Teaching English as a foreign language

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Gurgeh

Silver Baronet of the Realm
4,289
11,741
Oh, that's great. I never expected to find someone who lives over there on this board, haha
Well, I don't live in Vietnam, I live in Paris but I do spent 1-3 months in Vietnam each year. For business or visiting the in-law family.

. I'm gonna be moving there from Pennsylvania, so I'm used to conditions like snow/average temps./not much humidity. I know it will be humid
I'm from Paris, so weather is roughly the same as in Pennsylvania I guess. Hanoi in summer is hard for me, but Hanoi in winter is great. Saigon is pretty much always the same 30-33°C every day, all year long. If you need a break from the heat you can flee for a few days in the mountains, like in Da Lat, that's what the french used to do during colonial times, they went in Dalat, Sapa, Bana, to take a break from the heat.

but how much of an issue are mosquitoes and insects there, and is bug spray a thing in VN or will I have to import it?
I never really had an issue with the mosquitoes, it was bad in Phu Quoc, lots of rain + constructions isn't good. but not a major problem, especialy not in Hanoi / Danang / Saigon. You might need stuff to kill bugs inside your appartment, but this you can find localy.

Have you noticed any issues with electricity? EX: Are grounded outlets common there? Should I fear having things like my computer fried due to power surges/some other type of electrical problem I'm just unfamiliar with?

Never heard of anyone having a computer fried, the only significant electrical problem you'll have is... power outage, they can last hours, and happen frequently. Most businesses have generators... because EVN is quite unreliable, especialy during the dry season.

How about drinking water? Around the major cities, is it safe to drink straight from the tap, or should I stick to bottled water? Is bottled water expensive there?

AFAIK tap water isn't drinkable anywhere in vietnam, even in hotels you should avoid it. Middle class household will have a purifier somewhere, other will boil it or drink tea. Bottled water is unexpensive and can be found literaly everywhere all the time. Or you can drink their beer, not much more alcohol in their beer than in the water... One of the problem you might have is that some shop make the ice from tap water and if you don't have an hardened stomach, you'll be quickly running for the toilets. With experience you'll be able to tell ice made from tap and ice bought from dealers made with purified water, they don't look the same.

The traffic looks so damn intimidating, but most people say once you're used to it, it's not that bad. Is that true in your experience?
I've never driven a scooter, pretty much all the westerner I know that tried to do it had at least one accident, fortunaly most only result in minor injuries, but keep in mind there are at least 30k death from traffic each year and countless critical injuries. Traffic is really scary, and driving a scooter is by far the most dangerous thing you'll do in Vietnam. My advice would be to spend a lot of time observing the local , and riding behind an experienced driver before trying it yourself, and be extremely carefull. I've seen at least half a dozen bodies from traffic accident in a dozen month. Seems to me that most vietnamese have some kind of relative that died in a scooter accident.
Using a car is very expensive (taxes are reaaaally high on cars) and slow, but some of the westerners I know have a driver, the driver is cheap, but the car rather expensive.
Anyway having a scooter asap will sound like a good idea, but just be insanely cautious. If you can use the (limited) public transportation to work for a few months, it's probably a lot safer. Taxi aren't too expensive for the rest.

What is the internet like over there? Speed/price/etc.
At home internet isn't expensive, but some of them have some sort of data cap for data from outside vietnam, so if the website and stuff you're download aren't in Vietnam you'll be throttled to 5ko/sec after a while, I don't understand it very well. You don't have that problem with businesses connections, but i've noticed it in some private home and someone tried to explain to me how it worked and I'm not sure I fully understood.
Mobile Data is still rather expensive, it's cheaper to buy a coffee and use the wifi of the café than to use the 3g... and that's exactly what everyone is doing...

If you want to share any other things I should be cautious/aware of making the transition from America to Vietnam, I would greatly appreciate it!

It's getting a bit better, but in many shops prices aren't written. In those shop they'll try to rip you off every time, so you have to know the rough price of the things you're buying and tell them the price you're ready to pay when they offer to sell you a kilo of banana for $10 when it shoud be 50 cents at most. It does get a bit old, to have to negotiate every littlething, and the more you know Vietnam the older it gets because you know more and more what you should really be paying. It can get to the point that I have to check if the taxi meter isn't tempered with when I'm taking a taxi from a company that I don't know, I'm like that in some taxi "Ok so we're driving at 30 km/hour , meaning about 10 sec for 100 meters, which should be about 2k VND every 10 second" and i'm counting in my head to check if it's a scam... Most of the money I've lost from scams is from taxi. Only recently did they start to control the taxis in the airports...

