Hello again,
I seem to be replying to your posts on two forums now! Since I'm pretty sure the $250 a month apartment person was me, I'll give you some answers to your questions. Firstly, the apartment is $250 total for both of us. After bills etc. it works out at about $350 between us. But we live in a small city in local Vietnam, so it's cheaper than most places.
The conditions, pay, availability of jobs, requirements etc. depends on the country. But Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are quite in demand for English teachers. You don't register with anyone, it doesn't work like that. Like any job, you apply in person, interview, maybe do a test lesson and then you either get offered the job or not. And then you negotiate contracts/pay etc.
The age of students again depends on where you work. You can be teaching kindy age kids, 6-16 year olds, university students or adults. It depends on what kind of organisation you work for. There are different types. Normal schools in Thailand employ native speaking teachers to work in their primary and secondary schools. In Government schools you are the English teacher. In English programme schools you might teach other subjects as well. In private bilingual schools you also teach other subjects. In Universities you might teach English or whatever your specialist subject is. In language centres you teach across the board, whoever comes in for lessons. These may be group or individual. In Vietnam most of the jobs are in language centres. I don't know about Cambodia.
The money is best in Vietnam. You can get upwards of $12 an hour, which works out ok if you are working over 20 hours a week. It's obviously higher for qualified experienced teachers. But you have to pay for your own accommodation. In Thailand you can get housing supplied sometimes. They pay enough to live on comfortably. About 30,000 baht a month is typical for a starter teacher.
As for qualifications. In Thailand you have to have a degree to work legally. Many jobs will ask for you to have a degree and a TEFL qualification as well as experience. The best schools will ask for this and will thus probably employ people who have this. But what often happens is that there just aren't the teachers available to fill all the posts there are, so some schools accept people without TEFL certs, and without degrees.
You would probably need to commit to working somewhere for at least a term (6 months), especially if you need to find your feet, work out what you are doing etc. The best times to find work will be at the beginning of terms for Thailand, and all year, but particularly in the summer for Vietnam.
You do need visas to work in all countries. Your nationality isn't really an issue, you need a visa to work legally in another country. If you find a job somewhere then the school should arrange that for you. But if you don't have the qualifications to satisfy the requirements of the particular work visa, you will end up working on a tourist visa. Of course this is illegal, which is not to say that noone does it.
If you are seriously thinking of teaching, look at websites like www.daveseslcafe.com which has forums specifically for teaching. Or at www.ajarn.com which it for Thailand.
There are many other teachers who blog on here. I'm sure some others will reply to your post with other info. You could also find them and send them PMs with questions about the specific place they work.
There have been other posts on here about teaching. I'm sure Mell will link this one to them ;O)
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