A happy 2010 to everyone!

Well you'll no doubt have noticed that there hasn't been too many posts over the last couple of weeks on TD.

Tell you the truth we've been celebrating a bit too much hic hic! And now the new year is but a few hours away :-) What will it bring in the ESL world? Who knows.

Anyway, just time enough for me to say happy new year to all and lets hope it's a good one! See you soon in 2010!

Elt communications / English plus in fraud accusation shock!

It has come to light of just recent that certain franchisees of the now defunct ELT communications / English plus company have accused the franchiser of fraud. For...

Not providing fully qualified English instructors as stated in their contract!

There were also complaints by franchise owners of...

Lying to the franchisees and saying that they held a license from the ministry of education.

Failing to provide decent qualified replacement teachers for those absent or on leave(visa run)

Employing teachers who showed up drunk to classes, and never sorting out the problems.

It was revealed that the franchiser who never held a license from the Thai ministry of education had simply made up the curriculum!

Well the cat has well and truly been let out of the bag for ELT communications / English+ wonder what the next move will be? Mr M on charges and doing a bit of porridge? All in all a really sad end to a company that had shown great potential in the early days.



Source: Here.

ELT /English+ language school Thailand closes it's doors?

Over the past year or so many companies globally have been feeling the pinch of the world recession. However, education has always been one of those industries that tends not to get touched by global and economic crises. Unless of course you run a private language agency that relies on students who pay for their study off of their own backs.When the going gets tough the purse strings get tightened and English lessons fly out of the window!

It certainly looks like one of the bigger players in the Thailand ELT business has felt the financial squeeze more than the rest. However, for veteran teachers of the Thai ESL scene ELT communications also known as English+ was a disaster waiting to happen for many years now.

The company was founded in 2002 by a Mr Manoch who has quite a reputation here in Bangkok's ESL industry. Mention his name to some teachers/school owners here and you'd get some very mixed replies,of which probably are unprintable here.

The company started up way back in 2002, and quickly grew into a tour de force language school. Mr Manoch and his partner Miss Bun or Chutina as she's known built up quite a lot of contracts with government schools in and around the Bangkok area.

They also started up lots of E+ franchise branches around Bangkok and upcountry. At one point in time 2002-2005 there was literally an E+ branch on every corner throughout the city. This gave the impression to the uninitiated that English+ / elt communications was a winning business. What with all those branches and government school contracts, it really did look impressive.

So what went wrong for English+ & Kun Manoch

It's really hard to state exactly what went wrong, though there is and always was plenty of speculation flying around. Tales of franchise E+ branch owners being ripped off, government schools unhappy with the English+ management and some E+ teachers. However there were always stories circulating around English+ that they were about to go bankrupt even as far back as 2003.

ELT communications the incredible shrinking company

One thing that any keen observer on the inside would have noticed about English+ is that normally you start up a business and grow it! Your business expands, sometimes you start up small and then get new customers and it all goes from there.

No, not ELT communications! English+ was the exception to this business rule! They started off BIG! As each year passed they increasingly got smaller. They were losing school contracts like it was going out of fashion. Well school contracts in this business are very lucrative! Your bread and butter so to speak. Once again speculation abounds to why this may have been!

ELT communications where did it all go pear shaped?

Was it the business practices of Mr Manoch and his partner Chutima?

Was it the way they treated their staff teachers?

Or was ELT communications / English plus really a victim of the recession?

The English+ website is down and we've tried to contact Mr Manoch for an exclusive interview on this site, but alas to no avail yet. Mr Manoch has done a lord Lucan. Maybe one day he'll come back and grace us with his presence again.
Link

Qualifications for teaching English?

What are the best qualifications for teaching English in Thailand?

Well it depends on what type of job your looking for doesn't it? Most teacher travelers tend to have a tefl certificate, and having an accredited tefl certificate from a decent tefl course provider will go along way. However, having said that anything with tefl written on it will in most cases suffice!

If you have a degree as well then that adds a lot more weight to your tefl certificate and you also fit the legal teacher requirments in order to get yourself legal and get a work permit!

How can I be taken seriously in the tefl world?

Well if you want to make a career out of teaching English and you want to rise above being just a mere tefler with or without a degree then you're going to have to start thinking about getting some heavy duty teaching qualifications! Don't get me wrong here having an accredited tefl certificate is good and will open a lot of doors for you but if you want to hit the teaching big time you should really be considering taking a pgce.

What's a PGCE when it's at home?

Pgce stands for post graduate certificate in education. Now before you go jumping to any conclusions and wanting to sign up for one of these courses lets just examine the "pg" bit here. Pg = post graduate, so that means you already need to be a graduate and have some sort of degree before you go on this course!

So where can I take a pgce?
Don't do a pgce course search check out a good pgce provider first! The university of southern Queensland Australia.


Duration of the pgce course?
The course is one year full time and two years if you take the part time option.


requirements for pgce

What are the requirements for thev pgce? A three year B.A from a recognized university.

Pgce costs?

It varies from university to university.

One last word here. Get yourself a pgce and the ESL teaching world is literally your oyster!