Job Discussion Forums

[arioch36]

New concept is boring, no cool pictures, black and white, and the best organized and well thoguht out book out there, though for older students I like Interchange

[Robin53]

Thanks everyone for your comments. I more or less hold to what I said, but appreciate the different viewpoints.

When I first came to this country I worked for a company which sent FT high-school teachers to work in high-schools here. I left after a year when I realised that management were not interested in education, but in profits. I was used to management in high-schools in my own country being experts in education and able to give informed support and guidance to teachers. Then I moved to an ordinary state high-school here where I was the only FT. Although out of the loop as mentioned in my previous post, it was professionally satisfying and I felt appreciated, despite the salary being the usual 3000 a month in the part of the country where I live.

After 3 years at the state school I decided to move to a school where GAC is taught, as I wanted to save some money. So far, it seems OK. The students like me which is something I was worried about as these are rich kids, and at my previous school they were the opposite. Also, I've established a good working relationship with my Chinese colleagues. I hear hardly anything from management staff of the company which operates within the school, unless its a request. However after my years at the state school I'm used to this attitude from management staff. Call it patronising or arrogant if you want; its just the way things are, and not just in schools. There is nothing a FT can do but adapt to it if they want to stay. Otherwise - leave.

My other fear that being a profit-driven operation, I would quickly become disillusioned as in my first year, hasn't yet happened. The hours are longer, and there is a lot more paper-work, but working in this new environment doesn't seem very different than working in the state school. It is very different than working in a western high-school though, but I'm used to that now.

I'm looking forward to reading more posts from teachers who teach GAC. As far as I know, it is franchised out to several different education businesses and schools in China This website is possibly the only place where the FTs are able to swap notes. Such communication at management level I imagine is very good, but for most of the FTs we are very much alone in our schools.

Good luck! Its Monday tomorrow.

[englishgibson]

[Robin53]

Maybe we use a different version of the GAC books, but thanks for your comments English. After 5 years living in China, and as a fairly regular reader of these posts, I've finally decided to join, so its good to be able to communicate. What I like about the books are the teaching methods. If you had spent the past few years in a state college like I have teaching with dinosaurs of textbooks, you would understand my jubilation.

With the state school required textbooks I became a master at both seeming to cover them for the sake of English department requirements, and using what I could adapt to the communicative teaching method I was trained in. I was able to strike a happy medium, but I hated those books and their appalling grammar, spelling, and cultural errors of foreigners seen through Chinese academic eyes. When I had to hand them back, as well as have my poverty stricken and threadbare apartment inspected when I left my school, I felt embarrassed about the graffitti I'd filled the dinosaur books up with over the years during idle moments in the classroom. I don't think they looked, or pretended not to.

Emily is supposed to be coming to my school sometime before the end of the year to check up on my GAC teaching. If you have any advice or tips on how to handle her, and what to expect, I'd appreciate it.

[lf_aristotle69]

[Neilhrd]

I am glad I started this thread. Between us I think we are getting closer to the truth.

Aristotle's account of the history of GAC is also my understanding of the situation. My experience is that the selection of franchisees has not improved. Like everyone else GAC seems willing to take money from anyone and exploits China's refusal to set any standards of educational competence or experience for language school owners.

In theory GAC is also supposed to check that Approved Teaching Centres have adequate resources to support delivery of the programme before a licence is granted. This is a joke. At my centre we have no library resources at all. We are not allowed to use the University library and in any case it's English collection is just a few tatty 20 year old children's stories. Yet we are supposed to assess students research based essays to the same standard as students with all the resources of Canadian or Australian university libraries at their disposal. This is nonsense in my view. When the students realise that the required standards are unrealistic in China, usually around the middle of Level 2, they become demoralised and one by one lose interest or quit the programme. Our owners couldn't care less because by then the university and visa application process is done and that is where they make their money. I have tried repeatedly to raise this issue with both Emily and more recently with Rebecca Tao and they just cannot, or will not, see the problem.

So if you are considering working for a new centre check carefully, yourself, that they have the resources and don't rely on anything GAC or the Centre's website tells you.

Someone asked about dealing with Emily during a moderation visit. My advice is be very careful. She knows it all or thinks she does.

Aristotle also asked what the title of Co-ordinator means. We also have a Co-ordinator who is also known as Assistant to the DOS. In practice in most centres the Co-ordinator will be Chinese and therefore in the decision making loop. I happen to get on well with our Co-ordinator and the arrangement doesn't cause me any problems. However other FTs don't get on with her and their is a potential for trouble in this arrangement.

