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Someone emailed me asking advice on teaching in China, and I wrote this in response, I think it’s pretty good advice.
If you wan to teach in China there are a lot of options. First you need to decide what grade level you want to teach, you can choose from elementary school to teaching executives at a corporation.
Then you have to decide if you want to teach in a private school or a public one. You can get more money if you teach in a private school, but you will be teaching more hours than at a public one. I have also heard several horror stories of private schools failing to get visa’s for thier teachers and the teachers having to leave at the last minute. I would say public schools are safer and easier to be at than private ones. (I see your email address is at Macau, so maybe you know something about how china works, so you would know what to look out for.)
Then you would have to decide, where you wanted to study. To me Henan definitly seems like the “heartland” of China. What people talk about when they say, “the real china”. The people here are very nice, but I havn’t travelled enough to point out anything besides obvious differences between places, (people in Beijing are more sophisticated, etc.) I would have liked to be around some more natural beauty, mountains or the ocean or something like that.
Another thing, you need to decide is how large a city you want to go to. A larger city will have more foriengers, more people who speak english and more western conviences. Xin Xiang is not really that small, 700,00 in the county, but the city has the feel of a large town. It is easy to get around by bike, and you tend to bump into people you know. It is rather dirty, but the people are very nice and treat you like a celebraty sometime. This is another thing you should consider, In a small city, you will be stared at all the time and people will yell hello at you, this will happen much les in a larger city.
As far as my teaching conditions… they are allright. I dislike my books. One of them I never use. For half my class they never gave me a book and just told me to tell the students about “american culture,” by the end of semester I was running out of ideas. There is a room with a fairly sophistcated listening set up, where we can watch VCDs. I havn’t seen any OHPs.
The only qaulifications you need are a degree. Preferably a bachelours, but I met a 19 yr old teaching here with a two year teaching degree.
I didn’t really follow my advice at all when I came here. I just signed up with a program and went where they sent me. My only complait is that I don’t get enough money, but that is my fault for not shopping around. It is very nice to have an outside orginization, because if the school tries to pull a fast one on you, the people back in the states can threaten to blacklist the school.
I like Xin Xiang because it is easy to make friends here, there is a good amount of foriegners, (not to many and not to few) and I can learn chinese for free here. If you want any information about specific schools I can give it to you, otherwise you can check out http://www.eslcafe.com./ It has a bunch of stuff too. They will try to convince you that you need to pay to take a four week course to learn how to be a teacher, but i don’t buy that.