Total words: 243

Heidi sent an email to me last night:

Hey- I don’t have the patience to search all of your postings, but you seem to have put a lot of effort into knowing the law and likeness of Korea. What do you know about private tutoring? Is there any way to do it legally besides marrying a Korean? What if you have permission from your Hogwan boss? Just curious. I’d like to do it, but I want to do it legally, obviously. Do you know a good website with information of the illegality of it?

Thanks!
Heidi

I know that it is illegal and a deportable offense if you have an E2 visa. For those teaching on the F2-1, F5 and F4 visa’s it is not illegal but you are still required to register with the MOE and pay taxes on the income.

I do not know any web sites with information specifically related to this, but the immigration site might have information though I doubt it since they are pretty much like bureaucrats in any country, useless. If any readers have more information on this please comment and help Heidi out as well as other E2 visa holders.

p.s. Heidi, you might want to use the search before sending an email in the future - it’s not difficult and if you are too lazy too do it, don’t let the blogger know that. I almost didn’t bother replying to you at all.

Total words: 429

Kevin, of The Big Hominid Asks questions of university teachers. I have reposted his entire post here and will respond later. Right now you would not believe how busy I am. And on top of that there is this article in the Korea Herald that is deserving of commentary, but I probably won’t have time to get to that either.

a question for you university English teachers

No need to identify your university in your answer, but I’m currently mulling over the following questions, which require replies from people working at many different Korean universities:

1. How does your university calculate the number of hours you are required to work, and does that calculation vary? What does “work” consist of? Teaching and… what other duties? Is the method of calculation spelled out in precise language in your contract?

2. How does your university calculate overtime pay? Is the method of calculation spelled out in precise language in your contract?

3. If, in a given semester, it is determined that you have not worked the required minimum number of hours, what is done about this? How are you informed of this “undertime”? was the possibility of “undertime” spelled out in your contract?

4. Do you feel your university’s methods of calculation are straightforward, up-front, trustworthy, consistent, etc.? If the answer is not a definite “yes,” then do you feel that the problem(s) you’re experiencing may be the result of malice, disorganization/incompetence, or both?

5. If you have breaks between terms (say, a one-week break between summer and fall terms), are these breaks considered vacation (and noted as such in your contract), or are you “on call” during this time? If you are considered on call, are you paid for being on call, or are you obliged to “make up” that break because you weren’t teaching?

I look forward to many and varied replies. If a particular question doesn’t seem relevant to you, please note its irrelevance. If you have something more to add, something not covered by the above questions, please feel free to unload.

I decided to post these questions here rather than over at Dave’s ESL Cafe because I’m convinced that, collectively speaking, DESLC has no sense of perspective. The bitterness, the hatred, the more-than-occasional racism were a turn-off for me on the rare occasions I ventured into those forums. Better to post my questions here and elicit level-headed responses of a generally higher quality.

Oh, yes: PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THIS POST. I’d like a large library of answers from people all over the peninsula.

Total words: 44

Kevin has a question about Vygotsky. If you can give him an answer please help out. I want to answer, but for some reason my brain is currently incapable of forming coherent thoughts. No I’m not hungover or drunk - I don’t drink.

Total words: 123

I recieved the following email but was unable to help. I asked permission to post the letter hear in order to get reader response. PLease help out MB.

My sister is about to move to Gunsan to work for a school called Top Academy, which she found through Dave’s ESL café and eslcom.net. I am extremely worried about her as I have read the hagwon blacklist on the Internet and all the horror stories about teachers being treated badly. Please can you tell me where to get reliable information about this school,
or perhaps you know of it yourself? I would very much appreciate it if you could possibly find the time to reply. Thank you very much for your time,
MB

Total words: 248

I recieved the following question by email, but was unable to provide a satisfactory answer. The reader has agreed to have their email posted anonymously. If have some information for them please respond in the comment section below.

Hello--

My name is **********, I am from Knoxville, TN, I am considering moving to S.
Korea for a teaching position. The advice that I have received thus far
seems to all line up, but I am contacting you because you have been in the
country for 9 years. I really appreciate the information on your website.

I am working with an independent recruiting firm based out of Toronto
called teachaway. The website is http://www.teachaway.com. They have lined me up
for an interview with an English teaching institute called CDI. Have you
heard of this institute? If so, are you aware of any pitfalls that I should
be looking for when considering employment with this company? Do you know
anything about their reputation? The website for CDI is
http://www.teachinkorea.com.

Any help that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Total words: 90

Nathan, formally of Seoul Hero - now Coquitlam Odysseus, writes:

Hi,

How are you? I have a quick question: do you know of any plug-ins for the
Windows Media player that show a simple, clear relationship between what you
see in terms of visualizations, and what you hear in terms of pitch and
volume? It might be useful for teaching listening exercises.

Thanks & all the best,
Nathan

I have no answer to this, but hopefully a reader can help out and provide a link or other possible resource.

Total words: 154

Earlier today I recieved an email from a reader of my Korean learning group blog telling me about their blog.

hi, my name is ***** and i recently started a blog about learning cantonese. I was born in seoul and am half korean so there will be lots of stuff on korean also. anyways, i’m fascinated by languages and a lot of my entries are just my whole take on the language learning process. in any case, i hope you take a look. the address is http://houhousihk.blogspot.com/

I took a look and liked it so far. It is always interesting to read about anothers experience learning a foreign language. I in particular enjoyed Things I wish I Knew Before and Language Proficiency Tests and Why They Suck I agree that they suck, but not necessarily for the same reasons as the author. Anyhow go give 好好食 a read and see what you think.

Total words: 464

Yesterday I recieved an Email form Adam asking questions about teaching English to Korean children in the U.S. However I don’t teach children and have no desire to do so and consequently am at a loss as to what kind of advice to offer him. Adams letter is in the extended entry and I encourage readers who teach children to help Adam out either in comments or in the forums. I removed his surname but did not edit any more in the letter.

Total words: 194

I just got an email from John at Sinosplice asking if I could help with a question he had from one of his students.

I’ve been helping a student prepare for the IELTS (雅思 in Chinese), and she recently brought an interesting point to my attention. In her book of practice tests (a quality book published by Oxford University Press), different fonts were used for different reading selections. For example, a selection about biology was written in Times New Roman, whereas an article about education was written in Arial, and a passage about blindness and visualization was written in Verdana. She wanted to know if the real test was going to be like that.

Unfortunately I have no idea why any publisher would put out a book that uses different fonts. If for some reason IELTS actually uses different fonts for each question on the exam I would think that undermines the reliability of the test.  Like John, I quickly googled and additionally took a quick look around the IELTS site but unfortunately couldn’t find any answers.
Anyhow if you know the answer to this please leave a comment on Johns blog entry.

Total words: 347

On Monday Jiri, a long term reader, sent me an email asking a question that I am unable to answer. I wrote back to him and asked if he would like me to post the question here. In his reply email he suggested a good poll idea, so now we have a new poll as well. comments about the poll are in the extended entry - Jiri’s Question:

I was just wondering if you could help me out here with a couple things. I’m a non-native teacher and I realized that’s what I want to do, or am called on to do. I’m reading up these days on pronunciation and for a non-native it can be something of a tough nut, especially things like connected speech. Would you then know of a
dictionary that would provide phonetic transcription for not only infinitive forms, but also other forms and/or even some frequent chunks?

Am sure I had more questions but it all slipped my mind now.

Anyway, would be grateful for any help..

Jiri