If you want to travel inside vietnam, forget about bus, train it's really painful to use and not much cheaper. If you're flying try to book a morning flight, in the evening all the companies, including VN Airlines are late, and your flight can be several hours late or even be canceled, checking on flightaware or something if the flight you're about to book is often delayed/canceled is generaly a good idea in Vietnam, that being said flying is rather cheap if you book in advance, and safe (no major accident in decades in VN despite the rather rough weather conditions)

Again my advice would be to travel a bit, and check at least the 3 major cities a few days each (Hanoi Danang Saigon) before making your choice, these 3 cities are really different, and it's hard to tell which one you'll like the most before visiting. I wouldn't rule out Danang straight away, it's often ignored, but you've got a nice weather, beaches, a developping city, people tend to be nicer than in both the north and the south. Da Nang is also a major airport now, you can fly almost anywhere in Asia directly from there, if you want to spend the weekend in korea, japan, thailand, hong kong, china... And Da Nang main ressource is tourism, so english lessons are in high demand as well.
 

Chysamere

<WoW Guild Officer>
3,308
2,929
What were the main issues with corporate clients?

In my case they usually cram too many students into the class than is really feasible if they all want to improve measurably .

They also usually require customized lesson plans, where it's easier to use the off the shelf versions belonging to the language company.

Finally they always want more more more.
 

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
6,882
4,236
What were the main issues with corporate clients?

One big issue, as Chysamere mentioned, was that it required a lot of customization. Every company wants something different, and when they pay the money they pay, you have to bend over backwards to give it to them. For example, one of my clients in Kazakhstan was a pretty big oil company. Being an oil company, the English they wanted to learn was completely different from what a standard student would want to learn in a general English class, so we had to create customized lessons focusing on the specific language they needed and wanted.

Another issue I found was a big lack of motivation among corporate clients. The higher-ups were usually OK, but most of the mid-level employees I taught didn't really want to be there learning English (plus they aren't paying for it, so they don't have much of a stake). In most cases, they were told they needed to do it by their bosses. As such, they didn't put in much effort, missed a lot of classes, and just generally weren't great students. On the other hand, if someone goes out of their way to go to a language school and pay money to take a class, they likely are pretty motivated. Another related issue is that sometimes they're just too busy. One of my students was (if I remember correctly) the regional president of the Ramstore grocery store chain in Kazakhstan, and although he really wanted to improve his English, he had to constantly cancel classes because he simply was too busy with work.

Finally, there was the issue of needing to travel to the offices. Depending on where they were located, this could be a huge pain. This was especially true in Kazakhstan, where winters were -30 to -40 degrees, so it sucked having to travel back and forth across the city a couple times a day. It was much more enjoyable to stay in the language school and have students come to you.
 

Vanderhoof

Trakanon Raider
1,708
1,629
Didn't you flee Kazakhstan in the middle of the night to ditch a crazy Russian woman?

I wish I had tried something like this when I was younger. My wife could use a job; what kind of opportunities could one find in the USA?
 

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
6,882
4,236
Didn't you flee Kazakhstan in the middle of the night to ditch a crazy Russian woman?

I wish I had tried something like this when I was younger. My wife could use a job; what kind of opportunities could one find in the USA?

Yeah, that was me.

As for ESL jobs in the U.S., I think it heavily depends on the area where you live. In the Maryland/DC/Virginia area, it is insanely easy to get an adjunct teaching position in a language school or community college teaching ESL. All you need is a bachelor's degree and some kind of TESOL cert. Sometimes we're so strapped for part-time ESL teachers that we joke we're willing to hire anyone with a pulse.

I know tons of people (especially women) who do it part time as a way to stay busy a couple days/nights a week and make some extra money for their family.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,053
15,564
Hey Froyo, where in PA are you from?

Not that it really matters, but Keg and I both come from Philly. I think he still lives there, but I moved to Hawaii last June. I'm glad I made the change.
 

Campbell1oo4

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
1,930
6,136
Hey guys,

Just finished my CELTA course yesterday. Waiting to hear back from Cambrdige but I am confident that I passed.

Now, the job search begins.

If you have any questions about the course let me know.