Job Discussion Forums

patsy · Joined: 07 Oct 2004 Posts: 179 Location: china

Last year at my university in the developed city of Changsha, I had over 60 students per class. Oral english, all they wanted was for me to sing and dance, well , sing at least. No one really took the foreign teachers seriously , not even the english dept.

This year I am learning to adapt to the monkeyness of it all, and it's not all bad. Have a great sense of humor or you will be really dissappointed.

ninjamon · Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 28

1) How much teaching and preparation do you do?

Depends on the class. Oral clases tend to largely plan themselves, if you take a good textbook. (you do have some teacher training experience, right?) The students mainly need an opportunity to speak and develop fluency. Writing classes will be much more involved and require greater thought of the students' needs.

2) Is the salary enough to live on?

Salary where I used to work in Beijing was between 2500-6000 RMB/mth plus free accommodation. I think you would spend around 2000 RMB/mth depending on how much of a party animal you are.

3) What are the vacations like?

one month at Spring Festival, nearly two over the summer. sometimes longer. our holidays were paid, not every uni does this.

4) what kinds of activities tend to be useful?

You don't have to be a monkey - this tends to happen when you lack experience/training. I made it clear in my first lesson what I expected from my students and punished them if they broke the rules. As long as you are consistent, you will be fine. If you take it seriously I have found that they respond. Be open and ask for student input (but don't phrase it in such a way that they think they have to write the syllabus). I found myself teaching academic English in the writing classes as this is what they wanted to pass foreign uni entrance exams. Oral classes group work focused on fluency is good. They need confidence building. I also made them do a presentation twice a semester. This works well if you hold their hands initially.

As for learning Chinese, how committed are you to the language? It will take a minimum of two years of hard work before an advanced level is attained. Realistically you may be looking at three or four. Do you speak Japanese? I noticed you used simplified characters for "China" and traditional for "han characters", which they do in Japanese. If so I should warn you that (a) they are racist against the Japanese, and anyone who likes Japan maybe considered suspect (b) Chinese is the opposite to Japanese in that the pronunciation is difficult, but the grammar hard.

Good luck with your choice.

Lorean · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 476 Location: Beijing

TingBuDong · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject:

1) How much teaching and preparation do you do?
I teach 16 hours a week. This means 8 classes (35 students in each) with once-a-week 100 minute lessons (10 minute break in the middle). I typically have 2 lesson plans per week. I often spend 3 hours or even more on one lesson plan but most teachers here spend less, sometimes much less. Overall I've never worked more than 25 hours/week, total.

2) Is the salary enough to live on?
My salary is 3000/month. Living quite comfortably (eating twice every day etc.) I spend 1000/month. So, yes, absolutely. By comparison Chinese teachers at my school who are supporting families and have more responsibilities are paid around 1,700, so it would be ludicrous to expect more.

3) What are the vacations like?
Better than I will have the chance to experience in any other job in the future, for sure. Not including a trip home I might travel two or three months of a year, and still save money in the end. The "travel" category in my blog has plenty of pictures and stories.

4) what kinds of activities tend to be useful?
I've had Reading class all along. I give homework from the textbook, cover it during class, and often also cover an article, poem, song, or other material I've selected and made copies of. I also work in plenty of speaking activities with the occasional listening and writing thrown in. This week the homework was about the internet program Skype but I we also went over an article about Americans learning Mandarin that I found. Activities that work: I use a lot of groupwork where students must write out something (i.e. a new invention), prepare some kind of short skit, or discuss a question we will discuss as a class. Individual/pair work, i.e. worksheets etc. usually works well.
Activities that don't work: anything that relies too heavily on whole-class discussion or spontaneous comments and questions from students. Chinese students are quite shy and introverted in the classroom compared to Westerners.

Also, pay no attention to the overwhelming amount of jaded/cynical/sarcastic/racist comments on this board. It is a reflection of the commenter and this message board more than the state of teaching in China. The teachers I know personally have quite enjoyed themselves and their teaching. By the way, I would specifically recommend my university (for a remotely located, extremely Chinese experience that is), which is Hexi University in Zhangye, Gansu province.

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

Why are you only paid 3000/month???? Are there other FT's at your uni - are they paid identical wages???

