Sounds like the same approach all over the world. I taught every summer in Switzerland. All of the teachers would meet at the Swiss school and spend a week in orientation and then they would drive us all on a bus across the border into Italy where we would get a TB test (?!?!) and then be issued a work visa to work in Switzerland. There were similar hoops to jump in Germany for Americans trying to get work, but the wink-wink approach was adapted by every school there and they all knew the tricks.
Do you work with English teachers that are imported from English-speaking countries? If you do, do most of these guys speak the local language? If they don’t, how long does it take them to figure out the difference between asking where the bus stops and asking how many pickles it takes to elephant a sidewalk?
How’s your Korean?
Do you have an accent while speaking either languages?
What’s the general attitude towards Korea by the foreign English teachers?
So what about Korea pisses you off?
I just left Korea a couple of days ago the only thing I’m wondering is, “is this what Americans call a heat wave?” The weather is GORGEOUS in Central Pennsylvania. Seoul weather must be godawful right now. I had a great time there but man the weather sucks.
Actually, here in Korea it’s the American books that are more widely used. I’d imagine British books would be the choice in Europe. At the place I teach, we use British books for the lower levels and American for the higher ones. I personally would prefer if we were consistent, but the powers that be think it’s better for students to have exposure to both. As if learning a foreign language wasn’t confusing enough.
There’s not a clear preference. Most Koreans think British accents are cooler than American ones; plus, the clipped way of speaking is easier for Koreans to imitate. However, while there are schools who don’t care about accents, there are also schools that insist on American accents for their teachers. American culture is the prevalent one here, so it follows that American English tends to be more widely taught.
I’ve never worked with British teachers, so I can’t say if they’re less fun than Americans. I have worked with some boring American teachers, though. 
I’ve used it in the past - for crossword puzzles, word games, and children’s songs. Mostly extra stuff I use when I have time to kill in class. Now, all my materials are supplied by the school. It’s a huge organization and has a very strict program that is used in all their branches and franchises. We have a reasearch team that produces the teaching material we use in class, used exclusively by us. Our contract expressly forbids us to use our class material outside the workplace (like for private tutoring, for example).
Most schools don’t develop their own material, but they do use stuff from Penguin or Scholastic or some other big publisher. The Internet is mostly for supplementary stuff, used at the teacher’s discretion.
We do have online homework at my school. It’s convenient but can be a pain in the ass - the computer only recognizes one answer when sometimes a variety of words could be correct; students complaining that they can’t do their homework because their parents won’t let them near the computer :rolleyes: , etc.
I am currently the only Korean teacher at my school - the other four are Caucasian. Two are from Canada, two are from the US. Out of the four, one of them speaks Korean pretty well - enough to follow basic conversation (He’s been here for a year and a half, now). One of them just got here, so who knows how he’ll fare. The other two know maybe ten Korean words between them, and they’ve been here 9 months. Actually, one of them can sorta read, while the other is totally clueless.
The thing is, if you’re a foreigner living in Seoul, strictly speaking you don’t really need to know Korean to get by - providing you stick to certain areas of the city. You’re rarely in a situation where you’re forced to speak Korean, so I suppose there’s less incentive to learn. On the other hand, just learning how to read the alphabet makes life so much easier here (Korean is a phonetic alphabet, so it’s really just a question of memorizing the characters). Unfortunately, few foreigners attempt even that.
Most people don’t know I’ve lived in the US by listening to my Korean, and they tend to be surprised when I tell them. As for my English, if I have any kind of accent it’s an American one. Actually, one of the questions I always get is: “How did you retain your accent when you’ve been living in Korea for the past 10 years?” The answer to that is, I dunno. But my brother, who was born in the US and was 8 when we moved here, hasn’t lost his accent either, despite the fact that his English grammar and vocabulary are still stuck in the second grade.
Most teachers nowadays are fresh out of college and only here for a year or two to have fun and pay off their college debts. They love it here - in fact, most of them love it more than I do. :dubious: There is, however, a certain condescending attitude that most of them tend to have. After all, they make a lot of money off of the simple fact that they are “white” and speak English. When their Korean bosses complain that foreign teachers tend to be rude and selfish and insensitive to Korean culture, most teachers respond by saying, “Well, you guys are paying us shitloads of money to teach you OUR culture, so suck it up.” It’s a kind of, “I can get away with anything in Korea because I’m a foreigner and they need me” mentality. The sad part is that a lot of the time, they’re right.
Don’t me wrong - not everyone here is like that. (My co-workers, for example, are awesome people.) But many are. Maybe 6 out of 10.
Oh God, do you really want to get me started on this? I could start with the fucked-up school system that works its students to death and still allows teachers to beat their students with large sticks, or the conservative Confucian ideals that STILL dominate Korean society, or the repressed attitude towards sex that is so 19th century, or the way people shove and step on your toes and close doors in your face and never say excuse me or sorry, or the respect you’re supposed to show to anyone who is older than you, be it by 50 years or 5 months… yeah. The list goes on.
