Anyone taught at TLI

Has anyone taught English at TLI? What was it like? Any comments?
Thx, dawn

Dawn:

 I have a mate who used to work there, I can ask him; do you have any particular questions?

Cheers.

I was just curious to know if they are good about keeping their word on hours promised, if they treat their teachers fairly. In general, is it a good place to work or do they really take advantage of their teachers?
Thx,
dawn

I heard their pay rate is very low.

Bri

If you teach at TLI, will they give you free language lessons? If they can give me free Hokkien (“Taiwanese”) lessons and an ARC, I might go for it.

Here are another couple of questions about TLI: If you pay for lessons at one branch, can you transfer to another branch within the paid-for period without paying again? Do they only accept payment by the quarter like the Shida MTC?

Taught at TLI for a few months when I first came here about 3 years ago.

Rate of pay is low, classrooms are small bordering on the claustrophobic. They do a bit of everything - corporate, kids, 1-1 etc but I would certainly not class them as profeesional.

The free Chinese classes have plenty of conditions attached so look into those carefully. They were also unable to produce a Pinyin teacher, not uncommon here.

I had to work hard to make 50K a month and did so by mostly teaching company classes involving travelling here and there with no travel allowances.

The management are friendly but they mostly employ ‘fresh off the boat’ types so conditions and treatment are fairly poor.

Despite a very amicable parting thet then wrote to MOFA saying I had broken contract and should not be hired by others. This is also not an uncommon behaviour here (in Taiwan)I later found out.

So there it is. They’re easy going and will leave you alone but you can expect low pay and maybe deviousness.

I asked them a few years back about the free language lessons – apparently it’s limited to 3 months, or at least it was then.

Terry

From what I’ve read, TLI seems pretty suspicious; low pay while asking for high-level certifications…

Juba, re: transfering to another center…

In 6/2001 we signed up at the ShiLin Center in order to take the papers with us to apply for a visa overseas. When we came back, true to their word, they let us take classes at another center (Roosevelt). But we also had some problems because they had promised us 10 hours of group classes at the group class rate, and were only able to provide 6 hours with a group class, so my wife & I had a semi-private class for 4 hours (they let a number of people sit in on it to see if they wanted to join)… Late in the semester they presented us with a bill for the 4 hours at a higher rate, which was not what we had agreed upon. We had paid in full at the beginning of the semester & had ensured that we had paid everything for the semester, so this late bill was quite a surprise. Eventually we sorted it out by going to the supervisor, who understood that an agreement is an agreement, a promise is promise, etc.

In our semi-private classes and the group class at the Roosevelt Center we had a total of around 10 different teachers (3 different ones most of the time), and all were fine. That is unusual though – usually you have the same teacher for the whole semester.

The next semester we transfered to the Shih Lin Center where we also experienced a few minor problems… We’re in our 2nd semester of classes there.

I’d suggest doing everything in writing (I’m not sure but I think that they have e-mail), so they can’t tell you something else later.

All in all, although we’ve had some problems, they’ve been fairly accomodating and we’ve learned a lot.

I’m not sure about changing classes in the middle of the semester. I guess that would depend on the schedules of the classes at the other centers.

Sorry everybody else. I guess this post would be more appropriate in “Learning Chinese”…

Hope that helps somebody, somewhere :wink:
Harold