Job Discussion Forums

timbits · Joined: 03 Jul 2003 Posts: 7

Hi there. I'm a 34 yr. old Canadian and a bit newer to this website. I have some volunteer experience teaching English to Chinese and Vietnamese students, several years of music-teaching experience and close to it but no BA as of yet.

Will be getting my CELTA next month and I've been receiving job offers in the meantime.

I've gotten a handful of offers from China. One in "Taiyuan" from a K12 school that sounds like a private school where I'd be teaching 6-7 yr. olds. Another in the very small Russian-border town of Suifenhe that sounds ok and a place I could test my Russian-speaking skills. And the last one in Xiaoshan with EF where it sounds like a challenging job.

Anybody with experience in these places would be GREAT TO HEAR from!!? Also, I've heard lots about EF and other big chains and the concensus seems to be to stay away from them. I'm leaning towards the smaller schools but a few of them seem to be much less ORGANIZED and CLEAR than the bigger chains are re: what they offer you.

Also, curious about one of the Mandarin tones. The one that starts up, goes down and then goes back up. Is this tone hard to decipher when listening to it or are my ears just not trained yet? I've done a bit of language-learning over the ole 'net' and am perhaps understandably having a difficult time with Mandarin. Hey, how long for an average person to learn all the Mandarin characters. Takes years for Chinese kids to master it from what I hear, even with all their hours of practice.

All the best! Timbits

MyTurnNow · Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 860 Location: Outer Shanghai

Hi timbits, and welcome...

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

ditto on the tones. Like all languages, the sound of one unit (morpheme, whatever) depends on the previous and or next sound. Tones are good to get right, but don't kill yourself over it. It's getting the right group of words together that is important.

For instance if you say yao bu yao, the "bu" should change to the second tone. But it doesn't matter much if you say the 4th, because the yao...yao gives the listener the clue what the word in the middle is. IMHO, you'll start picking up the words when you know more of the word groupings, if that makes any sense.

I personally still can't identify the tones the way you describe. And guess what! Neither can the Chinese. Seriously. Often when I was studying with a student or teacher, there would be argument over which tone it was. They would often be wrong. Don't sweat the tones

MartinK · Joined: 01 Mar 2003 Posts: 344

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

Taiyuan is a coalpit, the air full of acrid smoke summer and winter, one of the most seriously polluted Chinese towns.
Suifenhe? I would think thrice about moving so far out into the wilderness. I do not know how many Russians you will see there, most travellers will be Chinese going to Vladivostok.
Hope your room is well insulated and you get an electric heater - you will be next to Siberia.
The same as Canada's North! Except that Chinese are very frugal when it comes to spending money on insulation or energy for heating!
Don't know that Xiaoshan place.

MyTurnNow · Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 860 Location: Outer Shanghai

I very strongly disagree on the tones!
If you can learn to replicate all the sounds by rote then I suppose you don't need to "sweat the tones", but working with tones must be much easier for most of us. I've known people who believed that the tones could be totally ignored and concentrated solely on vocabulary; they were almost impossible for anyone to understand- foreign or local. The tones are important but really not as hard as people make them out to be.

Martin, you may be right on the characters. The number I hear as "needed to read a newspaper" seems to vary wildly but 5000 seems to be the number I hear most. I'm blissfully illiterate so I can't tell you...I can only pass on what I've heard.