Internship worth it ?

@bstone - Katie from i-to-i said they had no set date for the next Vietnam internship but they might be looking at around Feb next year.
I had the same question - so hope this helps! :)

I'm not 100% certain, but I doubt it.

Hi im interested in the Vietnamese Internship but am not able to start in August, is there going to be another intake at some later date

billee

Hi there,

The Vietnam internship is brand new so nobody's been on it yet!

Generally speaking, internships suit people who, for whatever reason, are not confident about finding their first job themselves. You get on-the-job training, pre-departure and in-country support and five months teaching experience.

The only downside I can see with this particular intake is the timing. The internship ends in January - just in time for Tet (Vietnamese New Year), during which time the entire country comes to a standstill for a couple of weeks. This makes finding work or just getting anything done near impossible. That aside, the internship looks pretty good.

In 2010 I spent a couple of months teaching in VN (Hanoi rather than HCMC). I enjoyed it, but then I love teaching Young and Very Young Learners. Class sizes were rather bigger than was comfortable (up to 25 4-6 year olds in one class!) but the kids were relatively well-behaved and quite easy to engage. The biggest problem is pronunciation - because they don't pronounce the ends of words they can sound almost unintelligible - so you would need to over-emphasise the endings of words. I had a LOT of fun teaching the word 'fox' - the kids said 'fock, fock, fock'. Which sounds fairly similar to one of the more common names in VN - Phuc, pronounced 'f***'! :)

Briona