TEFL Job Descriptions

[robinturner]

I have pretty much abandoned the idea of working in another country next year, largely because my wife says she doesn't want to go and live in a country that she's never visited. This limits us to England and Italy, and neither country seems to be full of universities queuing up to offer me well-remunerated positions. However, I still receive mails about vacancies for English teachers, and some of the job descriptions are quite intriguing; for example, "Position title: Bright and Enthusiastic Summer Teaching Staff for Adult and Junior Courses." I know that "enthusiastic" is a euphemism for "prepared to work long hours for low pay" but I'm puzzled at why they feel the need to specify that applicants must be bright. Have they previously been swamped by dim English teachers?

Then there is "Come Teach In Lanzhou! Lanzhou!!" Lan-where? I have never been to China, but I have a reasonable knowledge of Chinese geography and history, and I had never heard of Lanzhou. Clicking on the link informed me that it is "A Cultural Center Located In A High Mountain Valley Along The Southern Bank Of The Yellow River". Clicking on Wikipedia told me the following:

Lanzhou is said to be one of the most polluted cities in China, if not around the world. The air quality is so poor that at times one can not see Lanshan, the mountain rising straight up along the south side of the city. The city is located in a narrow river valley with an unfortunate curve causing it to be hemmed in with no free air flow. Lanzhou is also the home of many factories including petroleum processing, and suffers from large dust storms kicked up from the Gobi Desert, especially in the winter and spring.

Now I see why they are so desperate to recruit.

Here is another one I liked: "The Fastest Growing Economy In The World, Teaching In China With Aston For Summer or Fall!" One wonders if this is a test: applicants will be asked to demonstrate their linguistic skills by parsing the job description. That is not a dangling participle; it is a participle which has fallen two hundred feet to its death.

Another one that is not so easy to parse (and sounds like a set of key-words for an extremely dodgy porn site) is "Adults Biz English, kids English, adults oral English position." The advert goes on to say:

franchiese school. Small class with 10 students. Teach adults or kids Englihs. One year contract. 25 teaching hours + 15 office hours per week. cities are around Shanghai

It then specifies that teachers must be native English speakers. Who knows, you may be their first.

Comments

[rainswolf.livejournal.com]

That was such an interesting post!


Funny, I've only been to England and Italy too.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That is not a dangling participle; it is a participle which has fallen two hundred feet to its death.

Every now and then you make me laugh out loud. :-D

[solri.livejournal.com]

I put that one in especially for you.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

*bows* You are most kind, sir. :-)

[solri.livejournal.com]

Find me a well-paid university job in either of those countries and I'm over there tomorrow.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Italian universities tend to recruit from local language schools. British universities are a possibility, but without a PhD, I'd be starting again at the bottom of the tree, and the kind of money they pay probably wouldn't support both of us.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Plenty of people teach at American universities with only an MA, but they get treated like dirt. In Britain the situation is odd because until recently very few people bothered to do an MA. When I was an undergraduate (admittedly a very long time ago) if you were serious about academia you went straight into an MPhil, which you later transformed into a PhD; MAs were for people who didn't know what they wanted to do, but fancied hanging around campus for another year or two. Nowadays, Masters degrees can be money-spinners for universities, but they tend to be more vocational rather than a route into academia. Anyway, I could probably get a job at a British university, but my standard of living would drop because (a) Britain is so expensive to live in, (b) I wouldn't get all the fringe benefits like free housing and (c) I'd have to support Nalan for a while.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Britain is more expensive to live in than Turkey, which is what counts! In particular, house prices are outrageous (and therefore rents are high). If we sold our flat tomorrow, it would fetch about 100,000 lira ($75,000). An equivalent property in the UK would cost at least $200,000. Compared to the USA, Britain is about the same for most things (it was probably cheaper before the dollar plummeted).

[solri.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to answer the second question. Nalan teaches ceramics. This has the advantage that in the long term, she could make a living pretty much anywhere in the world as a studio potter (and by giving courses) but it wouldn't happen right away - these things need time and capital.