Job Discussion Forums

[Susie]

In China, teaching English compared with studying Chinese:

At a Chinese University, as an international student, the price is RMB 98 per hour (5 mornings per week, 4 hours and a half per morning) to learn Chinese.

Pay for your own accommodation RMB375 pw.

No flight reimbursement.

Have to pay for your own X-visa, medical examination, etc.

Pay for your own food and transportation costs.


Calculate this and compare it with your deal as EFLer.

[Roger]

That's comparing A with Z, or apples with pineapples, or apples with oranges, in any case, comparing two incongruous situations.
Expat teachers serve the Chinese education system, and they come relatively cheap considering that many have a Master's but get paid by Chinese standards (a phenomenon we can call 'brain'drain').
Students on the other hand are cash cows that enable universities to generate extra revenue. This feeds the bureqaucrats, the consulates, the local docs and the institutions themselves, not to mention the local economy.

Look at it this way:
- Chinese going to work abroad find themselves being paid significantly higher wages or salaries;
- CHinese studying abroad: a) in Anglosaxon countries they pay just like
expats pay for studying in China, at local costs; this is a personal
sacrifice by their parents and for the perceived benefit of their
motherland (acquiring skills and know-how not readily available from
a Chinese source);
but there are also students who fall into the second categoryh:
b) students enrolling in European places of study or training - often
pay no tuition and get scholarships from their host countries.
Unnoticed by many, the EU has over the last ten years been catching
up and is now offering university places and other training programmes
to Chinese - however, often they have to be proficient at a language
other than English. Germany and France are leaders, heavily subsi-
dising Chinese students studying in Europe!
It's also interesting to compare the social backgrounds of Western and Chinese students: many Westerners pay for their studies in China with their very own funds, whereas Chinese rely on their superlatively-rich and well-connected parents to foot all the bills for what they personally expect to be a holiday away from home for years.
I sat beside a 15-year old last Sunday who started talking to me. She turned out to be a student at a bilingual school whose English was not exactly up to par for such a school (with subjects such as geography and maths taught in English). While I was wondering how she could keep up with the lectures, she told me she had just been to England, and next year would go to the USA for a summer camp. Her father? A civil servant in Kunming!
Now that you and I know that Hu Jintao must make do on 3000 a month, tell me how a city offical can amass enough money to enroll his daughter at a 30'000 a semester school, followed by a summer camp costing another 20'000 RMB (if not more)?

[cheryl]

I don't think they're as different as apples and oranges.

What Susie meant was that if you went to China to study Chinese, you'd have to pay all those extra expenses. She's saying, that studying Chinese as an EFL instructor is better. Sheesh, when will men ever understand what we're trying to say?????

[Wolf]

[Susie]

Just to be clear about what I meant:-

I know someone who got offered a job teaching English in China that pays RMB50 per real hour, 20 hrs per week.

Salary is net (tax won't be deducted from 50/hr).

Salary include accommodation allowance, no housing is given, only help to find my own flat on 50/hr.

Have to pay half the costs of medical exam and legal employment papers.

Get half the costs of an economy return flight after a year of employment.

Have to pay half the costs of insurance (compulsory).

No food.

Have to give a demonstration lesson with DOS and headmistress present to assess the teaching.

Now this offer was discussed in relation to the quality of teaching that would be expected: must be animated in teaching, kids must be interested in learning, students must talk in class, parents must be pleased, etc.

In case you don't believe me, there was a witness present during the time when this offer was made. Compare it with the studying Chinese deal.

I don't understand, please could someone explain. Will this offer cover the costs of the Chinese language study programme?

This offer was made to someone with two masters degrees (one in education) and 4 years of teaching experience in China.

Sorry to bore you, I think this whole argument has been made before.

[Roger]

Susie,
it is not a boring topic, far from it. I still think I understood you when giving my first reply.
The 50 kuai per hour is almost standard - it works out to some 4000 a month, based on 20 hours a week. here are better-paying jobs, but there definitely are jobs that pay less. And, Chinese teachers do make a lot less! (Let's not bicker about "comparing apples and oranges' /expat/CHinese teachers - I know the privileges my CHinese colleagues have).

The fact that you had to give a trial lesson actually says it all: You are taken on board for meeting requirements that you are not familiar with - Chinese expectations that can get horribly in the way of your teaching. You can please the audience during that lesson, and you get the job, you can fail (for reasons totally beyond your control!), and you won't get that job. The people assessing you are from a different cultural background, so how can they make an educated decision on your suitability for your job? The answer is: you are not being taken seriously as a "foreign expert" - note that "foreign" here always disqualifies. I think, the whole situation is comic. No Chinese should assess your lesson since they can't judge your proficiency, grasp of what's relevant; you are merely being judged in terms of social skills, personal chemistry. Most headmasters/mistresses/deans have to rely on their FAO for Chinese translation of what you are saying to their students! Isn't this a serious flaw???
And then the parents! My God - they drive me mad! Especially today! They want their kids to suffer at school, which is not what you want them to! Suffer for attending such an inhumane regimented and rigid military facility - boarding school, no privacy for anybody, wake-up music piped into their dormitories at 6 a.m., supervised body washing, taking breakfast, doing morning calisthenics, going to class for "self-study" (what a misnomer!), attending boring lesson upon boring lesson in a generally cacophonous environment, dusty classrooms, lunch again together, then a siesta of one to two hours, then back to class (perhaps with no classes being held all afternoon, but students being under obligation to spend their time in class until supper); after supper, back to class for "self study" (supposedly doing "homework").
That's the "ideal" chinese school where Chinese parents want their kids to enroll. No wonder, students have little to enjoy except that expat teacher who entertains them.

And the same stupid parents think they are doing their progeny a favour by - enrolling (!!!) them for extra classes in their precious spare time - weekends, holidays!!! Where in the world are parents so blockheaded????? Yes: In CHina!
These parents want "value for my money" - value they define themselves. You are a cog in the wheel, you have to do their bidding - "my child knows very good English, he just can't talk it". Bloody nonsense! How can this parent judge it??? By relying on the CHinese English teacher and on the school that passes any underachiever so long as his parents pay tuition. It is a vicious cycle!
The kids hate going to school, especially to private schools in their spare time! That's the only time they could in fact feel FREE!

What do you expect from a society that's essentially a collection of sycophants?
It will only improve IF and WHEN WESTERN STANDARDS ARE INTRODUCED HERE - standards of excellence, industry, honesty!
And these standards can only be introduced if expat teachers are given a more prominent role: no longer doing the bidding of those that currently are lording it over us in spite of their evident intellectual mediocrity and their warped sense of what constitutes success at their schools!
Expats should pass or fail students in English, with no appeal! And we should design curricula.
There should be no force-feeding of vocables, memorising 20 new words every week, without ever recycling and using words already learnt (and already forgotten), just to meet the five-year planned economy goals of their "education" system!

We are not paying only with our money and labour (under-salaried, over-worked, that's relative; social security? Job stability!); we are also paying as HOSTS in our own countries for those that come from here and want to benefit from our school systems!

[cheryl]

my apologies, it was i who misunderstood