I will be continuing my education soon to work on my B.A. which I would like to use to teach English in Japan. I am curious as to what major is best to prepare for the occupation.

From what I have heard, majoring in Japanese will involve; aside from the language, of course; the study of Japanese culture and history, and so that is not what I am interested in majoring in.

I have a friend with the same occupational goal who is going to major in communications. Prior to my friend telling me this, I had not even known what that major was all about, although I do now. It seems more of a relevant major for an ELT.

However, there is also linguistics. And I'm sure that, too, would be a good major. I am looking for the most relevant major, though, and I don't know if this would be the one.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

If you're just looking to teach English in Japan then nobody is going to care what you majored in for your B.A. The B.A. requirement is just a visa requirement. They basically only care that you have a clean criminal record, aren't a creeper, have a pulse, and are a native English speaker.

If you actually want to have career options then you need to be looking at majoring in an ESL(English as a second language) teachers program with a path to a masters in that same subject.

If you do not get a masters in ESL then you will still be able to teach in Japan, but you'll be restricted to private cram schools and elementary/middle/high schools. These jobs can pay alright enough for you to live in Japan, but many of them do not pay very well. They also have no opportunity for advancement, and do nothing for your resume.

It's great that you're excited about becoming an English teacher in Japan, but I think you need to do more research about what that actually is.

I'm sure OP has already researched a lot about English teaching in Japan as he seems really serious about college studies. But everything erlog said is right on.

If you want to teach English for the rest of your life.... I recommend thinking about teaching at a university level or even opening up your own private language schools. Living with maybe 30-40k a year kind of.... eh.

Some people also just teach English for a year as a stepping stone for different jobs. By stepping stone I mean going everywhere looking for contacts. Having contacts and nice certificates takes you far in Japan :p

I did not mean what major is best solely for the job requirement, but also for preparing myself with relevant knowledge to help with the job.

On a side note, I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but my college is a liberal arts college that does not work on majors but on emphases so actual majors don't matter much anyway.

As for getting a masters in ESL, that is not an option for me for financial reasons. On the subject of career advancement in the occupation, though, I know of someone who started teaching English in Japan with B.A. in an irrelevant major and ended up years later teaching in university, so I don't think it's impossible to climb up the latter with only a B.A.

I admit that I do need to do more research on the occupation, but it is nonetheless something that I can see myself doing and will strive to do.

@Xanpakuto:
You are right about the occupation being a stepping stone for me. My longer-term goal is actually something completely unrelated to teaching, and that is music composition. However, the bureaucracies of traditional universities won't have me easily majoring in that subject, so I want to supplement, instead, some coursework that would be helpful toward teaching English.

It sounds silly but I want to use the teaching job, aside from the experience it offers, as a stepping stone to get my foot in the door with my music in Japan.

Being an ALT as a stepping-stone to something not teaching-related is actually the most common and best situation. It's very difficult to get a proper masters degree for ESL in Japan while working as an ALT, and also very difficult to even do third-party ESL teaching certificates. Most of the people who are ALT's who then want to move up the ladder end up moving back to their home country for a masters in ESL, and then returning at some point.

As far as requirements for doing the actual job as opposed to just getting hired, there aren't very many. What you would find most helpful would probably be brushing up on English grammar as it is learned by non-native speakers. So getting a book like this one would be pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0132333317

Also, looking into some ESL concepts through something like TESOL course materials would be helpful even if you don't have the money to get an actual TESOL certificate. TESOL is kind of a crash-course in ESL and will teach you things like lesson-planning.

Depending on how you go over as an ALT there could be some training available for you before you start teaching, but in a lot of cases there won't be. Every situation is different, though. I learned a lot from the teachers I was team-teaching with, and then other ALT's after I got here.

I think you could study English with a minor in a foreign language, probably Japanese, if you don't think you'd be better off studying Japanese yourself anyway. That way you can learn more about English the language but also learn personally about the process of second language learning by trying to learn a language yourself.
Or you could study linguistics as a BS though most people do this in postgrad. There are some places that probably have a BS in TESOL but that might be kinda boring.

KanjiCrosser Wrote:I did not mean what major is best solely for the job requirement, but also for preparing myself with relevant knowledge to help with the job.
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KanjiCrosser you sound like a smart guy in how you write, so let me tell you something.

