Job Discussion Forums

[tofuman]

While there may be no tenses in Chinese, there are certainly tense indicators such as le, guo, zai, and zheng zai. I suppose that expressions such as de yihou, yi huar and others would also fit into this category as far as expressing tense or time is concerned.

To suggest that the FAO doesn't tell me in the morning about a meeting in the afternoon but chooses to wake me up at nap time with a phone call, has nothing to do with the inadequacy of his language. Chinese has more ways of conveying o'clock time than does English.

Now it may be that he doesn't know about the meeting himself. But that is not a language issue either. It is a personality issue. It is the personality of his boss, the culture of the particular institution.

Some Chinese schools, like American schools, can tell you several months ahead of time when the school term ends, the next one starts, and so forth. Some Chinese schools can not tell you, or won't tell you, these things. It's a typical abuse of power by those who have it. I have been told by an FAO that the school doesn't know what day the school term ends just a week or two before it will end.

In America, we call these kind of people "azzwholes." If you work for one, that is your problem. Find a decent place to work after your contract expires.

[fluffyhamster]

[daodejing]

It seems many cultures do not take time very seriously, i.e. if you tell someone to meet you at a certain place and time they may be an hour or so late...which is quite different fromt he Anglo-Saxon model which many of us are accustomed to.

And from what I understand, many places formerly under facism or socialism where there was ample free time and little work are changing to more of an Anglo-Saxon, business-friendly, strict time schedules. India, Spain, and Ireland are places where people are certainly busier than they were 30 years ago and I believe the "time culture" may start to change if it hasn't started already. This may or may not be totally accurate, but I heard that since the time that Joyce wrote "Ulysses", the average stay in a Dublin cafe has gone from 3 hours to 15 minutes.

One author I read claimed that the most important variable determing social class (lower-class, working-class, middle-class, upper-clss) is one's view of time. Lower class people live in the present, not really thinking about the consequences of their action which partly explains the inability of some to move up the socio-economic ladder. Upper-class people can envision their grand-children, view education as something that can help them far into the future, etc. It seems that any culture that is hunter-gatherer, or where survival is the chief concern on a daily basis, cannot really afford to look too far into the future. And even when the culture emerges into an industrialized economy, there may be a lag of a generation or two before the thinking changes.

[vikdk]

Business cultures - in one form or another - survive, and indeed flourish, whatever the political, social or economic climate - after all good-deals are born out of local situations - and their eventual emergence can never be eradicated!!!
However the type of "Anglo-Saxon/polite/moral" business culture that is being referred to in this quote (and the in the rest of the last post) -

[Steppenwolf]

[vikdk]

[pandasteak]

you can check out Lost Laowai as a crash course, Chinesepod as a language primer, and my modest site's esl section for some info.

As for the advice on getting an esl certificate, only dish out the cash for it if you plan to become a career teacher for sure. If you wanna backback, just come without.

[Steppenwolf]

[vikdk]