How much do ESL teachers at universities make in Korea?
Ivan the Fabulous asked:
From what I hear, ESL teachers(native speakers) at public schools(elementary to high school) get around 2,500,000KRW (2,200USD) per month.
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From what I hear, ESL teachers(native speakers) at public schools(elementary to high school) get around 2,500,000KRW (2,200USD) per month.
Then how much do ESL teachers (and foreign instructors) at universities and colleges normally make?
I believe most university instructors/lecturers have MA degrees, so do they get more money than high school ESL teachers?
March 1st, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Average ESL teacher’s salary in Korea ranges around 1.5-2.2 million KRW, which is around $1,750 USD per month. With this money you should be able to save enough money while you live in South Korea, while still having a good time. Living expenses in South Korea are only estimated at around 500,000 KRW.
Yes, teachers with MA degrees should earn a little bit more than your standard ESL teacher. Gavin
March 5th, 2010 at 3:11 am
In one sentence: teaching adult students as opposed to screaming kids is a reward in itself, so the salaries for uni positions are generally not drastically higher than positions teaching screaming kids.
Generally university instructors/lecturers don’t make much more than PS teachers or hagwon teachers. I’d say they generally make south of 3,000,000 won per month. A few who were around back in the “EFL boom” are making 4,000,000 won a month, but this is rare.
The reason for similar salaries despite requiring higher credentials (if that is the case — there are still some BAs teaching at uni) is that it is VASTLY more pleasant to teach adults and young adults.
The most difficult part of teaching English is not the teaching itself. That’s actually quite easy. It’s just a simple matter of giving the students the core vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic expressions, then testing them on them, and finding other ways to make them learn the stuff.
The difficult part is maintaining discipline in a YL (young learners) class, especially when your school does not allow you to fail, punish, remove privileges from, or even give less than 85% to bad students. This situation is especially bad in hagwons that are financially unstable, because they will do ANYTHING to keep on all their students, even the bad students, because they need the money.
Teaching university-aged students is a reward in itself that justifies an MA TESOL without extra pay because the type of teaching is so much more attractive.
In a university, if a student misbehaves, you can just kick him (or her, let’s not be gender-biased) out. None of this “you let my child outside the classroom, you’re liable to be sued” crap. If a student is disrespectful, other students will police him. Uni students treat the foreign teacher better, because unlike the 4th graders, they have learned English for many years, understand that it is difficult for the foreign instructor to have perfect, flawless Korean, and don’t think the teacher is “some idiot who can’t even speak Korean.”
So to answer your question, pay for universities is around 3 million won per month — barely higher than a hagwon. However, at uni, the conditions are so much nicer (especially the people you’re teaching), that in itself warrants an MA TESOL (which only takes one year to complete, anyway). Shinchon