Post: #51

(02-16-2019 01:54 AM)John Dodds Wrote:  

(02-15-2019 10:58 PM)flyinghorse Wrote:  Most people who have been here over 3 years make around 25 dollars an hour for the big companies.

How much are you earning as an English teacher in Vietnam?
And what country are you posting from?
(Can a mod check his posting country?)

I've been here two years so i'm on a middle tier salary.

How about you?

Post: #52

(12-12-2018 05:28 PM)ShanghaiPlayer Wrote:  Teaching in China isn’t viable anymore. Things are heating up every month between Western countries and China, and ‘incidents’ seem to be occurring every other month now. I have a feeling they’re going to start targeting foreigners at random and arrest them for political motives. They just recently arrested a former Canadian diplomat. Lots of people are leaving these days. I don’t see how any Western teachers actually feel safe teaching there now.

Very prescient.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01...fo-arrest/

I know two Americans who've left China and returned home in the last couple years. Both were +7 year stays. They didn't like the repressive turn of events in that country. One ended up getting intestinal cancer (young! only 30 yo) from the consistent food poisoning that he received from the dirty cooking oil over there. His specialist said it was absolutely due to the poor sanitation in Chinese restaurants. He had surgery and is fine now.

Post: #53

Sounds like hell. I taught in Japan for a year and was able to stock away 1000 a month with a car. All I did all day was play guitar in the nurses office and say a few phrases out of a book from time to time, as I was an Assistant Language Teacher. Used that money I saved over the year to hit South America.

Post: #54

Yep, only Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam are good choices for teachers without QTS but with tefl, degree, and native speaker.

Post: #55

In Brazil it is a big thing, was more in the past, but is still big.

Post: #56

You can make a ton doing private lessons if you market yourself well and have the personality for it.

Post: #57

Actually forgot to mention that a ton of English teachers work online and live as digital nomads.

They earn roughly 20 dollars and hour working for Chinese schools - you just need to be a native speaker with a tefl and a degree. Most people earn around 1800 dollars a month doing this.

I guess if you lived in countries that require less than 1,200 per month than you would have a good enough life and could save the extra.

Post: #58

(02-15-2019 07:54 PM)John Dodds Wrote:  

(12-11-2018 06:37 AM)JimBobsCooters Wrote:  The English teaching is still absolutely viable. Vietnam is a great spot for it right now, met several folks making $20-30 an hour in Hanoi without any qualifications and Hanoi is stupid cheap so you can save most of that. If you have qualifications you can make a fair bit more, there is actually genuine careers to be had in it if you really wanted to that do pay well, especially if you have some form of business degree/background and can get into the business English teaching area.

$10/hour in HCMC is viable, more than that and I would say they are lying.
I've not met anyone teaching English out here that is making more than they spend.
It's a fun life with plenty of opportunity for easy sex with great looking women.
You just gotta hope you die while you're young.

Biggest danger, the sex in SEA is gonna kill any desire you have to ever work in the west again.

I work in buttfuck nowhere Vietnam.. last job was $21 an hour, $1764 a month. I quit to work less hours for a cheap little place down the road, few classes and kids from poorer families (much better to teach), still get $17 an hour.

Everyone I know is making cash to save. Well.. APART from one heroin addict who blew all his money every weekend but he went to spectacular lengths to achieve that.

I agree that the chicks have got the finest asses I have seen and banged.

What you're describing sounds more like Thailand or Cambodia, hot available women but no money to be made.

+1 on not wanting to go back to western Women

Post: #59

Teaching Eng is still possible guys, esp in Asian countries. the visa required is quite different but all viable. I have lot of friends need to learn English in asian like Thailand or Vietnam. Eventho now we get many English learning apps from istore, chplay or apknite. But realife interaction while studying is still needed. That makes the progress of learning more practical and more fun.

