Act as an extra in Taiwanese movies. Damn! And I shaved off my Mountain man beard. Sounds like teaching in Taiwan (for kids at least) is essentially entertainment. So why not be honest about it?
Edit and proof-read. I am an experienced publisher constantly assaulted by horrible English in advertisements. In Thailand they couldn’t care less. All they would have to do is ask any traveller, maybe offer a meal or drink as a courtesy - instead they publish not just unnatural sentences but actually incorrect grammar and punctuation. Perhaps Taiwan is the same.
I was not being facetious, in either of my points…
1.Extra acting might be a viable part-time job - in Taipei. No teachers or other expats in Taiwan have done this?
Entertainment value keeps a teacher hired. Do you doubt that the purpose of schools in Taiwan (or anywhere) is profit? Keeping kids happy and therefire parents continuing to pay is about smiles and fun not great abilities teaching grammar.
Sometimes the truth hurts. I sure was annoyed when my school in Cambodia hinted that I should pass students *(even though this would slow down their fellow classmates and make teh teachers job more difficult) But the adnministartors didn’t have the balls to say ‘We are a business. Pass students because the NGOs who pay their fees won’t send them to next term if they fail’. Perhaps it had something to do with being funded in large part by Australian tax payers. I am very cynical about commercial education.
Unfortunately virtually all reporting is advertising funded so seldom can the truth be told. See the Guardian and Observer’s reporting on how G. Bush conned the US public his election in Florida and Saddam’s weapons arsenal.
Entertainment is a large part of any job servicing the public. No one’s going to buy magazines or newspapers or watch TV news if it’s not entertaining.
You can’t teach anything to a class of kids that are fast asleep because “teacher hun wuliao”. Nor a class of kids jumping around like monkeys making noise because they can’t stand another minute of boredom. Kids learn a lot more by playing games than they do memorizing by rote or listening to some dry lecture - that’s just the nature of learning: people actually pay attention when they’re interested.
Oh, and by the way Mr. Experienced Editor complaining about others’ grammar mistakes: fragments aren’t complete sentences. Prepositional phrases cannot stand alone as complete sentences. If you’re going to throw in an asterisk * it has to actually refer to some footnote. All sentences must end with punctuation (yes, even those with parentheses).
Proper form is to use " " when using quotes. Keep all of the sentences in a paragraph in the same tense - switching from past to present to future tense from sentence to sentence is confusing. Finally, remember: spellcheck is your friend.
[quote=“edgrimley”]Act as an extra in Taiwanese movies. Damn! And I shaved off my Mountain man beard. Sounds like teaching in Taiwan (for kids at least) is essentially entertainment. So why not be honest about it?
Edit and proof-read. I am an experienced publisher constantly assaulted by horrible English in advertisements. In Thailand they couldn’t care less. All they would have to do is ask any traveller, maybe offer a meal or drink as a courtesy - instead they publish not just unnatural sentences but actually incorrect grammar and punctuation. Perhaps Taiwan is the same.[/quote]
Sandman,
But your picture is of the wrong end of the horse.
I would like to suggest that “acting” (which does not have set hours), and “teaching” (which requires you to be at specific places at specific times) are [i]mutually exclusive career choices[/i].
I am certainly not trying to be critical of any of the comments made above, but am just stating what I believe to be the simple facts of the matter. I have known very many movie stars and TV stars during my nearly thirty years of residence in Taipei, including some of the top stars.
In a smiliar vein, I find my legal work to be mutually exclusive with teaching . . . . . because when the notices to appear in court come, you have to go. Plus, there is a lot of preliminary paperwork to prepare, including supplementary filings or other data which the judge requests. Then there are appeals, etc.
Consider these steps: (1) application, (2) administrative appeal, (3) 1st court suit, (4) 2nd court suit (appeal), (5) application to Supreme Court. This is the way my cases have been running. As it is very intensive, I have now hired a secretary who comes in every day to help me with all the legal paperwork I am involved in.
Finally, I might add that if you taught purely private students, and hence had a quite flexible schedule, then my above comments about mutually exclusive career choices might not apply. At any rate, best wishes!
and the nervous shuffling and defensive bickering erupts from the english teachers circle…
Lighten up guys… there’s no need to defend your profession so aggresively… You’ve go to accept that there are huge number of fly by night, slacker ‘teachers’, who clown around singing ABC songs, badly, for a living and these loosers give the english teaching profession in Taiwan a bad name… I think the contributers to Forumosa reflect the opposite end of that spectrum and are by and large, highly profesional, well educated, skilled and dedicated teachers/co-ordinators who take pride in doing their jobs very well… that said, i think the slacker, couldn’t give a damn, pick up the paycheck and leave the country looser ‘teachers’ are probably in the majority unfortunately, so it’s easy to see where the generalisations come from…
when i first came to Taiwan, i taught english for a while and i used to dismiss such, “English teaching is meaningless clowning around for money” as an unfortunate generalisation, not a personal threat to my ego… whilst an English teacher is never going to get the same level of status and admiration for their profession as say, the pope*… those who do it properly can defintely be calm in the knowledge that they are part of a well honourable profession, regardless of unfortunate stereotypes…**
*EDIT: the pope gets no respect from me though, i heard he was crap in goal…
**all spelling, grammar and syntax mistakes are intentional…
the pope??? he ain’t got no admiration from me (well a little bit cos he used to play in goal) how does one apply for his job anyway? do you get weekends off?
point taken… pope comment retracted (see EDIT and associated asterisk in original post). …
to all viewers of my original post, please insert a highly respectable public figure who has a profession which affords him/her large amounts of status and admiration where you see the “… the pope*” in the final paragraph…
i wonder if anyone’s ever accused those hack, fly by night english teachers of being overly pedantic?.. doubt it…
I think you’re supposed to get Sundays off. There’s even a law about it, but it’s widely disregarded by unscrupulous church leaders who make their ‘teachers’ have extra services on the day that everyone else takes off. It’s not much different from working in a buxiban really.
On the acting front, I keep getting emails from a guy named steve loi who claims to have such work from time to time.
I did a few conversation classes for him a while back and he seems easy enough to work for. If you need work then getting on his mailing list might be a smart idea. I get job notices dropping into my inbox every couple of days from him.
Where is Ed Grimley these days? Has he been overwhelmed by his welcome into the beautiful island’s online community?
and the nervous shuffling and defensive bickering erupts from the english teachers circle…
doubt it…