Job Discussion Forums

[rogerwilco]

Many schools advertise "Free Chinese lessons" as one of the benefits.
I do not know of anyone that has received their free lessons.
Did you receive your free Chinese lessons ?
Were they worthwhile ?

[Mr. Leafy]

I was promised free Chinese lessons. When I arrived I was told I could attend classes with the foreign 'language and culture' students when their language lessons were compatible with my teaching schedule. This would have been a couple hours a week for me and since they studied full-time, after a couple of weeks they would have been too far ahead of me for it to be useful. I didn't take them up on these lessons.

Recently I brought this up again and said their offer was essentially an empty promise that nobody would have been able to reasonably use (I used more diplomatic wording) and I was told the school and I could split the cost of a private tutor but I haven't started the lessons yet.

[muffintop]

It almost all cases I have seem...free Chinese lessons means they stick you i a room with a random Chinese worker and hope some magic happens. Not much different from the way some give English lessons.

[kungfuman]

I think two of the schools offered them as an incentive. They never materialized as there was always some reason why they couldn't happen.

Go find a Chinese girlfriend - instant Chinese lessons

[maxand]

My former school in Tianjin offered "free chinese lessons" in their ad. When I arrived in Tianjin, the following conversation happened:

Me: I am interested in the free chinese lessons you offered in the ad.
FAO: oh? really? ask one of your students.....

[teachingld2004]

My contract says "Free Chinese Lessons". But they are given with the Korean students 4 times a week and I can go twice. I found this out 4 weeks after they started, and I miss half of them. So the free Chinese lessons do not do me any good. When I asked my boss about this I was told that "Maybe I can find a student".

[doogsville]

My previous employer gave us Chinese lessons each semester with one of the Chinese English teachers on the payroll. They basically told the teacher to go teach us, and didn't offer a book or any other support, so when the teacher changed so did the syllabus.

I quit after the second semester. The reason was some of the other foreign teachers were the worst students ever. They would sit and talk among themselves whenever the Chinese teacher wasn't talking directly to them, or giving them something to do. Also one American guy who had been in China for 9 years was way ahead of the rest of us, and only came to 'practice' his Chinese. This took the form of showing off by speaking to the rest of us in Chinese which we obviously didn't understand, or arguing with the teacher in Chinese. I couldn't take it any more.

[5h09un]

it's a pretty standard part of every contract. the value of them varies by a lot of things, especially how serious you are and how serious your teacher is. in my experience, they usually don't materialize for various reasons. but regardless, if you don't even know how to order food in chinese (i didn't when i got here), absolutely anything is going to be better for you than nothing. and that's what makes "nothing" so frustrating. my first eight or so months in china was needlessly difficult just because i couldn't find a reliable way to learn chinese.

the first private school i ever worked for actually put chinese lessons on our weekly teaching schedules and assigned a chinese staff member to teach us one on one. i never bothered because i already had my own tutor that i preferred to work with on my own. most of my colleagues never did either. but those who did were generally pretty happy with it.

every other school i've worked for has been either somewhat serious about it or completely disinterested in ever fulfilling the promise. in one case, it was because they simply didn't care that there were teachers who actually wanted the classes. they asked and asked and asked but it never happened. in another case, the classes were available and conducted by people who are actually trained as professional chinese teachers. but the problem is they get canceled sometimes because they have more pressing work-related tasks they need to attend to. they aren't in-house chinese teachers for foreign staff.


if you want to learn chinese beyond a really bare survival level, it'll be really hard to teach it to yourself. i'm going to go ahead and say impossible because learning how to pronounce words well enough to get anybody to understand you takes time and coaching.

my advice is to at least find a private tutor to teach you. if you live in a city with a large population of foreign students who are studying chinese, there should be a lot of people around who are doing this for extra money or even as their occupation. this actually might require moving. it's why i came to where i am now and why i've been here for the past two and a half years.

consider enrolling in a university too. if you can find one with a good reputation, you'll learn a lot very rapidly, and for not very much money. i paid about 6,400 per semester for 20 hours of class per week. i've decided to stop and continue studying independently because i think it'll be more effective this way, but again, it was better than nothing.

and believe it or not, my employer has always been flexible about my scheduling to allow me to go to class in the morning and teach in the afternoons, evenings and on weekends so that i can at least attend all of my classes. whether that leaves me enough time to study as much as i should every semester is another story, but...it's better than nothing and time is on my side.

[Harbin]

Some schools might advertise this, but I certainly wouldn't count on getting it.... ever.

My employer never promised this benefit, but several Chinese English teachers did offer to give me lessons. I never took them up on this offer because they're not trained to teach Chinese.

I currently attend lessons at a Chinese college where lessons are taught by professional CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language) teachers who speak English well. The classes aren't cheap by local standards, but they're worth every Mao because the teachers actually know how to teach Chinese. It's also nice to have classmates to interact and network with.

[Kysorb]

This term my school hired a professional Chinese teacher to come out to the school every morning for 3 hours Monday - Friday.

Before that the Chinese classes were done by the Chinese staff and they weren't very good but now its pretty good.