Job Discussion Forums

[Chris_Crossley]

I have so far got 2 1/2 years of TESOL experience in China under my belt. These include 2 years teaching at a private English language school and, so far, half a year of teaching at a mainstream state-run primary school.

I want to undertake a TESOL Diploma in the future by distance learning, and I know of several organisations which offer the Trinity College Licentiate Diploma in TESOL through the distance learning mode, although it requires a full-time attendance period of about four weeks, depending upon the course provider.

As anybody who is/has been in China knows only too well, the cost of living is very low, but so is the amount of pay one can receive compared to in Western countries. At current rates of exchange, a UK-based Diploma provider may charge as much as the equivalent of 22,000 RMB for undertaking the qualification. For someone who has little or no savings and/or does not expect to receive any sponsorship of any kind, this sum of money may sound very high indeed - four to five months' salary for a lot of expats.

I know of one organisation which has a presence in China and offers its directors of studies at franchised schools the chance to do a Diploma if they agree to sign up for two years, have 1,000 RMB of their salary deducted per month for 12 months, and finally get "rewarded" by having the 12,000 RMB back at the end of their second year. This may be fine if one is a director of studies at a private school, but what if one is an ordinary teacher at a public-sector institution where there may be no hierarchy for expats?

It seems to me that being both an ordinary teacher, however many years of TESOL experience one has got, and at the lower end of the pay scale are practically insurmountable barriers to being able to undertake a TESOL Diploma, and I know of nobody who has been able to do this qualification in the 2 1/2 years that I have been in China.

Is it actually worth undertaking the Diploma at all while one is an ordinary teacher in China, or is it better to wait until one is either a DoS with an organisation that offers such people the chance, or else until one is back in one's home country where one is more likely to afford the fees?

I would certainly like to know what people's opinions on this are. I consider such a Diploma as important to my future career development, yet, while I am still in China, I have to put practicality - finance, really - before "desire", which basically means that it would be nice to get the Diploma, but can one really afford it because it is so expensive in Chinese economic terms?

[Ger]

In my view and experience, at the lowest end of the teaching scale, it is worth doing a certificate or diploma but not an on-line one. I think face to face training and supervised teaching are essential.

The school offering the diploma should be externally audited, have a good reputation, and have external examiners.

I think for financial and cultural reasons, in my view, one should undertake to do the diploma in the country in which one is currently, or planning to, work.

[Chris_Crossley]

In order for one to be considered "fully trained" as an ES(O)L teacher, a Diploma seems to be, indeed, necessary if one wants to move up the career ladder. Having an externally validated and recognised qualification like the Trinity Licentiate Diploma in TESOL can do wonders for those intending to become DoSes in private language schools anywhere in the world.

Having said that, most, if not all, ads for prospective DoSes want people to have either the aforementioned Diploma or else the University of Cambridge DELTA (or its predecessor the DTEFLA), though the letter "A" in the latter qualification means "adults". If one is hoping to teach kids, one may find the DELTA a "disadvantage", though I'd think that experience of teaching kids should be enough - after all, I've just completed one semester at a primary school here in China and am about to undertake at least one summer school, possibly two, again with kids exclusively. Plus I had two years of weekends and two summers teaching kids at my previous employer's.

Online Diploma courses may be the only option for those working away from their home countries, yet such qualifications will only be considered to be "acceptable" in the world of TESOL if they do have a full-time component whereby there is supervised teaching practice and face-to-face lectures. The syllabus for the Trinity Diploma demands this, so you can't get the Diploma unless you've done the full-time component, which contains an examination and other continuous assessment, including the teaching practice, which is validated by a Trinity-appointed examiner, with whom one has to have a face-to-face interview in order to discuss progress and assessment.

Hence, if one does do a Trinity Diploma course online, one must be able to set aside four weeks for doing the full-time component, which invariably means flying (back) to the country where it will take place. Clearly, it would be most advantageous to do the full-time component between contracts (or during the summer vacation if one is teaching at a public-sector institution), because schools are unlikely to pay people if they are away from their duties for up to an entire month.

[blackguy-n-Asia]

I'm not experienced in teaching.

