Well, I got contacted by a school in Seoul about teaching english at a private school. Its basically first grade english and they pay for everything except your monthly utilities.

Have you or anyone you know been a part of these programs before? I'm actually considering this as I've been in a complete rut lately.

I had a friend who did this in Gifu City, Japan. She had a horrible time.

I had another friend who's ex-roommate ended up in Korea, and had a really bad time, her mom ended up spending a good deal of money trying to get her back home a year early. I'm fuzzy on the details.

When I was an undergrad, I worked in a social work grad school, and one of the students, her daughter ended up getting stuck there, some fucked up visa/passport thing. She was stuck in Korea for two years longer than she had signed up for.

i know a girl who did this in chile. she lives there now but, you know, on purpose. and she's probably holding, if you're down there.

By buddy did it in Korea. He thought it was pretty ok but he did a lot of DJ gigs as well.

Dude, do your research.

I thought about this right after college and was very close to doing it. It all seemed very simple and the interview process was a joke it was so quick and easy. They REALLY wanted me to do this and really rushed me along.

I took a step back and started asking questions and they started being very vague about pay and day to day duties and to how they would prepare me to teach. I had no experience other than speaking english. There are horror stories of people going over there and the living arrangements being crap and if you decided you want out they cut you loose and you have to find your own way home, etc.

Not to scare you or anything but it was in Korea. Don't remember the name of the company though.

I'm sure it has a been a very rewarding experience for many people just be careful and make sure the company is reliable.

Perkele, who briefly posted here but who then went away in a huff because we didn't want to talk about Nick fucking Cave every minute of the day, went to Poland to teach English.

I don't know if he lurks or not. Perkele, are you there?

Another friend of mine, Iain, went to Japan. I've not heard from him since so I'd imagine he was murdered by the Yakuza.

My friend is doig this in Japan right now...

if youre interested, ill see if he'll answer any questions you may have....PM me!

Engrish?

Astro understands me!!!!!

i've been thinking about doing this myself as well. in fact, it's pretty much what i want to do for a while after college. i haven't really looked into much of anything besides peace corps but you need 4 months of certified ESL teaching before you can teach english for them. seems kind of ridiculous to me. i feel like the peace corps is somewhere where you might get a start in something like that. i've been led to believe that initiatives like that (requiring these qualifications) are related to changes under bush under the same ideas as NCLB. bummer. japan is kind of a dream spot for me. i would love to spend a long amount of time there. it just seems so incredible.

Worked for NEC (Tokyo, Sapporo) for over five years designing curriculums and content for their online ESL programme. Fortunately, my teaching stints were kept to a minimum - more or less guinea pig sessions to test the real-time abilities of the classes. The majority of the instructors NEC hired were either TEFL-certified or had MAs in ESL. Aquaintances working for the NOVAs or Berlitzes or GEOSes or AEONs were for the most part disgruntled and were living in Japan to 'broaden their horizons' or some such nonsense. The turnover rate for instructors is high and the quality of the teaching poor from what I gathered. I've been told schools will take anyone with a Bachelor's degree.

Also, never heard anything good about teaching in Korea. Nada.

I've known a few people who have done this (China, Japan) and they all had tremendously rewarding and positive experiences. One of them is actually still in China 5 years later, has his own TV show, etc. There's definitely a need for a "can do" and resourceful attitude, as it sounds like there are typically a few inconveniences, etc.

I taught conversational English in Germany a few times, but it was never part of a formal program. I was more part of the local university, than, say, a for profit firm assisting non-English speakers in making the leap.

I have a friend doing this right now, teaching English in Sevilla, Spain. It's part of her master's program through UNC-CH though.

a guy i know is teaching english in korea - he seems to like it ok. the questionable thing is that this guy is insane - seriously - he is pretty much an alcoholic, serious drug user, gets into fights all the time and had his 2 front teeth knocked out, and is really pretty dumb.

So, he teaches out of the chapters of The Dirt that were dictated by Tommy Lee?

I wonder if I could do this in Sweden! Most people there speak English though.

yeah i'd be surprised. hang out with some swedish girls every now and then and they are not lacking at all for english. i think they have that one under control in scandinavia.

actually, you'd be surprised. very conservative, not as quick to accept an offer of a glass of wine as most american bitches, and MUCH MUCH slower to drink it. what's more is that they're not quite as mythically beautiful as we've been led to believe. quite a few are downright unfuhable. but then again, the ones that are exceptional are absolutely exceptional.

[quote="cmanhatan4]actually, you'd be surprised. very conservative, not as quick to accept an offer of a glass of wine as most american bitches, and MUCH MUCH slower to drink it. what's more is that they're not quite as mythically beautiful as we've been led to believe. quite a few are downright unfuhable. but then again, the ones that are exceptional are absolutely exceptional.[/quote]

i don't know, i have some swedish friends--mlle and i went to their wedding in uppsala and spent some time in stockholm. i say nary a dog while we were over there. reykjavik was pretty much the same way. it's the promised land, imho . . . well with the exception of miserably dark winters. . .

Sydney Morning Herald (respected broadsheet etc) had an article on this yesterday. Should be accessible here for the next week:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hard-lessons-from-teaching-english-in-japan/2006/03/14/1142098460885.html

Shame if that's the case as I'd love to do it, especially since I'm studying Japanese

WWOOFing is a better bet if you just want to see a country rather than being genuinely into teaching. If you're pleasant, you can get some cash work with it - regardless, you can stretch the funds a loooong way. A lot of them aren't actually organic farms, they're just folks who need some casual labour now and then. They feed you, put you up, and often show you round and take you to and from the station.

http://www.wwoof.org/

Look at the JET program. PM and I might be able to give you some other leads (I work for a international exchange organziation).

the first rule of teaching english overseas is never talk about teaching english overseas

I'm over here now. What would you like to know? Research is wicked important.