Post: #60

I've been teaching English in China for a couple of years now. I got a CELTA which was excellent preparation for being dumped in a classroom of 50 students without any assistance whatsoever. To be honest my 120 hr online TEFL was just as good as far as getting the paperwork done. They didn't actually think my CELTA certificate was valid because it didn't say "120 hours" on the front of it!!! The CELTA is much better though as you get REAL teaching practice as well as all that peer observation.

Not all teachers are broke - I'm the wealthiest one I know lol. I make more from my investments than my job. But yeah, there aren't too many rich English teachers. I have previous side hustles to thank for that plus a good former career as a software engineer.

As far as food goes... I never understand the guys that come here and eat in 10RMB noodle restaurants. It's false economy to eat shit food.

I buy mostly imported stuff and cook almost all my own meals. As a result, the only time I've been sick in 18 months here is from the London assembled pasta salad on the Virgin Atlantic flight.

I'm a university teacher so the salary is pretty low. Actually I'm not even sure how much I get paid this year. But it's twice as much as I spend. The free apartment is a huge help. I had an OK salary in London but I was paying 825 GBP a month to live in a Pimlico broom cupboard.

In China you can earn 2 - 3x as much as me by teaching kids, or teaching at a language school, or doing lots of private tuition like prepping rich kids for IELTS. Also you can teach other subjects like A Levels. I had a go at teaching IT. That was fun but it took ages to prep the lessons and mark the coursework whereas with TEFL you can just rape stuff off of YouTube or the million and one free lesson plan sites.

Post: #61

If I get a new gig, I will have to get my CELTA because I only did 60 hours with Oxford Seminars and can't simply upgrade with another 60 hours.

This school year I jumped ship to some people I had worked with previously. It's a brand new school in the middle of nowhere, which has it's ups and downs. For one, it allows me to keep a low profile while all the political bullshit blows over. I get a meal allowance for the cafeteria (and the 10RMB won ton soups are tasty) but raw food is really cheap, like 2 bucks a pound for pork or chicken, and 10 bucks gets me a bag of vegetables that could last a week.

Public universities pay pretty crappy. K-3 can pay surprisingly well, but it's not really my thing so I stick to high school 10-12. However, my school is part of a larger organization and I will have rug rats one day a week. Next year I want to try to get into teacher training and hit them up for a raise.

Post: #62

Short-term yes, long-term no, unless you love teaching and are willing to market yourself for private tutoring, own a language school or create your own materials to sell. There's plenty of people out there making six figures in Asia but most of them are locals or Asian Americans who own the schools or sell language products. Best way of doing this as a foreigner would be to marry a local which in Korea at least gives you the ability to run your own business.

Post: #63

(02-20-2019 09:25 PM)TopPanda Wrote:  I've been teaching English in China for a couple of years now. I got a CELTA which was excellent preparation for being dumped in a classroom of 50 students without any assistance whatsoever. To be honest my 120 hr online TEFL was just as good as far as getting the paperwork done. They didn't actually think my CELTA certificate was valid because it didn't say "120 hours" on the front of it!!! The CELTA is much better though as you get REAL teaching practice as well as all that peer observation.

Not all teachers are broke - I'm the wealthiest one I know lol. I make more from my investments than my job. But yeah, there aren't too many rich English teachers. I have previous side hustles to thank for that plus a good former career as a software engineer.

As far as food goes... I never understand the guys that come here and eat in 10RMB noodle restaurants. It's false economy to eat shit food.

I buy mostly imported stuff and cook almost all my own meals. As a result, the only time I've been sick in 18 months here is from the London assembled pasta salad on the Virgin Atlantic flight.

I'm a university teacher so the salary is pretty low. Actually I'm not even sure how much I get paid this year. But it's twice as much as I spend. The free apartment is a huge help. I had an OK salary in London but I was paying 825 GBP a month to live in a Pimlico broom cupboard.

In China you can earn 2 - 3x as much as me by teaching kids, or teaching at a language school, or doing lots of private tuition like prepping rich kids for IELTS. Also you can teach other subjects like A Levels. I had a go at teaching IT. That was fun but it took ages to prep the lessons and mark the coursework whereas with TEFL you can just rape stuff off of YouTube or the million and one free lesson plan sites.

