Job Discussion Forums

[datokate9]

Hello everyone,

Im currently searching for a position in China and after posting my resume on here I got several offers, but after sniffing through some shifty ones, I came across this:

Full-time English Teacher

Language Requirement : English

School location : Urban City

School Province : Anhui

Student level : high school student

School type : Public School

Student number per class : about 30

School level : Middle/High School

Working Hours per week : 20

Class Subject :

English listening, speaking, reading and writing, American history or culture, TOEFL or IELTS training etc.

Treatment Conditions :

1. Salary: RMB 8000—15000 Yuan per month.

2. One-way(or round-trip) air ticket from the place of residence to China and traffic allowance when arriving in China

3. Free Accommodation

4. 2-week paid vocation for one semester

5. Free travels in Anhui province twice a year

6. Accident insurance.

Particular request (include nationality, language etc.):

1. Native English speakers or foreigners who received high school and college education in America, UK, Canada & Australia.

2. At least bachelor’s degree and 2 years related working experience.

3. Candidates with certificate of TEFL, TESL or TESOL are preferred.

Other living condition (include inhabitancy/telephone /internet access/television/ transportation/etc.):

The employer will provide a single accommodation with private bath room for the employee with: basic furniture (bed, wardrobe, table and chair), telephone, network access device, refrigerator, washing-machine, shower set, micro-wave oven and air-conditioner.

If you are interested in our position, please send us your resume, photocopies of degree certificate & teaching certificate & passport, and a recent photo etc. soon!


Has anyone worked at this school? I found some old posts about them but nothing recent.

Also, is it normal/okay to send over your passport information BEFORE accepting an offer or even having a conversation with anyone at the school?

Thanks,

Kate

[muffintop]

If you are simply applying for the job....send a copy of the passport but have the passport number blacked out. You can send them a full copy after you accept the position.

It looks like you'll be farmed out to different schools though I could very well be wrong.

20 hours for 8k of oral English is...fair I guess. But....writing? History? Hell no. A writing class will chew up your time like nothing else and you'll have a lot of prep work for the History class as well. 20 hours could easily turn into 35+..... add in wasted time for split shifts and an absurdly long lunch break and you'll likely find 4 hours of work a day can crap up a lot of time.

Perhaps Anhui has a very low CoL but for what they want the pay seems low....even at 15k.

[doogsville]

The student numbers rings alarm bells for me. about 30 students? Did a plague sweep through the town recently? I've never seen or heard of a middle or senior school here with class numbers below 50.

Also get clarification about the hours. The average public school class lasts for 40 to 50 minutes. If the classes last for 40, they may give you 30 or 24 classes with the breaks in between not counted as 'classroom' hours. Ditto the city. 'Urban city' is not listed in Wikipedia. I would also seek clarification about the etc. at the end of the class subject. Could be teaching the principals grandchildren at the weekends or one to ones with rich local business people. There's nothing in there about how many days a week you'd be working either, unless you left it out.

Basically, clarify, clarify, clarify. If they dodge your questions or won't commit to changes, give it a miss.

[rogerwilco]

I believe the city to be Wuhu.
I was there about 5 years ago with my Chinese friend.
We arrived at the Wuhu bus station, and every taxi in a line of about 12 taxis
refused to take us. Not a good first impression.
We were there just to visit for the day, and ended up walking everywhere.

[datokate9]

Thanks everyone.

After reading your responses, I wrote back to clarify so I'll see how they respond.

The city is Wuhu in Anhui, that was at the top part of the email that I forgot to copy.

Thanks again

[datokate9]

After writing this:

Pertaining to the classes I would be teaching. The classes about American history and culture, are they included in the 20 class hours OR in addition to the ESL classes?

Also, are these 20 class hours including office and preparation hours? If they do not, then the total hours would surpass the 20 hours.

I got this last night:

And for you question. No mather what the content you will teach, they are all included in the 20 classes (each class for 45 minutes) . You don't need to be in the office everyday, and you can prepare the course wherever you want. But the preparation hours are not counted.

What do you guys think?

[muffintop]

[thechangling]

I'll have to second what Muffintop said about the writing classes taking up more time than oral classes especially when it comes to marking assignments and exams. My experience was the writing the students submitted was mostly quite poor, error ridden and full of silly cliche's, so it took me so long to mark them all properly that in the end I gave up and just estimated what the mark should be by skimming over them all.