I taught English for a while in Japan literally just to get myself a visa over there, and after that I got hired into an investment bank and have always been able to make good $$ and live a very comfortable fulfilling life. I didn't expect to work for a company like that and never studied anything finance related before in my life, that was just how it worked out and I'm extremely pleased it did.

With teaching English in Japan, please understand most people doing this aren't serious and haven't studied anything relevant for the job (like me). You might feel good that you can go beyond them, but these will be your co-workers and it could easily dampen your spirits over time.

The option to go to teach English will probably *always* remain an option to you, whatever else you choose to study. Studying any further just to be better at that job, is in my mind, a pretty bad idea. If you get that job later and aren't fully prepared, you will have ample time and opportunity to learn that on the job. Whereas you only get realistically one shot at picking your degree.

If I were you I'd try and pick whatever the most interesting degree would be to you, and forget about its relevance with teaching English. If after your degree you still want to go teach English, by all means you can still go and do that and it make work out great. If however you find that its not really for you after all ....... you would have a degree in something unrelated that you might be able to do other things with after all.

And if you did teach English in Japan for a long period of time your Japanese would likely improve a lot to, which could open doors for you into other fields as well. Keeping your options open as much as possible is your best bet.

NightSky Wrote:

KanjiCrosser Wrote:I did not mean what major is best solely for the job requirement, but also for preparing myself with relevant knowledge to help with the job.
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I taught English for a while in Japan literally just to get myself a visa over there, and after that I got hired into an investment bank and have always been able to make good $$ and live a very comfortable fulfilling life. I didn't expect to work for a company like that and never studied anything finance related before in my life, that was just how it worked out and I'm extremely pleased it did.

Any more details about this transition? Did you go to a career forum? Just apply for the job and hope?

erlog Wrote:As far as requirements for doing the actual job as opposed to just getting hired, there aren't very many. What you would find most helpful would probably be brushing up on English grammar as it is learned by non-native speakers. So getting a book like this one would be pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0132333317

Yes, brushing up on English grammar is definitely something I'm going to do before going about these jobs. Although, since I have two years to work on that, I'm going to spend more of my time improving my Japanese. I imagine one would have more of an edge at the job if they can speak fluent Japanese as opposed to hardly knowing anything about the language.

On a side note, although I feel as if I should already know this, I don't know if classes are taught in English, Japanese, or a mixture of both. I have heard that students know enough English to understand lessons taught in English, but I don't know to what extent this is true.

NightSky Wrote:I taught English for a while in Japan literally just to get myself a visa over there, and after that I got hired into an investment bank and have always been able to make good $$ and live a very comfortable fulfilling life. I didn't expect to work for a company like that and never studied anything finance related before in my life, that was just how it worked out and I'm extremely pleased it did.

It's good to hear that it is possible to use the English-teaching job as a stepping stone to another career.

A little off topic, but were you able to get your working visa and the teaching job without first being in the country? (I suppose one would call that an overseas application.) But if not did you first have to get a traveler visa, fly over, and pound the pavement for someone to sponsor the work visa?

NightSky Wrote:If I were you I'd try and pick whatever the most interesting degree would be to you, and forget about its relevance with teaching English. If after your degree you still want to go teach English, by all means you can still go and do that and it make work out great. If however you find that its not really for you after all ....... you would have a degree in something unrelated that you might be able to do other things with after all.

That's good advice. However, because I'm going into a liberal arts college (a deviant one at that), the degree options are limited. I can pretty much study anything I want, though, and also add an emphasis if I choose to, within the B.A. because there are no formal majors.

I do have another career interest aside from the teaching job, as I've already stated, so I suppose I can work courses which would help me with that.

lardycake Wrote:Any more details about this transition? Did you go to a career forum? Just apply for the job and hope?

Answering this question and the other one from KanjiCrosser - I got my visa and job living in the UK because I got the job at Nova. Not a great place to work but it did make it very easy to move to Japan - sadly they went bankrupt sooooo I guess that option isn't there anymore ...

Anyway after Nova I found a job in a small IT company as a programmer, which was mostly terrible for various reasons, and after about 5-6 months I went talking to lots of recruiters in Tokyo and I went to interviews with one of the major american investment banks. In total I think I spent 10+ hours over 4 days doing interviews with them, it was tough.

For those kind of jobs I think its pretty much necessary to go through recruiters or other local contacts, I don't think you will find much on career forums or any online job listing.