I was recently offered 3,000$ a month to teach in china but decided i'd rather earn slightly less and be near my friends in Vietnam.

The people who have no money tend to be reckless with it. Most of my friends earn 2000 dollars a month and the cost of living here is only around 800 dollars a month so they should be saving a ton but they don't. Instead they go out drinking at fancy bars, go clubbing, and go on mini vacations to nearby countries every 8 weeks squandering most of their spare cash.

I do the above but to a much less frequent rate.

Post: #64

Ages ago, I looked into a gig doing English in Japan. It never happened, but then I got stationed in Korea with the US military. I met a few people doing the English teaching thing and kinda felt even better about being on active duty, getting a steady paycheck, having no bills and banging just as many women as I would have doing their job. Maybe more.

Nevertheless, they supposedly made decent money and back then (90s) an apartment was sometimes included. The "English teachers" I met there were usually of dubious educational background and often wouldn't qualify for an actual English teaching job right out of college. That didn't matter though, so long as they had a degree in basket weaving and could speak as a native, that's all they needed to do.

Most of them said the work was not something they'd be able to stand for more than a couple of years. I knew of one guy who was there for about five years and he looked completely burnt. Probably had no other options or plan.

These days with the Internet the landscape changed; surprised anyone is making upwards of $20 an hour. I know of a retired guy about 55 years old in the Phils who claimed to be doing this part time for about $7.50 an hour, mostly teaching Korean businessmen online. That rate is pretty good money for the Phils but not sure I want to be doing that when I'm finally retired.

No matter where you go think about the legality of working and what visa you are on. In Korea they'll boot you if you lose your job with a Korean school and there is no freelancing thereafter, at least not from what I remember.

Post: #65

I'm in China and on salary, but based on actual hours "worked" it is well over $20. However, I am going on 6 years now and have a good relationship with my employer who is not a fly by night operation.

If you have CELTA and build up two years of experience (you could probably do that part-time as a volunteer for an immigrant services organization if not full time with a private school) then you can find places for about $20 an hour. Wall Street English, the largest private training company (owned by Pearson, a huge education company) was hiring a few years ago for RMB20k a month, which is about $19 an hour assuming 2000 hours a year. The thing is, you were on your own for taxes, transportation and living expenses, and it was in Beijing which can be bloody expensive, in relative terms.

Similarly, Kaplan (of test prep fame) had a pre-university and freshman business program in Shanghai that paid about $40k a year, but you needed either a B.Comm for the grade 12 position or an MBA. That's not actually teaching English, but rather teaching business to ESL students.

These are both large, foreign owned education companies who won't screw you over.

My school last year was running a pilot online program. It was a bit of a mess but has potential. To run a "class" of X number of students you need specialized software and ideally local teaching staff to support the program. WeChat is universal and pretty good for one-on-one but RMB125 an hour would be a price point for a limited clientele.

Personally, I want to set myself up to do more teacher training next year and hit my boss up for a substantial pay raise.
The absolute highest paying ESL jobs I have seen were for elite international schools. There was a VP position in Qingdao offering $60k a year but you need the appropriate credentials and experience that even I don't have.

My strategy is to keep my workload low while developing my own location-independent business in my off hours. That is probably the best path for budding musicians, writers, artists, software developers and such who don't want to be barristas while pursuing their dream.

Post: #66

Living abroad for a time is a very good experience. I have been to Japan and, because I liked it so much, was looking for a teaching job once my 3 months tourist visa was about to expire. The problem was that the market was very competitive (Tokyo) and the salary extremely low. I forgot the exact numbers, but it was a fraction of what I made at home in the IT industry. So my recommendation would be that if you can save more in your home country, make the money there. Then use that money for your travel which will allow you to fully experience your time abroad without being in the hamster wheel of a low salary job.