Want to make big bucks teaching in Taiwan or just Asia in general? The good thing about many EFL jobs overseas is that they typically require around 20 hours a week but still allow you to make as much as someone would working full-time in the same country. This means that you have plenty of extra time to go and do something else, whatever that that may be. However, you aren’t going to get rich this way and you’ll probably find that the older you get the more important money becomes, at least that is the case for many long term EFLers I have met. One year quickly turns into five and then ten years and before you know it you are thinking about getting “old” and wondering how much money will you be able to sock away if you plan on being a long term EFLer. So, how can you possibly make decent money teaching English overseas?

Work Several Jobs
OK, so I said above that most jobs give you plenty of free time, so the first way is to work two or three jobs. This is definitely doable while you are young, and by young I mean not old For me personally I found that it was in my thirties that I started to get sick of running around all over town working in several different places for different bosses. You’ll definitely earn more and you don’t have to worry about having extra qualifications. Taiwan will allow you to work legally in a few places, so it’s definitely one way you can go about earning more money. The downside is that there is plenty of travel time and it can become a huge downer, especially if you work seven days a week. Again, this is fine if you are extremely motivated or young, but it’s not something I enjoy doing and it definitely isn’t working smarter, just harder. You’ll find out quickly that the months pass by quickly, but you will see a considerable increase in how much you can save. However, this would have to be the worst way of earning more from teaching.

Upgrade Your Job
Since most people in Taiwan end up teaching kids, the other way to earn more is to change jobs and look for something that pays more. This, however, is much easier said than done and you will find out that there is a ceiling on how much you can earn from teaching English, at least if you look for jobs locally. In Taiwan, teaching kids is actually much more lucrative because it’s a much bigger market, so if you think moving to an adult cram school will end up paying more, then you are dead wrong. Classes for kids usually pay around 600NT an hour, whereas adult classes can range anywhere from 400NT to 700NT, with MOST of them being in the 400NT – 500NT bracket. The other catch is that you may find a job paying 700NT an hour, but you’ll have fewer hours than you would if you taught kids. So at the end of the day your higher paying adult gig actually pays less on a monthly comparison because you are doing fewer hours. What about university, public school teaching or other positions that are more respected and professional? The same problem. When you compare the hourly rate you will find that teaching kids in a cram school will probably earn you more, and the only reason I would recommend someone look for a university or public school job is because you enjoy the work more and not because you think you can earn more money. At the end of the day, teaching kids in Taiwan is much more profitable and you’ll never really get “rich” teaching English so long as you work for someone else. The solution? You have to think outside of the box.

Private Tutoring
The obvious thing you can do is tutor on the side. Please note that this may be illegal and I obviously do not condone anyone breaking the law, but this is still one quick and easy way to go about making some extra money. What’s the best way to do this? You land a job teaching English that gets you a visa but has the absolute minimum number of hours required. This means you spend as little time as possible working and use your extra time to setup private tutoring gigs. If you are just starting out then you’ll find this very slow going. It will take some time before you have earned yourself a reputation and students start to refer others. You’ll also need a way to get the word out about your services. You’ll find that there are several sites in many countries that are setup to help people do language exchange and other things like that. In Taiwan one site you can use is http://www.kijiji.com.tw They have two sections, one where you can offer your service for language tutoring and another for language exchange, that you could post ads about your English tutoring service. Now, what kind of private tutoring should you offer?

The first kind is that of tutoring children. You have parents who basically want their child to have more intensive English lessons. They may already send their child to an English cram school but usually don’t like the idea of twenty children being in a class, because it means their child has very little opportunity to practice speaking. Starting out by offering these kinds of classes is the easiest, because there are plenty of parents with children looking for these classes. What will you be teaching? For the most part it will probably be going over what they are learning or have already learnt at cram school, or the parents may ask you to design or provide your own lessons. The good thing is you’ll find plenty of parents offering to pay you for classes like this, but the downside is their expectations are typically very hire or they aren’t willing to pay much. This means you should be careful and find a balance. Don’t sell yourself too cheaply! I once met a woman who was offering 200NT an hour, which was insulting. For that kind of money she should have hired a Taiwanese teacher, but she expected to get a foreigner for the same price. So you have to be careful here and not give in to parents demands. If you are expected to provide all of your own material and correct homework etc that are done outside of the actual tutoring time, then you want to make sure your hourly pay reflects this.

