Thread: Teaching English is dull...

I fucking hate teaching ENGLISH it's pure shit.

Originally Posted by Silent Orchestra

Originally Posted by klongmaster

whores in your bar are as bright as

You don't measure someone's intelligence by their education.

Agree with that.

Education often measures a person's persistence, not necesarrily intelligence.

Originally Posted by obsidian

Originally Posted by Roc

Those that cant do,teach,and those that can't teach.....teach gym.

and those that can do neither borrow money from mummy and open a bar.

^What are you going on about Oby?
I'm from a middle-class background and have an English bank account with 3 quid to my name!!
I just happen to be more productive then you'll ever be...savvy.

If teaching English was interesting, western educated thais would do it. As it is, they can earn much better money and have a better lifestyle doing other things, hence Thailand needs to import foreigners to do it.

Originally Posted by Smeg

If teaching English was interesting, western educated thais would do it

....and some do

Enough?

In the 3+ years I've been here, I have to admit I don't find teaching very interesting and would love the opportunity to teach other subjects. I've taught computer in several schools and found that much more fulfulling.

^So why don't you? The jobs are out there.

I would love to teach history or geography...but the only way to do that is to work in an EP program where you have a degree in the subject. It makes it a bit hard to find a job like that

^^There are ways around that. I work for a company which has 2 divisions handling teaching jobs. One is in-house and the other concentrates on filling positions for gov't. schools and corporate training. They will send out CELTA/TEFL holders out to schools to teach subjects other than English (for good or ill) when the occasion arises. This is what I'll do next term as far as teaching Social Studies.

Originally Posted by Smeg

Enough?

Not nearly. But surely it's more a matter of money than boredom? There are only so many well-paid positions.

Just about to take the CELTA and pursue a career teaching English here!! So am hoping it is not dull for me! Whatever though, it has to be more fulfilling than my office job back in UK.

Good luck to you. I think it's more a matter of attitude/subject interest than working conditions or pay as far as job satisfaction goes.

I agree...Its mostly about attitude. You can be a miserable sack of shit or a happy person, depending on how you look at things. Just like any other part of life, this is true about your job.

Well....it's better to be a highly paid miserable sack of shit than a lowly paid miserable sack of shit.

well stated

Agent Smith

I started out as an English teacher and have forced back into it a few times. I never really enjoyed teaching English, in my opinion, a total lack of intellectual stimulation. It is all about presentation, any fool knows “went” is the past tense of “go”, but how to make others with a different linguistic background understand it takes some talent. If you find the performance part of teaching interesting, English teaching is Ok, but if you also enjoy some intellectual stimulation coming from the subject matter, teaching English is not going to fill the bill.

I went on to earn higher degrees and became a “real ajarn” teaching business subjects and economics. I especially enjoyed teaching these subjects at the graduate level. So for me, the subject being taught did make a difference. Just because you don’t like teaching English does not mean you do not like teaching.

Unfortunately, here in Thailand being a university professor doesn’t pay that much higher (but there are a number of two thousand baht an hour gigs if you have the right qualifications) than being a basic English teacher.

I have now swapped careers to being a practicing manager, but if I could make the same money teaching business subjects and economics at a university I would go back in a heartbeat.

You could try teaching English to this lot:

Ajarn Forum - Living and Teaching In Thailand

Teaching English is dull however it might stem from the fact that nobody fails so the question is why bother. All Thai's really want to do is play games, have fun and piss about. This is both at primary and secondary levels.

Universities are pretty much the same. One third bothers to interact the others are nothing more than seat warmers. I was so fed up one day at trying to get them to talk, I stood up in the class and told them I was gay. I even got a reaction from a 55 year old woman that was in the class. Teaching at those levels changed forever. I came to the logical conclusion that day that it is best to be a clown even with older students else they will not learn.

Teaching was not really bad, it just was not rewarding. Not financially. If I wanted to make money I would go home and make money. It was just not 'spiritually' rewarding. At the end of my ESL 'career' I look back and think of all the fun that was had and try not to think of the negative people I had met. At the end of the day - life is what you make it.

8 hours in front of a class of adults would make me ill if I didn't have a little fun.

So I toss them a relevant article from the daily and a board marker and tell them to translate and then discuss it. Each one does one sentence and can then choose the next victim while I chill out and call out encouragement from the back of the room. My German is fluent but I rarely speak it during classes and all my lessons are based on spoken English nowadays.

It stops them falling asleep and I don't even bother with a lesson plan or homework any more, it's all just too boring for them and me.

It occurred to me way back that people will only learn if they want to, whatever the method applied. I can always modify the approach to give them more if they need it.

To be sure, like the OP says, it can get very boring at times but at least I get German pay rates for it and a good success rate; that's two good reasons why I would never teach in Thailand unless I were really hungry.

I just remebered, at high school English was the one subject I hated, I wagged most of the classes, and failed in year 11 (Grade D).
Later (20 years), I did a Navy course on report writing which went over all the basics of sentence construction etc, and I found it absolutely brilliant. I suppose, as has been said before, it comes down to the student, and being able to relate the subject matter to real life.

As an engineer you learn very quickly that communication skills are your mainstay, not Eulers' theorems.

Even your english is dull,

American doesn't matter on it, as long they understand what you mean!

Quit today. Couldn't face that class anymore. I feel a million pounds lighter now. Now to ponder my next step....

^

Originally Posted by Agent_Smith

Glad to know that I'm not alone.

So, there's only 6 weeks left in the term and I've convinced myself to stick out until then instead of quitting midway.

So what happened?