What’s It Like Teaching English In Korea, China, Japan & Taiwan? 30 Teachers Explain [On Video]

30 ESL teachers I interviewed in Asia on the backdrop of an old painting I did.

Back in 2009 I set out to create an online project I would later name ESLinsider. My plan was to make a video based guide to teach English in Asia.

There were two main objectives.

1. Film instructional videos shot in the classrooms that I was teaching in.
2. Travel around Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan) and interview teachers and ask them about their experiences teaching abroad.

Fast forward 8 years or so and we did it! It was scary and daunting, but we did it. In this post I’ll focus more on the interview part of the program.

At the time I was living in South Korea and I had just finished a contract and I was bent on setting out to get the inside scoop on teaching in Asia. The whole idea was based on the struggles that I had as an English teacher.

Here’s the first video I made around 2010 (originally published on a different channel).

Interviewing other teachers would help give others the inside scoop to what was really going on. Prior to teaching in Asia (China, Korea and Taiwan) I took a TESOL course, but it hardly prepared me to teach in Taiwan — my first country.

I was disappointed.

So I wanted to make something real and practical. I didn’t have any interview skills and as an introvert it was a little intimidating to approach teachers I didn’t know on the street, beach, park, school or wherever I interviewed them.

If you look at the picture above you’ll see a little man with a backpack. That was me! I was mainly staying in Korea at the time (post contract) in hostels, love hotels, jimjibans…

But I set out with my backpack to do some exploring and interviewing.

I interviewed teachers in person with video in the following places:

• Busan, Korea
• Cheonan, Korea
• Taichung, Taiwan
• Hangzhou, China
• Xiamen, China
• Tokyo, Japan
• Fukuoka, Japan

I asked them a lot of questions and some of the best questions I think were:

• Do you have any advice for someone who wants to teach abroad?
• What’s been the biggest challenge that you have had teaching abroad?

26 Teachers Give Advice On Teaching English Abroad

That’s Dale, lol in Taiwan. He’s an old friend. It gets pretty hot in Taiwan.

Teaching abroad can be difficult too.

30 Teachers Share Their Challenges Teaching English In Asia

After I had created the how-to videos and all the interviews I got them up on ESLinsider. It took a long time! In fact from the point when I started making videos to when they were actually up on a functional website took more than a year.

Ahhh, life’s obstacles and delays…

In that time I worked in numerous schools (hagwons and public schools) mainly in Korea as either a substitute or full-time teacher and I recorded many instructional videos.

Man, it took a long time!

If I had known I don’t think I would have started. The idea started in 2009, but it wasn’t until nearly 2011 when I got the videos up. Yeah I learned a lot from that and I would definitely do some things differently if I could have.

But I am really happy with it.

All those how-to videos and interviews have been viewed over 1,500,000 times on my site and on Youtube.

But I didn’t stop there.

I used to be kind of anti-TEFL course because of my poor experience and all the bullshit and lies many courses tell newcomers.

But I realized I had fantastic learning materials — that were way better than the ones I had in that course or anywhere else online that were really geared towards teaching in Asia, so I decided to make a course to accentuate those materials.

So I started a course in 2012 and since then the whole site and courses have evolved and they are still evolving!

If you want to watch more teacher interviews you can do so here.

Want to know more about what it is like to teach in China, Korea, Japan or Taiwan? Then you have some options:

1. You can go back out there into the confusion and continue your search.
2. If you really want to know what it’s REALLY like to teach English in Asia then I would sign up for this free (time limited) Basic course. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain.
3. You can maximize your future teaching self by enrolling in this Advanced course targeted at teaching in Asia especially to children (which is the largest part of the job market there).

Stop waiting and start learning!