The second kind of tutoring is to adults and can be broken into two groups: coffee club English and English to pass some kind of test. Coffee club English is what I call those adults who just want to learn English for “fun”. They are usually middle-aged people or retirees who have no hobbies outside of work and just want to make a foreign friend. This kind of work can be easy, because they just want a chance to practice speaking English and you’ll probably end up meeting at Starbucks or something like that. Easy work and the students are usually willing to pay a fair price and won’t try to undercut you. Again, don’t sell yourself too cheap. I met a guy who expected me to travel 1 hour to hold a class with him for one hour and he only offered 300NT an hour. Taking into account my travel time it meant I was earning 150NT an hour, so I didn’t accept his “generous” offer. Coffee club English students will generally have no goal or set objectives, so you’ll have to provide the material. Generally some kind of conversation book is enough. You simply spend half the lesson drilling the book and getting them to practice the phrases, and then you can spend the remainder of your time doing what I call “free talk”. Here you basically get them to talk about anything that happened that week which is of interest to them. In the even that they have no idea, then you can just bring in the local English newspaper and talk about what happened in the news. The other kind of clas for adults is the one where they want to pass some kind of test. This means TOEIC, TOEFL and occasionally IELTS. TOEIC is very popular in Taiwan because if they pass the TOEIC test it means finding work is easier or they can get a pay rise. The downside is that there aren’t many people looking for these classes. Testing taking is big business in Taiwan and if you provide tutoring then don’t sell yourself too cheap. However, this also means you will have to be well prepared. You’ll need to know the test they plan to take like the back of your hand, and the best way to do this is probably to take the test yourself or to buy some test prep books and read them from front to cover several times. Preparing for classes like these is generally a lot more work than coffee club English classes, but you will stand to make considerably much more money.

Start Your Own School
What you may find is that if you start off tutoring you get so many students that you eventually have to start your own school. This isn’t uncommon and I’ve heard stories of exactly this happening. The small classes of two or three students grow into something that required a much bigger and more legal setup. Now, if you asked about starting your own English cram school ten years ago, then I would have said you were a smart cookie, but doing it now is financial suicide. Of course there are ALWAYS exceptions, but the amount of time, energy and money required to setup your own school far outweighs the potential benefits. Obviously I am talking about a legal cram school here and not something that you run without proper licensing. I’ll assume that you have no problem registering your business and look at some of the issues associated with setting up your own school. The first is that in Taiwan now the English market is saturated. Saturated is an understatement because many people assume that cram schools are cash cows, and they were ten years ago but not now. So you have all these schools, mainly for kids, that are running at a loss or running on such thin margins that it makes you wonder why they even bother. The other issue is that the number of kids in Taiwan as plummeted over the years and is continuing to fall. This means that if you absolutely MUST open your own school then I’d say you better make sure it doesn’t rely solely on kids. I think adult or a mixture of adult and children classes would be much “safer”. I really can’t say much about opening your own school because I think it is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Plenty of people talk about schools online and the all sing the same song, that they work their arse off and when you factor in how long it took to get to being profitable, it just isn’t worth it. I honestly think you’d be much better off investing your time and energy into something else.

