.com and hit the job boards and do a little resume spamming.
Where should I go?
First off, unless you have good qualifications (such as some of that useless stuff called "training") or want to live in poverty cross all of the world except East Asia off your list. There, that was pretty easy.
Japan: You'll get the highest pay here and all the perks of living in a first world country. And you get to see the homeland of spikey haired cartoon characters! However, the cost of living is scary. It makes small puppies cry. Don't expect to save too much. And you'll live in a tiny box, living in tiny boxes isn't fun.
China: The industry in China is expanding damn fast and the demand for teachers well outstrips supply. This means that you have a lot more bargaining power then in other places, for example my friend (hi Seeker!) got offered a uni job in China with ridiculous ease. Only problem is they pay you **** and the pollution is horrific (hell just being downwind from Chinese pollution in Seoul or Okinawa is bad enough, my friend in Okinawa gets coal dust blowing in from China on a regular basis). However, costs of living are low enough that you can live pretty well on what you're paid and pay is increasing at a decent pace while its stagnant elsewhere. Also if you're away from the coast your shiny white skin will probably make people treat you like a minor celebrity! And there's nothing quite as fun as having a bunch of kids follow you around yelling "alien."
Hong Kong: Don't know too much about the industry in Hong Kong, except that the expat scene being mostly composed of FILTH (Failed In London TRy Hongkong) and thatit'd probably be a bit easier to get by there due to more English being spoken
Taiwan: For some reason most South African English teachers seem to end up here, don't know why. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really want to be in a Chinese-speaking country and want to save a little money. Also the public transportation is apparently quite horrific by East Asian standards.
South Korea: My own personal preference. Seoul is a fun city and you get more people speaking English here than anywhere in Asia north of Hongkong, which certainly comes in handy sometimes. Also Korean people are cool if incredibly nerotic, they won't try to rip you off, they go out of their way to be nice to foreigners and are generous to a fault. How can you not love a country whose national sport is Starcraft?
Also if you want to save money, South Korea is FAR FAR FAR FAR the best country to be. If you're single and possess a little discipline, with the current exchange rate you should be able to save $1,000/month without THAT much effort. Very nice ratio of English teacher pay/standard of living, taxes are low (I pay 3% income/payroll tax), healthcare is dirt cheap (I paid $3/doctor visit and $20/month on health insurance) and the public transportation system is amazing, so you'll never feel in need of a car.
Also Korea is the only place where free airfare (coming over and going back) and housing are standard fare, which is very very nice if you're cash-strapped.
How Much Bargaining Power Do I Have?/What should I put in my resume?
What the schools are looking for: young, white, non-ugly, non-fat (at least in Korea EVERYONE wants photos attached to your resume), college graduate (you need a bachelor's degree for the visas) people from the right country (England in most places, North America in Korea, Aussies and Kiwis are not preferred since it is known that their degenerate accents will rub off on their students and impede their English education for ever and ever). If you get a few of the demographic categories right, you're probably all set.
Qualifications help a bit too and if there's anything about you that your boss could brag to parents about you've got to really really pimp that with abandon. For example the responce rate to my resumes doubled after I started shamelessly pimping my SAT score and the US News and World Report ranking of my college in my cover letter (yes I know how sad that is).
Anything else is junk. Remember that the people reading your resume often don't have the best English so any kind of crap about what a wonderful well-rounded person you are doen't mean ****. I've heard stories of school directors requesting photos from recruiters and making hiring decisions on the basis of those alone.
Also keep in mind what you want. Don't worry so much about pay, worry about hours, you don't want to end up working 20 more hours a month for $100 more a month. Also look out for split shifts and (their dread partner) places that have both kindy and elementary classes. Use whatever bargaining power you have to avoid those if you can. Also the farther away from big cities you are the less picky the schools are and the more you can demand.
What's the Work Like?
Unless you sign up with JET (the Japanese government program) in which you get to do the demanding and fulfilling job of being a tape-recorder with legs, you'll probably end up at a hagwon (or the local equivalent).
Hagwons are private (and very very much for-profit) schools where poor little kids get sent after a full day at their public school for extra lurnin'. Some kids go to as many as five different hagwon and take classes until as late as 11 PM (although 10 PM is the legal limit in Korea). Generally you'll get 5-10 kids (nice small classes) and a textbook and told to teach it without too much support or management oversight. It generally isn't too hard and you generally don't have to do any kind of lesson planning or grading or whatnot. In a lot of the places you can get away with playing games all the time with the kids without anyone complaining. Not too hard, just gotta dodge the kids when they try to stick their fingers up your butt.
There are more serious places but they're not the majority.
How can I tell which schools are good?
Well you've got to be careful, most English cram-school directors are the scum of the earth, who pimp out their mothers to syphilitic gorillas to make a dime. Here's a rough break-down of trustworthyness:
-Corporate jobs: they pay very very very well to teach execs.
-Universities.
-Being directly hired by an individual public school.
-Some government-run programs. JET in Japan is isn't going to screw with you (just bore you to death via "team teaching") but other country's equivalents are much more shady. Korea's EPIK is notoriously corrupt, mis-managed and generally annoying.
-Big name hagwons. Every country has a few ones, in Korea there's Chungdamn and Pagada...
-SAT hagwons. They usually pay you by the hour to teach SAT tutoring class (and whatever they can come up with in the off season) and don't give you much of anything in the way of benefits but the pay is very very nice. Since they've got kids you expect to go to college in the states the students are much older and have much better English than is normal (for example I teach an adult-level novel in my high level reading class) and the classes are tiny. I'm working at one of these now and I'm really enjoying it.
-A big hagwon. The bigger the better, more security and sanity that way.
-A hagwon owned by an owner that owns more than one hagwon. Don't get this confused with franchise chains, franchise status means ****.
-A hagwon with no kindy. Kind is evil and results in evil schedules.
-A small hagwon in the sticks with just one foreign teacher and lots of kindy classes with a boss that barely speaks English and who's so strapped for cash that he drives the hagwon bus himself and pays all his employees a month late (my first job when I was too stupid to know better).
Other things to look for:
-Your boss speaking English is a good sign, although it is sometimes fun to pretend you don't understand when your boss asks you to do something you don't like, the communication hassles aren't worth it.
-Look at the contract. Contracts aren't worth to much, but if there's weasel clauses in your contract that's a bad sign.
-Try to figure out the turnover rate. Ask specific questions about how long people have stayed from the boss and then confirm those exact specifics with a potential future coworker. Bosses have been known to lie in order to make their turnover look lower. High turnover is ALWAYS a bad sign.
-If your school is giving you strange-sounding or in any way non-standard reasons to work there, that's a bad sign. These include free language classes for you, a "boss that really cares about the students" etc. etc. etc. Places that sound at all desperate are usually to be avoided.
-Avoid the K-Mart hagwons. They're usually cheaper for the students and have the students in there for a shorter time, try to figure out their names (such as Wonderland in Korea) and avoid them.
-Ask for advice. Seeker and I are good Korea resources as are the www.eslcafe.com english boards and there's plenty of people teaching English in China on 'poly.
-www.efl-law.com is your god, worship it.
Quick note about recruiters: a lot of people will tell you to avoid recruiters and only deal directly with schools. While most of the top-notch schools don't bother with recruiters and while it is true that recruiters are the scum of the earth, they can be useful. Most of their evil from the teacher point of view comes from the fact that they're hired by the schools to find teachers not vice versa (never EVER forget that fact), so most of their evil is just school evil passed on to you. In most cases they won't lie to you any more than schools will.
Any questions?
. The washing machine is in there too, so it's fairly roomy. But freezing, so it's mostly an in-out job.
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