More pertinent to the topic at hand - the one thing that REALLY pissed me off was that I’d get paid less simply because I wasn’t “white.” Honestly, they’d pay people who had the grammar and vocabulary of a 5th grader a higher salary than they did me, regardless of prior experience or qualifications, simply because I was Korean. I’ve had to pretend that my Korean sucked in order to get a job. A lot of Koreans can’t seem to understand the concept of “bilingual” - they think that if your Korean is good, it means your English sucks. The school I work at now was one of the first schools that paid its teachers equally, regardless of race.
Summer is the worst. You have weeks of monsoon followed by weeks of sticky heat that doesn’t even cool down at night. Another thing about Korea that totally pisses me off. 
HazelNutCoffee,
I know what you’re talking about with the cut-throat competition found even in primary education. It’s absolutely ridiculous. About corporal punishment though, even after completing my elementary school in an American system and going to middle school in a korean public school, I didn’t mind it. I know teachers tend not to hit girls as frequently or as severely so I doubt you’ve experienced the worst of it. Going to an all male school meant teachers went all out. Despite this, the Confucian ideals are one of the things that I love about Korea. In my opinion, teachers should be able to punish his/her student without having to worry about getting shot the next day. In Korea, teachers get the respect that they deserve. S. Korea has becoming one of the most prosperous countries from one of poorest in less than 50 years partly thanks to the Confucian tendency to greatly value education and the people that provide it (teachers and professors).
About the American teachers general attitude, that does not surprise me one bit. Even without the politics (Bush is the devil etc), that sort of mentality is the reason that Americans sometimes are not so loved around the world. They expect their host country to adapt to them, instead realizing they’re guests in another culture and they should be the one adapting.
I know you broke down the Korean skills of the teachers you know, but how common would you say it is not to know any Korean at all? Does anyone know about Japan and not speaking Japanese? How do female teachers fair in the system compared to males? Is there a preference?
I’ve been toying with the thought of teaching ESL after I graduate in 2008, if only because I’d like to travel and don’t really want to study in Europe for a semester. It would be nice to take a break before grad school too. Oh, and pay off some debt. The non-fluency thing is encouraging.
It’s pretty common for foreigners to arrive knowing no Korean, and to leave in almost the same state. You can get by knowing only the standard phrases: thank you, sorry, how much?, etc. I wouldn’t worry about the language. Just make sure to live in Seoul, preferably in Itaewon - that’s where most of the foreigners live.
There is no real gender preference when it comes to ESL teachers. Some schools prefer to keep a balance. There is a slight preference for female teachers when it comes to private tutoring jobs.
Feel free to email me if you want advice about teaching in Korea. I’d be happy to help.
What do your youngest students generally think or say about you and your classes (as far as you know, anyway)?
What do their parents say to you, assuming you have contact?
I am of the opinion that many of them get more respect than they deserve. Students are abused, physically and sexually, by teachers fairly often in Korea and the teachers get away with it because of the damn Confucian idea that the teacher is untouchable. When the students accuse their teachers, they are rarely believed. More often than not they are punished. I don’t regret my experiences in the Korean education system (they’ve taught me a lot about survival, if nothing else!) but I definitely will not inflict it on my children (if I happen to have any).
The best part about the place I work at is that teachers don’t deal with the parents - the admin staff does. Obviously the foreign teachers can’t communicate with the parents, and it would be unfair to make the Korean teachers do so simply because they are unfortunate enough to speak the language. It makes things a lot easier to keep the parents and teachers apart, especially at a private institute.
I teach mostly older kids, but I did have a lower level class a few months ago. They seem to like me, but they are definitely a bit afraid of me - I’m one of the more stricter teachers. The little girls always comment on my clothes and nails (I dress up a bit for work, and my nails are usually manicured) and they like to give me hugs - it’s really sweet. I have one or two boy students that still drop in to say hi even after they’ve changed teachers. Most of the boys, however, complain loudly that I give them too much work to do, the ungrateful little brats.
Besides being stricter, I also give a bit more homework than the other teachers, and I’ve been told the parents are pleased. :dubious:
Very few of the teachers I’ve met are completely fluent (most of the ones who become fluent move on to different lines of work), and there’s a fair percentage that speak almost none at all. The majority fall into varying levels of conversational Japanese, much of which is learned through the pursuit of alcohol and/or sex. Also, very few (of the ones that were planning to teach for just a couple of years, anyway) learn how to read kanji well, or even the phonetic kana. Japanese skills aren’t really a big benefit in the classroom (though they can help at times, and may make the students more comfortable), but they’re very useful when you need to talk with the school staff, and believe me, life is much easier when the receptionists and accountants like you. And of course, everyday life is more fun when you can understand what’s being said and written around you.
Most of the teachers I know are male, though there are a decent number of females as well. Maybe a 75:25 split. I don’t know of many schools having a preference for men or women, though some students might (mothers may prefer a woman for their young kids, or groups of housewives may want a “women’s coffee hour”, for example). From what I’ve seen, treatment and payment have been equal, and bad experiences are the exception, rather than the norm. Incidentally, from the Japanese side, English seems to be a more ‘feminine’ line of work: while all of the schools I’ve worked for have been owned by men, the people managing day-to-day business, hiring-and-firing, training, payroll, scheduling, students, etc. have almost all been women.