Find a Job Overseas
What? Leave Taiwan and work elsewhere? Well, you could because the Middle East and Korea pay a heck of a lot more than most jobs in Taiwan, but this isn’t what I meant. What I mean here is look for a teaching job that is listed overseas. Huh? This applies mainly to China but is also true for Taiwan and other Asian countries. You’ll find that many universities are jointly owned or run and they serve as prep schools for children whose parents want them to go to high school, university or to study postgraduate degrees overseas in the USA or Australia. Basically you are teaching classes that bring these students up to speed and teach them the necessary skills they will use while studying in university overseas. So where can you find jobs like this? You need to check sites like http://www.jobs.ac.uk and look for positions in schools that are jointly run or something like that. The benefit of working in a place like this is that they pay MUCH more than you’ll ever earn if you find a teaching job locally. The downside? You’ll be expected to teach and will probably put in a lot of hours. These kinds of jobs are for the lazy, so make sure that it is something you are serious about before you apply.

That’s what I think about how you can make some serious money teaching English in Taiwan or anywhere in Asia. The above could be applied to other places like China or Korea, but just remember that no matter what you do you need to look at how much time you put in and what you get paid. Travel time can be a big killer and working several jobs may allow you to make more, but when you factor in how long you spend getting from place to place it actually isn’t that crash hot. I think the absolute best way to rake in the cash is to teach students to pass tests. TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS or prep schools that prepare students for studying overseas. I hope you found the above useful and please feel free to post comments below or your own ideas about how you get make more from teaching English.

So you’re going to move to Taiwan, start off teaching English and then move into other fields? That’s the plan, or something like it and it’s posted on many blogs and forums online. People see teaching English as a doorway to a better life and career in Taiwan, and while it sounds good in theory, the problem is that it is about as watertight as a bucket full of holes. Maybe I am just being a negative old fart or maybe I’ve been here long enough to know how Taiwan works. Read on and I’ll let you decide.

Let’s be frank. Most people teaching English in Taiwan usually don’t have a background in education or teaching. They studied something like a BA in Basket Weaving and then for whatever reason made the move overseas and ended up in Taiwan. One reason is perhaps they couldn’t find a job back home or perhaps they thought they liked the idea of learning Chinese and working as a professional basket weaver in Taiwan. Now, obviously when I say basket weaver you could insert any other white-collar job, but the point is still the same. People think they can move to Taiwan and once they’ve picked up Chinese they can build a career in IT, marketing or some other field they typically already have a degree and experience in.

The first reason this “dream” is flawed is because of simple economics. The average salary in Taiwan is around 30,000NT a month, and that is about $1,000 USD or so. That may not sound too bad, but many people will work 10 hours a day and possibly six days a week. This is the first stumbling block and something many people aren’t even aware of. They will be earning considerably LESS working in their field in Taiwan than they would back home, or at least I think it is very safe to say this. Now, the second problem is that there are rules and regulations regarding what foreign white collar workers should be paid. What does this mean? It means that a boss has to pay a foreign worker MORE than a local worker who can do the same job. How much more? I can’t remember off hand but it is around the 45k mark. So, a local employee will cost around 30k and a foreign one 45k.

The other problem is “culture”. Yes, culture. Taiwanese are generally happy to work long hours, work overtime without extra pay and do what they are told without question. They’ve lived their entire life in Taiwan and “know” how the system works. They know how to game it and play along so they can secure their job and pay their bills. Now, a foreigner is, well, completely foreign to the workplace culture of Taiwan. They will do crazy things like provide input and feedback with the false belief that their boss or higher ups will actually listen to their input. Hopefully you can see the picture I am trying to paint here. Foreign works cost more and simply are a lot more hassle. Why would a boss hire someone to do a job a local could for a lot less?
So does that mean you can’t use English teaching in Taiwan as a stepping stone to some other career outside of teaching? No, it doesn’t mean you can’t do this, but it does mean you need to wake up and smell the roses. You aren’t going to be able to just step off the plane, teach for a year and then land yourself a high paying job with perks and benefits you would expect back home. Do you really want to live in Taiwan but not teach English? Then there are two ways you can go about this.

