Teaching Abroad

One of my friends from university emailed me to find out what company I’m working for and some advice around finding teaching positions overseas, so I had sent him this overly long response. I thought I would post it for interest sake and for those interested or know someone who is interested in teaching overseas.

I ended up getting on with JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme). I believe the deadline has already passed for this year. As far as I know, applications had to be in by November. There are a lot of other teaching programs out there though, but I decided on JET because of the positive reputation it has. I had done a year of teaching in Indonesia with a private organization based out of Jakarta called Intract, and the experience was kind of similar but also really different, perhaps because there are such differences between the Japanese culture and the Indonesian culture, and the way things are done. The similarities between the two are that both contracts provided a house at subsidized costs, both provided a monthly salary, Japans of course larger because of the economic differences (JET provides around 3000 dollars a month, whereas Intract was something like 700 dollars a month, which was like 3 times as much as what a regular teacher in Indonesia makes). JET provides a plane ticket to and from Japan from the beginning of the contract to the end, whereas Intract only provided the flight home, based on completion of the contract. Intract did provide a personal driver to and from school everyday, Japan I had to buy my own car to get around (because there are not enough trains around where I’m living) but they pay for the gas used to go to the schools.

JET also provided pre-departure orientation, giving free language classes and what to prepare for before living in Japan. They also put you up in a nice hotel for 3 nights in Tokyo to give a thorough orientation on everything you can imagine about living and working in Japan. Intract didn’t provide anything like this, which made it a bit difficult to adjust to everything at first. Here, I am at 3 different high schools, but have my base school that I’m at everyday. Indonesia I also had three schools that I was at once a week (all elementary) but was on call if a teacher couldn’t make it to school. Every JETS situation has been different, really depending on if your teaching elementary, junior high, or high school, but everyone that I’ve talked to, has more than 1 school that they work at. Some have 19 schools that they rotate through (this would be elementary though, and is pretty rare).

Every situation is different, and every contract will be a bit different. Take a look at Dave’s ESL Café: http://www.eslcafe.com/joblist/

There are tons of job postings here. I think a large majority of them are for teaching English, but there might be some for other subjects too. I think this website is pretty good, but there are some job postings that you really have to be wary of. I have some friends that ended up going to Mexico, and their contract was not what they thought it would be. I think they had to end up finding their own housing and paying full cost on it or something like that. It just didn’t sound very organized. You should make sure that they provide some sort of accommodation, let you know how much it will be, let you know your salary, where you will be teaching, and at least a flight to or from the country. The more information that’s posted about the job, the better. Get as much information as you can and be really sure of the company that you want to work with before going. Some of the higher paying places/more popular places to teach are Japan and Korea. I think Korea would have been my second choice had I not come to Japan.

Anyways, working and traveling is the best thing ever. Great way to see the world and still make some money.

Hope this helps!

Joey

Aisu Kurimu onegaishimasu

If there’s one thing I enjoy it’s seeing the ways in which different cultures will take elements of other cultures and adopt it as their own. Japan, like so many other countries has adopted elements of the English language and fit it into their own linguistic framework. This has made for some very interesting and unusual, how shall I say, Engrish. Japan has three alphabets, one of which is used for loan words; words or ideas that are not originally from Japan. There has been an explosion of new words, taken especially from the English language after Japan opened her doors to the world in the Meiji period. In the last couple of decades there has been an explosion of loan words, taken especially from the English language. You would think that this would make teaching English in Japan easier, but guess again. The Japanese language has about one third the amount of sounds than that of the English language. Two of the most difficult sounds for Japanese speakers studying English are words that have the letters R and L. Just for fun, I sometimes have my students attempt the word “parallelogram”. In order to get around the problem of not being able to pronounce these English sounds comfortably, the Japanese have taken these new words and ideas and turned them into Japanese sounding words. Words like ice-cream and hamburger have phonetically become aisu kurimu, and hambaaga. Going to any western style restaurant you will find the menu items said in this katakana style. Place names have also been katakanaized. New York, London, Winnipeg become Nu Yooku, Rondon, Uinipegu. When I first heard this, I thought that it was some form of Pidgin, but later realized that there are many other languages that the Japanese have adopted, specifically from Korea and China. I suppose the English language does the same thing with other languages; adopting words for such natural phenomenon’s as El Nino and Tsunami, and we often pronounce place names without consideration of how it would be said in the local dialect. I just like to think of Japan as a special case, just because there are some words which are adopted that are worth a chuckle. Words such as ‘camara-man’ meaning photographer, or movie titles such as the movie “Up” has become “Karl”. Some words are just adopted because they sound cool to the Japanese. For instance, a hair salon that for whatever reason decided to name itself poo-p. “Wow, where do you get your hair done?” “Oh I go to Poo-p.” (First word learned perhaps?) Grammar is generally very difficult for Japanese learners of English. There are a lot of things poorly translated into English that are just plain bizarre. Often the grammar on signboards and official documents are too wordy, many of which are out of context, the grammar is off, and the idea becomes lost. One example, my Aunt and I went to an aquarium last week, and one sign read, “Please do not disturb sunfish by taking photographs with a flame of flashlight. Thank you for your cooperation.” Another one read, “Please to not get over the handrail.”

Also articles such as A and The do not exist in the Japanese language and is very difficult for Japanese speakers to know when to place these properly in a sentence. One sign I saw the other day read, “Please push a door” I’m a little worried this Engrish is going to effect the way I talk. By the time I come back, I will be saying everything with adopted English loan words. Canu yu undasusando mi?