[arioch36]

Emily most likely will not be visiting your center.

Technically there is supposed to be a laowai DOS. By Chinese law (so i am led to believe) there must also be a Chinese person as head. SO the laowai DOS only has power when the Chinese feels like leaving everything to him.

Shanghai, as best as I can see, publically speaks the talk of the GAC standards, then privately allows the schools to do whatever they want I could give you some great examples, like students who failed module 1 and module 2 still continuing in module 3

One of the problems definitely is the studnets ability to do proper research for theri papers. The other problem is when students perceive that guanxi still reaign supreme and they can do whatever they want as long as their parent really pay. I try to convince that mmaking "students happy" regardless of standards is long term disaster fot the school. Students stick it out because they see it as rewarding.

If standards are kept, many times better then the worthless over priced IELTS schools (and I will include New Oriental in that group)

[englishgibson]

Arioch, with respect to the laowai DOS, as far as I know there's a new 2008 regulation that calls for a Chinese national to fill in the position. Some centers around have (happily) followed the regulation and some that either could not find suitable Chinese applicants or faced "laowai revolts" within their own operations have kept laowai DOSs. That could also explain why Chinese nationals Emily before and now Rebecca have their leading posts of academics in the Shanghai's Head Office of ACT Education Solution Limited or GAC

Aristotle, I thank you for posting all that info here. I have been with an ACT center (that I am supposed to call a GAC center) for three years and since they've opened there has been a new edition of books a couple of times. Not much changed with books (especially with regards to those errors) as long as I am there, but every time they've brought "their" new edition their smiles we've got new edition puzzled me since just about everything was the same...except the Assessments as it looks. I've just had one completely different. I am so outraged at the head office/Rebecca, because the previous one was (and had been for two previous years) an "impromptu role play" assessment with no dictionaries allowed. This year it is an assessment that they can take home and prepare for it and come back ready the next time/day.

[arioch36]

Math books are a pain in the ass. I think I first taught math three years ago. Had a good laowai DOS, dutifully submitted the mistakes.
Where they put the dots is a pathetic typo problem. 3.2 the dot, more often then not, is raised up so students and teachers this it means multiply. Then occasionally they use x to mean multiply. Same answers wrong in the book.

They tool out Matrix math, which would be very helpful for many of them, especially as they tend to be more math inclined then us anyways.
They put no interesting things in their book, no math puzzles, or interesting quotes or observations.

Three question on the math test are still incorrect after 2-3 years. One is still misprinted (Level 1 question 1 c should be a repeating decimal)

SO either the corrected books ... No scrap that, the tests are on the computer. No updates

[englishgibson]

So, we've got some concerns on over "LIES" from a company or should I say franchised operation that advertises itself as a western one. Is it really a western one or is it supposed to mislead all into beliefs that it is a western one? Is this operation to get those "poor" young Chinese out of missery or is it to globally recruit some capable young talent for those western unis? Or, is it to bring in some revenues to those finanicially strapped western unis? These are some of the questions that come to my mind after having experienced the GAC/ACT and after having read all this.

[arioch36]

I also find the tests becoming easier and easier, Useful parts which some students found difficult being deleted.

The students should be brought to the level where they can do impromptu role play.

Trigonometry, in fact all math, all the word problems have been taken out (that is if train X departs from City B travelling NE at bearing 17 ... etc)

Also the matrix math was taken out. As many of these students will continue with math, I would say the matrix math was very useful. But I believe most students never had it in their Chinese high schools. The tests, it appears to me, are being dumbed down.

Also the goal of going directly to college is being dumbed down, as there are now a plethora to the plethora degree of "Englisg training sites" in OZ, UK etc, that cal themselves college or promise after sucessful completeion of their course the student can enter the college ...ad nauseam

[Robin53]

You are right about Emily Zhao - she now works in the same office, but only for one specific GAC company which has FTs in GAC franchised schools. By the way, it costs the schools $20,000 for a 5 year GAC license. The Regional Academic Director of ACT coming to watch my classes and check on the assessments will be Rebecca Tao I guess - this is what my Chinese DOS tells me, so you were right about Emily not coming. The other 2 RADs in the Shanghai ACT office are Bessy and Anne. The country manager is a foreigner named Andrew, and there is a visiting one from Sydney Pauline.

There is a much bigger GAC company that has nothing to do with education - does anyone know if our GAC is part of this big company?