The first is to work your way towards Taiwan. Work for a company back home that you know has offices in Taiwan. Build your career up with the goal of one day being posted to Taiwan. If you can do this then you will be much better off than option two, which I will describe below. Being posted here means you’ll retain your lovely and high paying salary you have grown accustomed to back home and it also means you’ll receive other perks like free housing and maybe a house maid and personal driver. Obviously you’d only get benefits like this if you worked for a big company and were in a top managerial position, but this is the BEST way to go about living in Taiwan and not being an English teacher.

OK, so perhaps your company doesn’t have offices in Taiwan or your career is one where there are limited opportunities to make the move overseas. So, if this is you then you need to get at least two years of work experience in your field before moving to Taiwan. Simply put, you need to slog away back home for two years so you can put that on your resume and prove you have verifiable industry experience. Once you have done that, you can start thinking about moving to Taiwan. I’d use English teaching as a way to get into Taiwan and then start looking for ways out of teaching. I’ve read plenty of stories about people who work in non-teaching jobs in Taiwan and don’t speak a word of Chinese, but I believe it is in your best interest to study Chinese. Why? Well, you are starting off at the bottom of the ladder and this means you’ll need to prove to your boss that you are worth hiring. Being able to speak Chinese means you’ll be able to network with people and not scare away potential employers because they think a non-English speaker in their workplace won’t fit in. I’d suggest you check sites like www.104.com.tw and other popular job sites in Taiwan to see where the vacancies are. You would be looking for ANY job so you can start working on building your career in Taiwan in your industry. You’ll have to be prepared to work long hours and probably work overtime without extra pay. It’s the only way you’ll be able to gain the experience and network as you build a career here in Taiwan.

Again, maybe I am just too jaded, but I think people need a good dose of reality before they follow their dream of living in Taiwan and doing something outside of teaching English. Many English teachers never actually manage to “escape” English related jobs, because they end up in translating, proof reading and editing. Hopefully the above gave you something to think about, and I’ll leave it to you to decide if there’s any truth in what I said. Good luck.

One of the hardest things for any EFLer is to decide on “where” they will teach English. Also, it’s something that anyone who has been EFLing for a while will have thought about at least once. Where should I start or where should I go next? One comparison I see popping up a lot lately is that of Taiwan vs. China. Both countries are somewhat similar, at least they have a lot more in common than China does with either Japan or Korea, but they are also at the same time light years apart. Each of these countries has its pros and cons, but which one is right for you depends on who you are and where you are going.

The EFL market in Taiwan has been around for some time, and has become somewhat long in the tooth, so to speak. I talked about the EFL industry in Taiwan in 2012 in a previous post, but I’ll quickly touch on it here. Taiwan is dominated by English cram schools for children. Most of the work here involves teaching children. Don’t like kids? Well, then the good news is that you can teach at a university if you have an MA, but you’ll need a PhD if you want something full-time, plus you’ll be asked to do research if you want to keep your job. So, essentially, making a living teaching adults in Taiwan isn’t easy, it can be done, but it’s not easy. The future for the EFL market in Taiwan is one of downsizing. There are far too many universities and cram schools when you consider the drop in the birth rate and how small the country is in the first place. The only solution is to either “merge” or simply close.

China seems to be the complete opposite of Taiwan, or at least about 15 – 20 years behind Taiwan. The EFL market is currently booming. Schools are opening up everywhere and there seems to be no end to how many people want to learn English. You’ll find that English learners come from all ages and aren’t just limited to children. Work teaching adults is also plentiful. You’ll find that universities constantly advertise online and will pretty much take anyone, sometimes even non-native English speakers. It’s pretty clear that the EFL industry in China is still in its infancy, as both parents and the government continue to pursue a path that involves learning English.

