I couldn’t believe it when I found out that GVO (Global Village) pays only NT$350/hour. Are there two different pay, one for foreigners and one for Chinese instructors? 
It’s more incredible that anybody would waste time teaching there when other places are offering NT$600/hour and higher. GVC teachers? Can you tell me why you’re there? :s
[color=#BF0040]Admin here: For reference, this is the website for Global Village in Taiwan:[/color] gvo.com.tw/
I don’t have any first-hand experience with GV, but I’d bet the Chinese instructors get paid even less.
Maybe they have “other benefits” – more vacation, less preps, no grading, paid correction time, no kids classes…??? Just guessing. But I’d sure hate to work for NT$350 an hour these days, that’s for sure.
Terry
Urbanjet, to answer your question. YES, there are different wages that are graded according to your “race” (that was not a racist remark). One wage rate for foreigners and another for the Taiwanese English speakers, and in most buxibans another for ABC, CBC, AUBC, SABC speakers. In Taiwan, “lighter is brighter”, thus the umbrellas in summer.
One of my good friends has worked for GV for almost ten years. He says he likes it because he has a set schedule of 15 hours per week, gets an ARC for that, the students come and go so you’re not stuck with the same old Easter Island crowd all the time, he doesn’t have to prepare for class!!! because he has to use their materials (seen them, they’re crap, but whatever…),he knows what to expect, and he can pad his income with privates at $1000 per hour.
I suppose you could compare this to some places where they expect you to be available to teach for them and then drop your privates, even when you’ve had practically no work for two months…
As a foreign teacher I get paid NT400 by GVC. I am not sure about local teachers.
The pay is not good and there is a lot of travelling between branches and bad organization, but on the up side there is no preparation, marking, kids etc… and virtually nobody supervising /monitoring you.
Having said that though, if I decide to stay another year I think I’ll be on the lookout for a school that pays better rates. Either that or reduce my hours (30 a week at the moment) and take on more private students.
CT Mike, I have a friend that told me his hourly rate was also $NT400. But that was in 1997. I think early 97 too. For that rate I’d be expecting some kind of ‘other’ side benefits from the bosses wife. I’d suggest you sit down with management and ask them what their story is. Cutting hours, sure if that’s what you want, but $NT400 an hour mate, come on, were they waiting for you at the airport!!
Thaks for the info Amos, I will look into it.
Do they at least give you free lessons in Japanese or access to their service/facilties?
A discount, although I dont know how much.
I worked there from '94 to '96, and got 380 NT per hour. It was okay, while it lasted, for all the reasons mentioned already. The biggest problem was boredom – rare and highly to be prized is the class of Taiwanese adults who can hold an interesting conversation for two hours in Chinese, much less English!
$400NT/hour? :shock:
For that kind of wage, I can offer anyone 40hrs a week, no prep time, good vacations, and a big wet sloppy lick on the ear everytime you walk in the door!
There’s even different pay levels between North Americans, Brits, and down here South Africans, if you can believe that. For some reason unbeknownst to me one accent is better than another.
This is a particularly stupid concept when one thinks of all the different accents a person will hear when they travel abroad. For example when we were back home my wife’s best friend had recently moved from Poland, and her co-workers were also people who’d originally come from other countries. So what’s the point of learning just the North American accent? As if most students are going to speak “unaccented” English, whatever that may be, anyways. It’s about the same possibility as me speaking unaccented Chinese.
Perhaps we should start bringing over “multi-cultural instructors” and begin developing a niche market so that students might know how to converse with the other ESL speakers they will invariably meet when the go to multi-cultural cities such as; New York, London, Toronto, Vancouver, etc.
Getting back to the thread topic, I’ve never worked for Global, but my wife went there for a while and complained about the unispired teaching. She also found out that they paid miserably. There are some higher paying adult jobs, but they’re hard to come by.
That’s GBP2.45 (NT$140) above UK minimum wage. A splendid deal !
When I first came here eleven years ago, that was what i was paid for subbing at GVC. ELEVEN years ago.
Ironically, my wife would pay me less than that for working in her bushiban!
Fringe benefits? I couldn’t think of any, that’s why i never offered to get a visa through them in the first place.
Kenneth
When I approached GV they offered me a starting wage of 600NT/hr. I am from the U.S., have a CELTA, and two years past EFL teaching exp.
Wall Street is exclusively adults. The hourly wage isn’t the greatest, but you are gauranteed 30 hours a week and it is a very easy environment to work in. I know they (we) are hiring too. I could make more teaching elsewhere, but I am weighing qauntity with quality and it is very well balanced right now…
Saw a really crappy commercial by GV the other day.
Cut scene to a white woman teaching asian adults. The woman is gesticulating and exaggerating her speech (sound cut out) from the looks of her mouth. Except she makes it look like as if she is (in a stereotypical way) addressing deaf people. What a dumbass.
[quote=“Boss Hogg”]What about IVLC (international village Language Centre), what do they pay?
ivlc.com[/quote]
Someone told me that they pay 500 or 550 per hour.
The deal on GVC is that their classes are run like a club. The run a large number of classes, but there is no guaranteed enrollment for each class. Also, they seem to spend a lot of money on frills that have little to do with language learning.
Two words:
Babe opportunities
That’s the only reason I can think of for anyone to work for such below-market pay at GVC. Adult classes pay less and are far less available than kids’ classes in Taiwan. The one guy I know in Tainan who makes his living exclusively teaching adults at one of the adult language chains admits that while the pay is a paltry 500NT he makes up for that with a very cushy job twiddling his thumbs (compared to the actual strain and hard work of teaching little brats) and spends half his time in class picking up phone numbers, “Hey, you’re cute, what’s your number?”
i concur with that…lads i know teaching at GV use it to get an ARC and a constant supply of fresh xiao-jies…