Term Dates / Chinese New Year Dates

Can anyone advise what the school calendar is like after 1 Jan 2003 ? When is the start of term for schools and bushibans, and when are the holidays for Chinese New Year (I know when New Year is but not the school hols).

I am planning to arrive in Taiwan in January. Not a great time for work ?

Unfortunately, January isn’t a great time to find jobs. After Chinese New Year is usually better - or so I’ve heard; I haven’t been looking at either times. As you know, different bushibans run different schedules… I can tell you about the Language Training and Testing Center (LTTC) in Taipei which wouldn’t compensate you for your training but would appreciate it at least. LTTC has lots of former ELSI teachers and also provides some supplementary material. The top management in the past hasn’t appeared to care how you teach as long as students are happy, but there are (or at least were; I don’t work there now) lots of long-term foreign teachers who do care about how they teach and create a pretty supportive environment. They run four ten week terms a year, and the winter term starts at the beginning of January. The students are usually college age and up. Let me know if you’re interested and I can get more info for you 'cuz they’ll be hiring in December for the winter term if they need new teachers.

A masters would qualify you to teach in college (shorter hours, better pay, can’t promise anything about work environment, though). Anyway, good luck with your plans!

Thanks for the info. I will pm you in a mo’.

What happened to ELSI / Ke Jian anyway ? Was it just a matter of dropping the ELS name, or was it a seismic shift ? Is it still the same place it was 7 or 8 (or even 10) years ago ? A kind of a solid place to put in a couple of years at the start before earning real money - or has it gone down the tubes altogether ?

ELSI TO KOJEN NAME CHANGE: In 1999, ELS International was bought out by Berlitz. The new ownership had a large drive to standardize their schools world-wide. ELS USA has always been an adult school with intensive programs for academically bound students. ELSI Taiwan over the years has moved to teaching a majority of adult conversation classes in the adult department, and added children’s programs in the mid-eighties which make up a majority of the students at KOJEN today. The new owners of ELS USA, when it came time to renew the franchise agreement, wanted ELSI to standardize back to intensive English courses for adults only. In order to do this ELSI would have had to drop more than 80% of it’s students and discontinue children’s programs in its schools. So, after 20 years as ELSI, the franchise was abandoned, and ELSI changed it’s name to KOJEN. It is still owned by the same family and run the same way as it always has. It was an amicable parting and there is still a strong relationship with ELS USA, as KOJEN sends 100s of students every year to the ELS centers in the USA, Canada, Australia, etc.

THE SPELLING OF KOJEN: Kojen has always had the same name in Chinese. Ko Jen Mei Yu. The English spelling was chosen for the practical reason that many foreigners coming to Taiwan have no previous experience with Han Yu Pinyin, Wade Giles or other romanizations. The owners figured that native Chinese would read the Chinese anyway, and that foreigners would pronounce the name close enough for Chinese speakers to know what they were talking about.

Hexuan - Welcome back to Taiwan. From your 100’s of posts on this site, I can tell that you’ve been here for a long time previously.

Thanks for the info, Prentice. I’m still in Ireland, but planning to go back to Taiwan in Jan next year. I want to teach adults/adolescents, so would it be fair to say that Kojen would not have a great deal of classes in the adult dept, or is it the case that if you prove to be a good teacher the hours are there ? (I mean that was how it used to be - if you were good you got the hours, if you weren’t you didn’t)

It all depends on which school you’re placed at. I would say that over all pretty much everyone who starts with Kojen these days teaches either all children (6-9, 9-12 year olds), or a 1/2 children and 1/2 adult classes. An average schedule would be 2 adult classes X 6 hours/wk and 6 kids classes X 2 hours a week = 24 class hours per week. Everyone pretty much teaches Saturdays too. {There’s a preschool program too that teachers teach full time in.}

If a teacher stays with KOJEN for more than a year, opportunities would then improve dramatically for teaching an all adult schedule, as a teacher would then have accumulated enough experience to start picking up extra hours as either an Oral Tester or Teacher Trainer. With those added hours it is possible to be an exclusive adult teacher.

So, some things have changed since the early 90’s. Back then there were plenty of early morning and mid-morning adult classes. These days I think the students are all mostly sleeping in. :slight_smile:

Does anyone know when Chinese New is this year? Also, how long will it be? Thinking about taking a trip home at that time.
thanks

Chris

Maoman has answered this question:

[quote=“Maoman”]It’s official. Chinese New Year holidays are from Friday, January 31st to Wednesday, February the 5th. You can bet that most people will also take off the Thursday and Friday of that week, giving themselves a holiday of ten days. That’s a nice round number, isn’t it? Ten days! Whoo-hoo!
See you on the beach! :laughing: 8) :smiley: :mrgreen:[/quote]

at:

segue.com.tw/viewtopic.php?t=2621&highlight=