So, China wins, right? Well, this is where I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. There’s no doubt that if you want to work, then China is for you. They’ll take anyone, almost regardless of age, nationality and credentials. This means that if you are 50 something, then you’ll have very little problem finding work in China teaching English or doing something that involves English. The same isn’t true for Taiwan. Cram schools in Taiwan prefer young teachers, and with the current trend it means there are fewer and fewer jobs available, so competition starts to heat up. However, Taiwan is light years ahead of China in terms of “quality” of living. Taiwan, for the most part, is a great place to live. It’s dirty, yes, but not to the extent that China is. There’s no government firewall blocking access to websites, and you’ll have available almost all the same kinds of movies and books that you would find back home. The other advantage of Taiwan is that the pay is better than China. Now, if you remember, I did say that you’ll find more work in China, but at a slightly lower rate of pay. In addition, the cost of living in China is somewhat comparable to Taiwan. So, you can make more in Taiwan working one job than you would working one job in China. Hopefully you saw here that I said “one” job, because it’s relatively easy to get several jobs or to tutor in China than it is in Taiwan.

If someone stopped me on the side of the street today and asked which was better, Taiwan or China, I would say that if you are looking at spending any length of time teaching English, then you would be better off in China. There’s plenty of work, lots of places to live and the added bonus that the requirements to be an EFL teacher there are much lower than Taiwan. Having said that, I find myself in my 10th year of living in Taiwan, so perhaps, just perhaps, I don’t know what I am talking about .

You manage to swerve just in time as a car runs through the red light and almost slams into the front of your motorbike. Does this sound familiar? There’s nothing fun about almost being in a traffic accident and I definitely hope you had never had the misfortune of being in one, but they occur at such a high rate in Taiwan that it is almost “normal”. Perhaps I was raised by a bunch of weird or strange people, but I was always told to look both ways before crossing the road and that a red light meant STOP, not go FASTER. Perhaps it depends on which country you live in and maybe how old you are, but sometimes I don’t know which will kill me first: children in the English classes or their parents who pick them up from school after class. Sometimes the people on the roads can really drive you up the wall.

Adjusting to a new life as an English teacher is one thing, but something people overlook is that there’s a completely “different” way of life that you need to adjust to outside of the classroom. Specifically I am talking about road rules and how people choose or don’t choose to adhere to them. I speak as a man in his mid-thirties who comes from a sunny state in Australia. I must also confess that I am a bit uptight when it comes to rules and regulations, so if you are anything like me, be warned! Road rules in Taiwan are optional, and if you choose to follow them, then you may find yourself in worse trouble than if you chose not to. How’s that? Well, a good example is the red light. It doesn’t really mean “stop” here in Taiwan. Instead, it means different things depending on what action you are currently in. If you are in motion and the light changes from green to red, then this means go faster as you have about 1 or 2 seconds before traffic starts coming from another direction. If you happen to encounter a red light, then it means that you should slow down and look to see if there’s any traffic before continuing through. To make things a little more complicated, these rules are flexible and will vary depending on which part of Taiwan you are in and also whether or not police are present.

If it sounds like the wild, wild west, then perhaps you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Driving a car or riding a motorcycle in Taiwan is extremely dangerous, but it’s definitely not a death sentence. The first thing a newcomer should do, including myself who happens to be a little hard headed, is to be patient and calm. While the roads can be chaotic, there is a kind of madness to the method. Drivers “know” others are going to run red lights and cut in front of you, because they themselves do it. I guess in this way they forgive each other because if they were in the same situation they would do the exact same thing. It’s not uncommon for people to run red lights, double park their cars, cut in front of you and just be downright rude and lack any kind of driving etiquette that you may be used to in your home country. So be warned! Be patient and try not to stress yourself out about it, because driving you up the wall and making your hair turn grey is what children in your English classes are meant to do, not the cars on the road.

A question I get asked quite a lot is how old do you have to be to teach English in Taiwan. It might sound like a strange question to anyone who is a qualified or certified public school teacher, but when it comes to EFL jobs it’s definitely one you need to ask. There are two groups of people who usually fall into the category of wondering about age: those who have been into EFL for some time and those who are making a career change halfway through their life. Don’t fall into either of these two categories? Well, if you are less than 30 and have been wondering about age, you shouldn’t. However, if you are 40+ then I’ve got some good news and bad news about teaching in Taiwan.