TingBuDong · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject:

Others here are paid the same or very similar, and there are a couple of Peace Corps volunteers who are paid 1,500. This area is poor and not anything remotely resembling a city like Shanghai. It's a fair wage. I came for the experience and didn't expect to come home with a ton of money saved up. Actually, there are 12 foreign teachers here now and no one has ever complained about the money. One of the teachers was a Canadian with 15 years' experience teaching in China (and a teaching certificate and experience at home; he simply prefers China) and he said this was overall probably his favorite job in China. A job cannot be judged on salary alone.

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

therock · Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 1266 Location: China

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

TingBuDong · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:06 pm Post subject:

As I've stated typical Chinese teaching wages are barely over half of what the foreign teachers are paid. My students' parents typically are farmers with considerably less money than that. To demand even more money than I'm getting from the school to fulfill my Western notions of a salary would be absurd. I'm not quite sure how being provided with a large, well-equipped free apartment, international airfare and a salary that is 300% of what is needed to get by is unfair. To insinuate that I am poor quality teacher for accepting pay that is extremely reasonable in the circumstances is insulting to me. I do have a TEFL certificate and take myself and my job perfectly seriously. There is certainly no one cackling in a back room of the school and counting the money they have made by screwing over poor foreign teachers; the living standard here is just vastly different from big cities. A picture of the town square at night is also certainly no sweeping summary of the entire city and the economic situation of its university.

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

i would find it strange if the wages in Gansu needed to be lower. It makes no sense except for one reason, they can persuade laowai with the argument that there wages should be lower.

Overall, the schools outside the capital pay more because they must. But a uni at Gansu ... their costs overall are cheaper then a school in the city. But don't they overall receive the same monies? As of now, the students must pay the same in Henan, Hubei, or Gansu. The government gives money to the school based on the same formulas. Why should the incomes be lower there? I know a couple that just left one of the top schools in Henan to go to Gansu, they asked for and received the same wage

So it comes to the same and dance here, as others mentioned ... oh laowai, we have it so terrible here, we are treating you so much better then the Chinese teachers, and you are helping the poor students, and you can see a beautiful part of China. And the leaders are still driving around in their nice big gas-guzzling cars, sending their teachers on junkets to foreign countries, etc.

You can not tell me how much poorer Gansu is from Henan. No, it the laowai who lets himself believe he is accepting a low wage for some noble purpose. Thus serious long-term teachers must accept lower wages, thus fewer serious long term teachers

I

eslstudies · Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 1061 Location: East of Aden

TingBuDong · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:49 am Post subject:

I assure you that leaders are not being driven around in fancy cars and teachers are certainly not being sent on junkets to foreign countries here. The school does receive less money, the cost of living here is much, much lower than even other parts of China, and the wages here are deservedly lower for that reason. There is no need to make haughty assumptions about places you have never lived or even seen. If I were working for 3,000 in Beijing without a care in the world, I could understand the argument that I'm making it harder for career teachers. Obviously, I would not accept the same wage there. Likewise, to demand a big East coast city wage here would be laughable. Lower cost of living = lower wages. It's a simple concept. Any teachers interested solely in money will not even consider coming here, so I don't see the problem.
ESL studies - glad you enjoyed the blog.

jeffinflorida · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:53 am Post subject:

I work for a very large university - maybe 30,000 students. Thank God I don't teach English...

My fellow Fts that do teach English here are very dissatified with the students performance and work ethic. Example, my friend has 20 students in his class. Only about 9 show up. The school will not hold back students for missing - or never attending - English eft/esl class but will hold them back for failing business courses ( which I teach).

So here's the issue - all these students that skip their English courses wind up in my business classes and they don't speak a lick of English...

This prevailing attidude makes every teachers job very difficuly and takes what little rewards are offered away...

I went to dinner with 2 students and ScooterBabe the other day. The student said they all skip their English classes and the school does not care. If they fail a business course they pay 100 rmb to take the test again and they pass the test regardless of their true score and move up to the next level...

Other than that I am very happy working 13.5 hours a week for 8500 rmb and getting a new apartment, airfare and visa paid, and having no issues from the school that ScooterBabe sleeps next to me for the last 6 weeks...

And did I mention my new Scooter????