But from what I hear, Tesol, Tesl, etc is not very necessary in China. From what I know about it (not too much admittedly) employers seem to look for degrees and experience only, Tesols are just extras. It doesn't increase your pay or priveleges.

Dui, bu Dui? (Correct or Incorrect?)

[Chris_Crossley]

In many cases, yes, that is true. Public-sector institutions, particularly, are not at all fussy if any expatriates they hire have no TESOL certificates of any kind, but Chinese employment laws usually require schools to hire only those expatriates with college degrees in any subject and are native-speakers of English from strictly anglophone countries.

However, I know from my 2 1/2 years in China so far that both private and public-sector institutions deliberately circumvent the law. I know of - or else have heard about - people who have been hired illegally for up to a year without the proper documentation, that is, they have had no Z-visas (that is, work visas) issued by any Chinese embassy or consulate outside the PRC or even by the Public Security Bureau within the PRC. (The latter is possible after an expat comes in to China on an L-visa, that is, a tourist visa, but NOT on a student visa. It is NOT possible to change a student visa into a work visa once an expat has entered the PRC. If such a change is desired, the expat must leave China first and then re-enter on the new visa.) I know of one person who was from an EU country yet was hired simply because that person had lived in the UK for over five years and spoke with native fluency with a native accent, yet that expat still has only an EU passport from that European country, not the UK.

Yes, in order to be an "ordinary" teacher, one does not ordinarily need a TESOL certificate whatever schools say in their ads - a lot of them are prepared to drop the "requirement" for a certificate, especially if they need someone to start ASAP because, say, a new school semester is going to start within the next couple of weeks and the school needs to fill a vacancy in order to sort out what courses are going to be run (usually a last-minute affair in the private sector).

However, if one stays for a long time and wants to make a career out of it for more than a year or two, a TESOL Diploma will/should help people move up the career ladder into ESOL management. This is what I want to talk about in this topic rather than what one needs to become a grass-roots teacher, since I am already in that position now. Is it actually worth doing in China even though it is so expensive (20,000+ RMB)?

[oprah]

I was not aware one could move up in this profession. I have been here one year and a half and do not see any great promotions. I like 16 to 20 classes a week, this is all I need to do, whereas I see some University teachers always working, marking papers, etc.

[Chris_Crossley]

When I was teaching at my first school in China for two years, I myself received two promotions. The first was to Senior Teacher, the next was to Acting Director of Studies. The umbrella organisation, of which the school is a franchisee, does not insist that people have Diplomas in order to become a (full) Director of Studies (DoS), yet it does offer the scheme, which I mentioned in an earlier post, whereby people sign up for two years, have 1,000 RMB removed from their salary per month for the first 12 months, and then get their 12,000 RMB back again at the end of their two-year contract (always assuming they get their Diploma!).

Their ads always say that a Diploma is "desirable, but not essential". Hence, it is perfectly possible to be a DoS at private schools in China without the Diploma. However, it is a totally different matter when it comes to applying for DoS - or even senior teacher - jobs in the UK. Not only do schools expect candidates for such positions to have at least 3-5 years' experience in TESOL, but they also want them to have the Diploma - which may mean shelling out if one is unlucky enough not to have any financial support from anybody if not one's own financial resources.

Which brings me to the point of this topic. Is it worth my undertaking a Diploma in China or should I simply wait until I get back to the UK? I'd certainly like to hear from anybody who's got the Diploma, whether they studied for it in their own country or in China - especially in China.

[bendan]

I'm not sure you'd benefit in terms of career progression here in China, though there are one or two organisations who understand what the Trinity Diploma is. If a job came up with the Diploma as a requirement, you would be in a very good position, but it's highly unlikely that a public sector institution here would ask for such a qualification.

I've met no *foreign teacher* in China who knew the difference between the Diploma and the Certificate. I doubt those who have answered your post do, either, particulary as you don't explicitly say you already have the Certificate.

Would you not need a local supervisor for the Diploma, anyway? I think that would be hard to arrange in China. The cost doesn't seem insurmountable to me - you could (almost) make that money on summer camps alone.