The bad news for anyone who is 40+ is that you are starting to get too old, at least for cram schools. What’s that you say? You exercise every day and don’t look a day older than 25? You eat healthy, have no facial hair and no grey hair? Tough luck, because cram schools simply couldn’t care and they’ll start slamming the door on your face or not answering your emails once they see you are in the 40+ zone. Why are you too old? Are they worried that the children won’t like your older person smell? The probably really isn’t with the school, it’s with the parents. Parents “prefer” to see a young and energetic looking teacher in the classroom teaching their children English. For this reason young teachers are given preference and anyone who is 40+ will start to find it increasingly difficult to land a job.

The other reason “oldies” in their 40s and higher will have doors slammed and emails unanswered is because you “know” too much. Many cram schools want someone who will toe the line. By this I mean you will simply do what you are told and not ask any questions. This is VERY important when it comes to things like teaching methodology and any additional work that suddenly happens to “pop-up” unexpectedly. Schools don’t want someone telling them HOW to teach English to their children, they simply want you to follow the dots in their teacher’s book. Also, they don’t want someone saying “this wasn’t in the contract” or “you need to give me seven days’ notice” when they are asked if they can come in on the weekend or take on additional hours.

As a general rule of thumb, anyone who is less than 30 will have no trouble finding work at all. At this stage in your life you are highly sought after by cram schools. The typical Taiwanese boss equates you to a freshly born baby who will work for minimum wage and take on additional hours without asking a question. The 30 – 40 zone is a little grey. Most schools probably won’t bat an eye at your age and will happily employ you. However, once you hit 40 then things start to change. English cram school bosses will start to worry that you might look too old, not have enough energy or be too set in your ways to fit into their work environment. What about 50+? I’d say forget it if you want to teach in a cram school. Of course you could still find a job, but you’ll have more doors slammed in your face than it’s worth. Very few schools want an old fogy teaching English children in their school.

So what do you do if you are classified as undesirable? Well, you have two choices. The first is that you try to get out of the cram school rat race. This means you either look at work teaching adults or you find another line of work in Taiwan. Finding work outside of English teaching in Taiwan is VERY difficult, so I won’t even touch that one. Your second option, and I believe this to be the best choice, is that you go to another country. There’s a place called “China” just across a big chunk of water from Taiwan where you can find plenty of jobs regardless of your age. Taiwan, no country for old EFL teachers.

I decided to write this post to give people some insight into what the ESL or EFL market in Taiwan in 2012 will be like. Everything in this article is based on my own experiences and beliefs, so take what you read with a grain of salt. What’s it going to be like in 2012 if you want to teach English? I can see a basic continuing of what has already been happening over the past few years. Expect fewer English schools and jobs. You should also expect fewer hours and less pay or working conditions to either stay the same or maybe even worsen.

It’s no secret to anyone that has been in Taiwan for any amount of time that the birthrate here has plummeted. It’s gotten so low now that, like many countries, the government is encouraging people to get married and have babies. I’m not going to get into whether or not this will work, because the effects of a low birthrate are already evident in Taiwan. Primary schools have been hit hard with some having as few as one child enrolled and others have reported a significant drop in the number of students in each class. Don’t teach in a public school, so you shouldn’t worry? Wrong. Cram schools are also directly, possibly even more, affected by the drop off in number of children. Many parents send their children to cram schools because they basically need a baby sitter to take care of their child while they are at work or doing something else. Much like public schools, cram schools have also seen fewer students looking to take English classes, and this directly affects you as a teacher. Schools are struggling to keep classes open and some have closed. However, many Taiwanese consider cram schools to be cash cows, and continue to open up schools thinking they’ll get rich. This basically creates a hostile market where more and more schools are competing for fewer and fewer students.

