Hi, I am a TEFL certified and I taught English in Prague for the last year. I am about to move to Taipei, but I don’t have a job yet b/c I want to make sure I don’t make a bad decision. Ideally I would like a job that doesn’t require me to work weekends and has good hours with adequate pay. With only one year’s experience, what should I expect to be paid per hour? Am i a good candidate for a job in Taiwan? I am a 25 year old American girl, do age or nationality help or hurt in any way? Also, any advice anyone could give me about what not to accept or what to be looking for would be great. Thanks!!
You will have no trouble at all finding a job, you have all the right key words. ‘American’, ‘girl’, ‘25’. If you chucked in ‘blond’ and ‘blue eyed’ it would be a done deal. Like everywhere the market’s not great at the moment, but I can’t see you having any trouble.
Probably around 600NT ($20) an hour to start with.
You may struggle finding a job where you don’t work Saturdays, unless you choose to teach kindy - which would also pay more.
thanks, that’s good to hear.
and i am blond with blue eyes. does that honestly help for getting a job? does it really work to one’s advantage just to look more western?
The more your appearance fits the market’s idea of the ‘perfect westerner’ the easier it is to get work.
You will have no problems getting work here.
Kindy’s illegal, btw.
Good point.
I’ve been here so long I’ve forgotten there are laws. Kindy is illegal.
I’m not trying to thread jack, but would it also be easier to find private tutoring positions if one had the same background as the OP (i.e. young, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, American female)? Would the hourly rate be more or less than with an actual school?
It depends. If you are tutoring, you are selling a different product: the ability for your student to get faster, better results than in a cheap class. With a cram school, you are selling face, ethnicity, and funny. With tutoring, you can charge what you like/can get. Although, unless you have an APRC/JFRC/ROC citizenship, it’s illegal too, although there’s very little chance of getting caught unless someone doesn’t like you.
Is it safe to assume a red-haired, hazel-eyed, American female of the same ilk would have similar job prospects? 
OK, I’m being a little flippant. The main advantage both you guys have is the American passport. It really will help you land a job over here. The cram school bosses love it because it means they can tell their customers that teacher is American and it’s actually true. There is a big demand to be taught in an American accent.