Job Discussion Forums

LexiMan · Joined: 03 Jul 2013 Posts: 1

Hello everyone,

I recently moved from Holland to Shanghai to live with my Chinese girlfriend, and with no qualification I think my only option is to find a job teaching English.
I have talked to a couple of foreigners I met downtown and their advice is a short training course like CELTA, not cheap but most likely I will have a better chance finding a job than just getting TOEFL.

I don's care much about the salary, just want to do something.

Any advice of any kind is appreciated.
Thanks

Non Sequitur · Joined: 23 May 2010 Posts: 4724 Location: China

Holland?
Are you a native speaker?

mwaltman · Joined: 07 May 2013 Posts: 78

mike w · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:54 am Post subject:

What makes you think you can just do a short course and become an English teacher?

I'm sorry, but this is just the sort of thing that devalues qualified English teachers. It also holds our salaries down, because schools know they can get away with paying you less than a qualified teacher.

I also have to ask the question - are you a native English speaker?

Rules seem to getting implemented more severely these days - and one of them is that you must be a native English speaker.

dean_a_jones · Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 1151 Location: Wuhan, China

Agree with all the others so far. If by no qualification you mean no degree, and you are not a native speaker, then no decent school should bother with you. Probably would be able to find a place that will employ you illegally, but with the tightening of laws as well as all the other risks you take in this kind of situation, it is probably not worth it as you might find yourself unpaid, deported and barred from China. Which might be annoying if your GF is here.

Sounds like time for plan b. Perhaps you should look into actually studying something, as the future is always going to be there in front of you and further study might help you deal with that fact and problems like your current one. If you did study you might be able to pick up some conversational English students on the side or something (technically illegal as well, mind you).

vikeologist · Joined: 07 Sep 2009 Posts: 600

MozartFloyd · Joined: 12 Jul 2013 Posts: 66 Location: Guangdong, China

The rules have changed in China. It's no longer the last bastion of Tom-foolery ESLing. You need a degree.

Sadly, one of my coworkers: a Brit with no degree is in danger of losing his contract. He's a good teacher and the school doesn't want to lose him, but they aren't about to circumvent the law.

I know a Dutch gal teaching English here in China. She isn't a native speaker, but she does have a university degree.

Maybe time to start a business. Haven't seen many tulips in China.

Bud Powell · Joined: 11 Jul 2013 Posts: 1736

OP: You speak the English language, but you're Dutch.

There's a lot more to teaching the English language than teaching grammar and the mechanics of the language. Ask any Chinese teacher. Better yet, OBSERVE any Chinese teacher.Though a LOT of native speakers come to China with no post-secondary education, many of them arrive with a keen sense of class room management, understanding of the English-speaking cultures, and a lifetime of acquiring idioms and axioms of the English language. They have lived the language. They have lived the culture. They have absorbed the nuances of the language.

Post-secondary education in English education may not guarantee the making of a good teacher, but there is no substitute for experience speaking the language over the course of a lifetime and living in the culture.

Teaching English in China should not be one's course of last resort. I've worked with non-native English speakers who fell on their faces because they couldn't explain the simplest idiom or properly construct a sentence. Students pick up on the teachers' shortcomings.

And the teacher is eaten alive.

If teaching English were such an easy job, western secondary and post-secondary schools wouldn't accept a certificate as evidence of language proficiency. That isn't to say that those who teach in China on relatively scant formal education in the English language (or anything for that matter) aren't capable of teaching; to the contrary, I've seen many who could put American Ph.Ds to shame with their acumen and their class room management and teaching style. Kudos to them.

Consider this: you'll be struggling in a non-native culture AND teaching a language which is not your native language. That's a lot to bite off. There are NATIVE English speaking teachers in China who couldn't negotiate the cultural norms, much less the demands of the Chinese class room (or any other class room, for that matter).

Give this matter serious consideration from not only your point of view, but also from the perspective of the student.

OP: You say that you moved to Shanghai to live with your girlfriend. Do you mean VISIT? What type of visa did you arrive on? Unless you have a Z visa (or can change your present visa to a Z visa), forget working legally.

Something doesn't quite add up.

roadwalker · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1750 Location: Ch

Yeah, OP a CELTA would certainly help in making you more marketable. Btw, TOEFL = English ability exam for student admissions; TEFL = generic name for certificate courses like the most well known CELTA and Trinity Tesol. I think a course such as a CELTA or any serious similar course is good training and may prove beneficial even outside of teaching so I would recommend it.

But you are running into the problems that above posters have brought up: your passport is not from one of the favored native-English countries. It will be extremely hard for you to get legal work (maybe impossible) even assuming a bachelor degree. A school may want to hire you anyway, especially since you are already in country, but you could be facing big fines, deportation etc. Good luck whichever way.

qwertyu2 · Joined: 13 Mar 2012 Posts: 93

I think a native Dutch speaker with a university degree and CELTA certification could do just as good, if not better, job than most of the English "teachers" I've met in Asia.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Of course I don't know the OP at all, but it's pretty rare for a Dutch citizen living abroad not to have a BA at least, so I guess he's probably got one.

Education is far more affordable in Europe for European citizens than it is in North America for North American citizens. (Foreign tuition fees are always higher, so if you're from North America, don't imagine you can run over to Europe and get a cheap degree - unfortunately).

Banner41 · Joined: 04 Jan 2011 Posts: 656 Location: Shanghai

I have seen many non-native speakers take the jobs in the kindergartens legally. It seems to be an area many regular TEFLers seem to avoid like the plague. Lot's of Russian, Ukrainian Dutch and Afrikaners in those positions around here. Being Shanghai, it might be a little more difficult because the level of English there is somewhat better. So, if this were a question about smaller cities I would see a kindergarten as an easy option. If your ok with small ones you may find a job easier in SH. Just do it legally. I agree with the above that getting banned for 10 years for working illegally and your girlfriend being in China would suck.