Teaching in China

If you have been teaching ESL in China for a while then at some point I’m willing to guess that you’ve been asked, or even required to teach material to students that was way over their heads. If you’re in this kind of position I have a useful tip for you.

Maybe you’re preparing students to take the TOEFL test way before they’re ready or maybe your teaching at a training center that has made some outrageous guarantees about students’ English proficiency at the end of their program. In either case, my suggestion is to concentrate on teaching the students vocabulary. Besides being a key factor in getting a higher score on the TOEFL, I believe vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of learning to speak a language.
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www.teachinginchina.net is a great resource for any teacher thinking of taking the long journey to China in hopes of teaching English. This site focuses on providing useful information to teachers who have never taught ESL in China and/or have never traveled to China before. They operate under the slogan “What you should know before you teach in China.”

The most useful pre-departure information is under the “Precautions” and “What To Ask” sections. These pages give a list of important considerations that foreigners going to China to teach for the first time might not otherwise not think of. All the detailed questions under the “What to Ask” section are quite important and very comprehensive. These are all important things to ask.
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ESL Employment
“The ESL/EFL Job and Employment Resource Site” is an excellent source of information for ESL teachers. The site not only provides all the latest news and updates for teachers to stay informed, but also a vast and comprehensive inventory of ESL job listings from around the world. Their China job listings are among their more comprehensive. The other great thing about the site is their email service. Anytime there is a job opening matching your preferences they will send you an email reminder. That way you can stay current and snipe good jobs as they appear.
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Listening is an activity not a passive action. It is a tiring experience listening to someone talk for an hour, especially if the person talking is not using your native tongue. The reason for this is because your brain is supplying the missing information, or words you miss along the way. When native English speakers talk with each other they may only hear 50% of the words spoken. The rest of the information is supplied by what we know of intonation, rhythm, and culture.
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Many teachers may find that getting straight answers from a school regarding exact vacation dates is difficult. So why can’t they just get organized and tell the teachers? The quick answer to this question is that they really don’t know when the vacation will start. The Chinese government will announce when the spring festival national holiday will fall every year a few months before it arrives. After this is known then the education council in your area needs to decide what days the schools will be free. After that happens the school you work at might have their own ideas, so the exact vacation dates might need to be adjusted yet again.
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Most standard ESL teaching contracts in China offer between a week and a month of vacation time over the winter break (January/February depending on when spring festival falls). So what do you do during this break? Some will go home, some will teach an ESL winter camp, and some will go traveling.

Traveling on or around Spring Festival can be a nightmare in China! With 1.3 billion people all on vacation at the same time you can imagine the chaos that ensues. I have a few travel tips taken from my own experience as well as the experience of foreigners around me.
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Starting a training center? Developing a new teaching method? The first thing to keep in mind is that you’re always operating under the heavy radar of the Chinese government. I’ve known a number of excellent teachers with new, great ideas for ESL training in China who “just couldn’t take it” and ended up heading to a different country or back home.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how innovative your new methods are. In the end, if the person next to you, with no experience, and no care for students drinks bai jiu with a school principal three nights a week then he will end up with a new contract or the necessary funding for his training center.
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If you’ve been in China for any amount of time then you probably know well enough to bargain for just about everything. This certainly does not exclude a teaching contract.
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The semester is winding down and depending on where you’re teaching you might only have a month left. Some people are going home for the holidays but many either can’t afford it or simply don’t want to. If you’re in the latter group then are a few options available to you over your vacation. You can always travel, however, if travel doesn’t appeal to you and you don’t mind teaching over the break then you might want to seek out a winter ESL camp. It’s a great opportunity to make extra money, especially if you’re on a contract that doesn’t pay you over the vacation. If you’re thinking of finding a job at a winter language camp there are a few things you should consider.
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This can be the most difficult question when dealing with Chinese students. For years they’ve been taught to simply memorize information and regurgitate that information on a test. There is very little room for independent thought or vivid imagination in the Chinese education system.
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