The Booming Industry of Phone English Teaching

Photo Credits: KoreaTimes.com

A lot of Filipino English speakers nowadays shift to the blosssoming industry of teaching English to Foreigners mostly to Koreans. It has been gaining the spotlight since 2004. This is due to the fact that callecenter jobs in teletech, Convergys, telus & etc. are really stressful & health-risky. Although the pay is a bit lower when compared. Another reason is that Korea is starting to go global. Most of the employers there require high scores in English Tests like TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS and many more. They have the option of going to native english speakers like the US, Australia & Canada but in times of economic crisis they resort to going here.

Reasons why:

1. Proximity - Philippines is just roughly 45 minutes travel by plane from South Korea.

2. Inexpensive - the cost is really more affordable compared to the other countries.

3. The cost of living is cheap - there are a lot of dormitory-english schools here. Koreans live in these dorms & at the same time learn English for 1-5 months. The one-night expense at the bar in Korea surges up to 5 thousand pesos while it's only 500-1,000 pesos here.

4. The quality is almost the same - it depends on how wise you are in choosing the institution to go to.

There are different services in this field.

1. The online teaching (which i'm doing now) - the teacher calls the Korean student (who's of course in Korea) & have a class which lasts from 10 minutes to 1 hour. Here in our company it's 10 - 30 minutes. Click Here to learn more about Phone English Teaching. Phone English

Phone English is an old serviced that has existed for quite a long time. Yet it
wasn't until quite recently that it became the preferred choice for ordinary
households as a method of children's English language education.

A
mediating agency arranges native English teachers with students, and the latter
call students at a designated time of day. Teachers include Americans, British
nationals, Australians, New Zealanders and Filipinos who don't speak any Korean
at all.

Moon Young-ho, marketing manager of Times Call, said the market
for phone English has grown significantly in recent years, especially after
President Lee Myung-bak was sworn in in early 2008.

``Phone English is
traditionally well received during times of economic difficulty thanks to its
affordability,'' he explained.

The size of the phone-English market in
Korea is difficult to accurately measure, he says. Yet, recalling his four-year
experience in the field, he can say for certain that the market is expanding at
tremendous speed.

``If you type in ``phone English'' at naver.com, you
get at least 300 entries,'' Moon said, referring to his own market research.

It isn't just traditional English brand names that are expanding their
share. New investors have joined the competition, he said.

The selling
points of phone English are direct engagement between students and teachers,
along with affordability.

``Parents get quite enthusiastic about it.
It's cheaper than sending the kids to hagwon, private after-school institutes,
yet the quality is the same or better because the teacher is directly engaged
with the children," Moon said.

``Furthermore, since the session takes
place at home, parents can see their children perform. They may also be briefed
about their children's performance by the call center's headquarters,'' he said.

Times Call charges average 120,000 won per month for 10-minute daily
phone

2. Man-man Teaching or face-to-face teaching (the latter sound better since the former sound more a bit of gay relationship) The dorm-turned english academies offered by Koreans living here. - they have contacts in Korea & accepts students in their dorms & teach them english. Of course they hire Filipino English teachers.

3. There are companies & pivate individuals who offer home-based Teaching jobs - the convenience of not commuting to the office & just working in your house is also becoming a trend. One famous site for this is the ontue.com.