As an English teacher, this means you either find it harder to find a teaching job in Taiwan or it means that you receive less hours. Obviously fewer children doesn’t mean that all English cram schools will close, but it means they have to adjust. Most of them simply combine classes and the result of this is that teachers lose teaching hours and that means they take home less money each month. Ten years ago it was very easy to have a full schedule teaching English in Taiwan, but in 2012 this is no longer the case. Many jobs are advertised with the bare minimum of hours required to legally get you a working permit, 14 hours, and others advertise a lot but they never deliver. Some schools are also cutting cost by hiring “cheaper” teachers. I personally know of an example where “old” teachers who were demanding a much higher pay were simply replaced by new teachers who were willing to work for less. This means you shouldn’t expect a pay increase and I would definitely not recommend asking for one unless it was offered.

Sound like nothing but bad news? Well, apologies if it does but that’s how ESL and EFL jobs in 2012 in Taiwan will go. Expect fewer jobs to be advertised and those that do will offer you either less money or fewer hours than you may have been able to get a few years ago. It also means that if you do have a job, I would strongly recommend holding onto it. Unless you are in Taipei it can be extremely difficult to find a teaching job as there are so few English cram schools. With this in mind it should put you in a better position for when you go looking for a teaching job. There’s still money to be made teaching English in Taiwan, but doing it in 2012 will be much harder and more difficult than ever before.

There are plenty of ways to get a teaching gig in Taiwan, but I am writing this post here to warn people of and strongly recommend that they DO NOT use recruitment agencies.  That’s right.  I repeat, DO NOT use recruiters to land any type of teaching job in Taiwan.  I know why people use them, because it makes your job searching so much easier, but recruiting agencies are like sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Making the move to another country can be a very daunting experience, and I understand that some people may feel overcome or seriously worried about whether or not they will be able to find a job or make an adjustment to living in a new country.  I think these are some reasons why people turn to recruiting agencies to help them find a job.  In a way it kind of makes sense, especially if you aren’t familiar with the country you plan to move to.  You don’t know anyone there, you don’t know any places to find work, and you probably can’t even speak the language.  A middleman that helps you find the right job for you sounds like a godsend, but walking down the path toward a recruiting company is about as wise as selling your soul to the devil.  Do I sound a little melodramatic?

The first thing you need to remember is that recruitment agencies only get paid when you land a job.  If they can’t place you in an English teaching position, they make no money.  What does this mean for you?  It means that they will give you any bloody job they can just to get paid.  They’ll wine and dine you by asking where you would like to work and what kind of job you are looking for, but for all intents and purposes you might as well be talking to a wall.  Most of what you say won’t be taken into consideration, because their primary concern is placing you in a school ASAP so they get paid and can move onto the next sucker in line behind you.

The other problem with recruitment agencies is in the kind of jobs they have on offer.  What’s wrong with them?  Well, schools generally pay recruitment agencies a portion of your salary.  This means every month when you get paid, the recruitment agency also gets paid.  Sound stupid?  Well, it does to me so I won’t blame you if you were thinking the same.  Alternatively, these companies get paid a “fee” for finding you, which is a considerable sum of money considering their total lack of care for you and what you want.  If I haven’t made the picture clear enough yet, let me spell it out.  Jobs recruiting companies have are utter crap.  The pay is low, much lower than the normal going rate, and they typically place you in jobs that are out in the middle of nowhere.  Why do they have so many remote jobs on hand?  It’s because the schools either offer such crap pay in the first place that no-one is stupid enough to take the job, or they just don’t know how to find foreign teachers.  Either way you end up getting screwed because you’ll get a low paying job that is so far removed from anything that resembles civilization it isn’t funny.