So far at my job my general impression is that those in charge don't care too much about the instructions set out for teachers, or the system worked out for teaching and assessments. All they want to see at the end is a finished ACT record book showing all assessments completed and signed off by the FT. All other guidelines and rules are irrelevant as long as this sacred piece of paper is delivered at the end by the FT. This takes away a lot of the initial jubilation I had when I started teaching with these books, in fact it makes me feel sick.

[arioch36]

Robin
.

[Neilhrd]

There are some very enlightening posts here.

First of all on a personal note I took on the DOS job reluctantly and with my eyes open. I am well aware that there is a lot of bulls*** that I won't be able to change. But we have an old saying in England, "politics is the art of the possible"; coined by McMillan I think. So I will try to focus on what I can improve and not get unduly stressed by what I can't. I dislike office politics but I have a lot of experience of it and if I have to play mind games I play to win. So, please, no more posts suggesting that I am a sucker.

It seems to me that there is some muddled thinking in this thread. I don't really care about our bosses whoever they might be. My loyalty is to the students. They may be rich kids but most of them are hard working and decent young people. On top of that I think we should all reflect on the fact that study abroad is a once only, life changing opportunity for Chinese students. If we don't do our best for them they probably won't get another chance.

Some people have suggested that the GAC books are much better than the "dinosaur" textbooks used on other Chinese university courses and therefore we shouldn't complain about them. I agree that they are much better than those I have seen elsewhere. But they are far from perfect and I think the students deserve better for the substantial fees they are paying. So I will continue producing supplementary material of my own and trying to use the system within GAC to improve them.

I also agree with Robin's suggestion that the supply of parents with the money to send students abroad may slow down as the economic recession bites in China. That means that it is in our own interests to ensure that the GAC course is top notch in order to beat the competition for the remaining rich parents and protect our own jobs.

The question of failed students being allowed to continue and then shuffled quietly into useless "community colleges", diploma programs and language schools abroad concerns me. This is happening in my centre as well. I believe that the reason is that parents are being given unconditional guarantees that their children will go abroad at the end of the course. That concerns me because this is exactly what Nova did in Japan and it eventually brought down the school when the parents realised they were being conned and went to court.

Another problem is that genuine students become demoralised when they realise that others with far lower ability and work rate are still going abroad. How do other centres keep students motivated until the end of Level 3 in these circumstances?

The recruitment process is carried out entirely in Chinese and the Chinese staff are evasive when asked what exactly is in our contracts with parents. So it is hard for me to prove exactly what is going on. In theory GAC carries out a "Student Destination Survey" to monitor where students go after graduation. Is this being faked or are they aware of the language school abroad scam and condoning it? Does anyone have any more information about this?

Let's keep this thread going and exchanging ideas and experiences.

[Robin53]

Thanks for that post. I see you have read my one on the revived GAC topic which I thought was a better place to be discussing things now that the topic of Rebecca T. has kind of fizzled out. However I'll reply to you here.

I completely agree with you that despite all the warts, the main people are the students. I thoroughly admire my bunch.

About "scam" schools and colleges abroad, I don't entirely agree with you. In other countries getting college or university accreditation is a serious business overseen by government departments of education with regular reviews and checks to see that systems are in place.

If I was a Chinese parent and had the money to send my child abroad for 3 or 4 years, here's what I would do: In China i would make sure they finished their high-school education to GaoKao level if that was the track they were on, or to college level otherwise. For a year or two before they were due to leave, I would hire a tutor for regular English lessons, and have them sit either IELTS or TOEFL however many times it took to get them up to the level required overseas. Then I would enrol them at either a college or university overseas and apply for the student visa once fees and acceptance were completed, as well as application for a Chinese passport. Overseas,if their IELTS or TOEFL scores weren't high enough, the student could do a one semester foundation course to get up to standard, and after that continue with the college or university program. In my country, many Chinese students would do a 2 year college program in computers or tourism or something, then on graduation have the diploma credited to a university and spend another 2 years there and graduate with a degree. Some just went home after a 2 year college diploma happy enough that their level of English was then very good, and they had an overseas tertiary qualification. Others had no trouble in completing a university degree after a few months on a foundation course to get their IELTS scores up, or in some cases compulsary courses in Communications for all university students and not just Chinese ones. Chinese students are not the only ones who can not write an academic essay, and such Communication courses are compulsary at many overseas universities for everyone in the first year.