Do ESL teachers need to know the language well (say Japanese) to be teaching English in Japan?

Question

I am a student thinking of becoming an ESL teacher. I was wondering if it was possible for an ESL teacher to travel around to different places teaching English but having maybe not a very strong language background of other languages (ie. chinese, korean, japanese etc.) Is it a requirement to know the language really well in the country you are teaching ESL in? Or will the basics do? How does it work?

Answer 1

hi! am korean. my american teacher knows not a word about my language. sometimes when we cannot understand what he's saying, he shows it through actions. also, our school requires all native speaker teachers not to speak korean because we already have our korean english teachers to explain the lessons to us in korean. don't worry, if you come to korea, you won't get lost even if you can't speak korean. the people will love to speak to you to practice their english. you will have a trouble understanding them :)

Answer 2

You should check into the J.E.T. program.  One of my friends - who had a very limited grasp of Japanese, went to Japan in 1998 and taught English for a year.  I attached a link for you below:

Answer 3

You don't need any japanese to teach ESL in japan.

I'm doing it right now ;)

You should check out the JET programme, and also various english schools here like NOVA, GEOS, AEON etc.

All require no japanese ability.

(I am doing JET as I post this message. I am in Osaka now ;)

Answer 4

I've looked around at various ESL jobs around the world and none of them ever had the requirement of knowing the language of that country. In my opinion though, it sure would help with living there, advancing your career in that country, and explaining some lessons if the students don't know much English.