OK, so the jobs don’t pay as well as others and they may be in somewhat of a remote area, but don’t they help you find a place to stay and show you around?  This is another common line they feed unsuspecting teachers.  You don’t have to worry about finding your way around or getting a place to live, because they often claim that they will help you do this.  However, much like the caliber of the jobs they offer, you quickly realize that they couldn’t give a hoot about the kind of housing they help you find or making sure you have settled in.  Any housing a recruitment agency finds you will typically be a run down, rat infested hole.  OK, I admit that might be a little over the top, but I am just trying to slam home the idea that these companies DO NOT GIVE TWO FARTS about you or what you want.  As soon as you have a job and are settled into your new 4 x 4 “home”, they’ll drop you faster than you can say why-did-I-come-to-Taiwan-to-work-for-less-than-minimum-wage-in-the-USA.  Capiche?  They simply do not care.

Hopefully by now I should have painted a rose coloured picture detailing the finer points of using recruiting agencies to find English teaching jobs in Taiwan.  You have been warned.  Accept a job with one of these companies at your own risk, but hopefully you will remember what I said above and won’t be silly enough to go down that path.  If you don’t believe me, just Google around online and look for what people say about these companies.  Everything I have said above is based not on my own experiences, but information I have received from others.  I, thankfully, have never made the mistake of using a recruitment company to find a job, and hopefully neither will you.

One luxury that many people outside of Taiwan have is that of working only during the weekdays. If you plan on moving to Taiwan to teach English, then this is one luxury that you can kiss goodbye. What’s that? You don’t like the idea of working on Saturday or Sunday? Well tough luck because it is very common in Taiwan, at least working on Saturdays. It really depends on what school you end up teaching in but since most people teacher in cram schools then there’s a good chance that you might be asked to teach classes on Saturday. Why do they have classes on Saturday? Is it because the boss wants to make as much money as possible? I guess part of the answer is of course they want to have as many classes as possible so they can make more money, but that isn’t the only reason. It’s probably one of the main reasons but another is because classes in cram schools usually meet twice a week. One class is with the foreign teacher and the other class is with the local Taiwanese teacher. The schedule in a school usually goes something like this. Classes meet on Monday and Thursday. Another bunch of classes will meet on Tuesday and Friday. The final class will meet on Wednesday and Saturday. This explains why many English cram schools have classes on Saturday, because the kids come twice a week. If you working in a public school then won’t have to worry about your weekends, but you will be much busier during the week as you usually work from eight in the morning to fight in the afternoon. This is just another little thing you need to keep in mind before you decide to move to Taiwan to teach English. Working on weekends is something that Taiwan is a very accustomed to, but, and it’s easy to understand why since I’m also a foreigner, some foreigners get really irked about having to go to work on Saturdays. The bad news is it might be something you just have to learn to live with.

Teaching English in Taiwan is much like being a paid entertainer. This may be good or bad depending on how you look at, and some days it can be a little bit of both. Don’t be shocked if you have classes of children that behave differently when you’re teaching and a Taiwanese teacher is teaching English.

Kids in English classes generally love the foreign teachers because it is a time that they can have fun and relax. Chinese teachers are usually strict and children are much more afraid of them than they are of foreign teachers. This is partly why if you take a peek at another English class where a Taiwanese teacher is teaching, the kids are generally all sitting down with pens in their hands writing like busy beavers. Another reason you might find that kids in your class are a little bit more active is because foreign teachers usually play more games with them than Taiwanese teachers do. They generally associate the English teacher with games, and this means they look forward to your class because they get to have some fun and relax. Another reason why you might find kids in your class are a little bit too active is because of the language barrier. If you were 10 years old and you had a foreigner speaking a language you didn’t completely understand, you would probably feel a little bit confused. This is especially true for classes that have never had a foreign teacher before or you are their new teacher and they aren’t used to your accent or way of teaching. It’s very hard to take someone seriously if you can’t understand everything they are saying, at least from a kids point of view anyway.

This isn’t to say that kids are always naughty and misbehave, but if you have never taught children English before it’s good to keep the above tips in mind.  One thing you quickly learn in Taiwan is that classroom management is important.  With a little bit of work and patience, you’ll find that most kids can come to enjoy attending your classes while still learning something at the same time.