[julian.d]

In the vast majority of instances a TESOL certificate or diploma isn't necessary in China and it's easy to get work and live there comfortably without one. However, the VERY BEST jobs there or anywhere else require a minimum of a TESOL certificate and a BA. It really depends if you want to get the top jobs or not.
In the end it depends on how far you want to go with your teaching. I have worked for three years in China and am taking a year off to do a postgraduate diploma in TESOL so that I can put myself in a position to get those jobs and because ESL is my life. I firmly believe it's worth taking the time to do it as it will put me in the best position down the track. With a diploma there isn't any door that won't open for you in ESL and in the long term it's an investment. In the end it probably depends on how serious you are about your teaching and where you want to go with it.

[Chris_Crossley]

I will now say explicitly that I do possess the Trinity Certificate in TESOL, which I got in June 2001 before coming to China, and my highest degree is an MBA from a UK university. Even with those, it is very unlikely that I will ever be out of work (save getting sacked or else quitting for some reason!), given that, even though I am midway through my current contract, several private schools are already trying to tempt me away from my current employer because of my experience and because some staff members used to work for the private school that I worked for for two years before leaving myself.

It is just as well that I am serious about the TESOL profession because, even right from the start, I never wanted to make it a "one-year thing" as if I were some Gap Year student looking for something to do between the end of high school and the beginning of university. Hence, a Diploma would, as some fellow posters have indicated, not be "necessary" to career progress - in China, at least. Even an MBA is enough to make employers sit up and take notice, never mind a TESOL diploma.

I must admit, however, that I was surprised when Julian D. said that he was "taking a year off" to undertake a PG Dip in TESOL. Does it really take an entire year to do this qualification? If I were to undertake the Trinity Diploma full-time, it should take no more than 10-12 weeks, but it would be so intensive that the opportunities to find the time to do other, part-time work would be extremely limited, not to mention inadvisable. If anything, it should take a full full-time year to undertake an MA degree in TESOL or Applied Linguistics, though, personally, in order to keep my career going and the money coming in, I'd take the distance-learning route over a number of years (at least three), even if doing this from China would be very expensive compared to doing it back in the UK.

A number of universities around the world do offer the distance-learning route for a master's degree, but people should be aware that schools looking for people with the Diploma prefer them to have the Diploma owing to its practical teaching element, something which many (if not all) master's degree courses lack, especially if they are undertaken online. If one has both the Diploma AND a master's in TESOL, then no problem, but it seems that, for many schools in one's home country, say, the Diploma carries more weight than a master's just because of the presence of the practical teaching element in the Diploma and the lack of it in the master's degree programme.

[ContemporaryDog]

Chris,

As I understand it from previous conversations you have a B-Ed and are therefore qualified to teach in International Schools.

If I was going to throw in my thruppence worth it would be to look for a job at such a place (e.g. in Hong Kong) where you could get a very well paying job with the qualifications you have already.

[Chris_Crossley]

Contemporary Dog,

Yes, you're correct. I do have a B.Ed. and Qualified Teacher Status from the UK Government. I still intend to look for some kind of job at an international school or some other such place in China if I am unsuccessful in getting a job, say, at a school in Hong Kong, where the medium of instruction is English. Any such job would start in February, though, since I am committed to my current contract until the end of next January.

Did you manage to get this business about the flight fare reimbursement sorted out?

[NateM]

Given your qualifications, I would think a TESOL/TEFL Certificate might help you get a job, but in most cases probably wouldn't really teach you much you don't already know. So if you want the piece of paper on your resume, a cheap, online course probably wouldn't be a bad place to go.

[Kenny Kimchee]

For those interested:

http://www.indiana.edu/%7Edisted/masters.html

[yaco]

We are entering the murky world of TEFL.

This is my understanding of the current situation

A recognised TEFL certificate requires practical teaching supervision and therefore cannot be completed online.

A TEFL diploma can be completed online.

A Masters in TEFL can be completed online.

Summing up a four week course must have a practical component whilst a 12 or 18 month course has no practical component.

You are a better person than me if you can work this out.