Job Discussion Forums

[meenakshidc]

Hi,
Does anyone out there know of any non-native speaker of English who has actually got a teaching job in China? I've been sending out applications for over two months with hardly any response.

I have over 20 years of experience as an English teacher in Bombay, a post grad. degree in Eng. Lit., but no formal ESL/EFL qualifications. I'm very keen to teach for at least one term in China as I'm studying Mandarin. Please let me have some first hand experiences, so I'll know whether to give up or keep trying!

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[senorfay]

There are a lot of non-native speakers here in Harbin teaching English. A lot of Filipinos, Russians, some Pakistanis, Nepalese, Cameroon, it may not be as easy for you to find a job as an American or Briton, but I don't think youshould have too much trouble.

[HunanForeignGuy]

Dear Friend,

I worked at a university that had Polish teachers, Spanish teachers, Indian teachers, Bengali teachers, American teachers, Canadian teachers, etc., etc.

As the previous poster wrote, it may be more difficult but it is far, far from impossible. It is however becoming more difficult -- at least theoretically -- in some provinces but again I have seen this "more difficult" tossed out whenever there is an urgent need.

Your background is quite good, I believe, and perhaps you should be advertising on various free sites, such as this one, and others. Additionally, this is a kind of "inter regnum" season here at the moment and it is not the peak hiring season for spring. A huge rush-through-the-door will occur in late February / early March.

All the best,

HFG

[7969]

some sound advice here. just send your resume to as many addresses as possible in one blanket email. then wait and see what happens. chintefl.com is a good place to go to get working email addresses of schools that you can contact directly.

[lostinasia]

I work on a daily basis with Indian, Nepalese, Pakistani, and other teachers and students ... and the Chinese students and I cannot understand a word out of their mouths when they speak English. The university hired a few on a part-time basis to teach English - quite illegally - and they were removed from their teaching duties in less than 2 hours. That's not to say some out there can speak English properly and clearly.

[HunanForeignGuy]

[lostinasia]

Yea, yea, whatever. You missed the point entirely.

There are hardly any American accents that make their spoken English entirely unintelligible.

"Brilliant and highly qualified" says nearly nothing of their accent.

The Scottish and Irish are also people I would put in the category of "should not teach English." <---- generally speaking

And I have a physician co-worker from New Dehli that lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years that I refuse to allow to see my patients back home because he only confuses them with his English - to the point of dangerous.

The point being - case by case.

[AussieGuyInChina]

A couple of years, ago a government college in GUANGZHOU told a Pakistan man with formal teaching qualifications, that the provincial Foreign Experts Bureau declined his F.E.C. renewal because he was not a native speaker of English. The man promptly found a new position in Guangxi where he was issued a F.E.C. & F.R.P..

Perhaps the O.P. should steer clear of Guangzhou (bot not necessarily all of Guangdong) and maybe also Beijing & Shanghai.

[7969]

regardless of where someone comes from, there are "difficult to understand" native speakers from loads of countries. the people in china doing the hiring dont seem to care about it, the students on the other hand, generally do, since they're the ones that have to listen to the teacher day in and day out.

one other point, there are lots of people teaching in china with passports from english speaking countries, who are not native speakers. easy to fool the people doing the hiring based on that alone.

meenakshidc would probably get hired at the university where i work.

[HunanForeignGuy]

[eslstudies]

[MGreen]

If you've got an MA in English Lit, I would push that angle rather than the standard of TEFL. In the Foreign Lang and Lit Department at my university, there are several NNS (India, Ukraine, Germany...) teaching American Lit, British Lit, poetry etc. In March, we have a visiting literature professor coming in from Korea.

[Leon Purvis]

I worked with a couple of Cameroonians. (sp?)

Everyone had problems understanding them, but they're still at their public uni jobs.

Re: unintelligible American accents and dialects. Almost any rural area in the south will be home to the verbally challenged. The Appalachian accent is pretty rough and gets rougher as one moves northeastward.

I had a hoot with one of my classes on the first day.

I said:

"Ha thair. Haire yew? Watchoo bin upta?"

The panicked looks were hilarious.

My favorite southern accent, though, is the Cajun-English accent. Native speakers of French have great difficulty with the Cajun dialect because it's basically a mix of 17th and 18th century French, Spanish and modern English.

But back to the OP's question. If you try hard enough, you'll land something somewhere.

[Katja84]

I wonder how many of the people from the countries you mentioned are actually native speakers of English - Cameroon has a large minority who speak English as their native language, as does India. Their accent may be non-standard in the same sense as the Scottish pronunciation is, but I'm not sure all of them deserve to be put in the category of "non-native speakers".

What are salaries like for non-native speakers? I've heard that some universities offer lower salaries for non-native speakers, but does anyone know by how much and whether this is usually decided on the basis of the applicant's experience (e.g. whether they've lived in English-speaking countries) or whether it's a lower standard rate for all non-native speakers?

[7969]