Take the plunge - become an ESL teacher in China.

I was in a rut, bored, suffering from empty nest syndrome, getting close to retirement age and was in need of ‘an adventure’.  To have a ‘real’ adventure my husband and I decided to go to China and teach English.

This was totally out of character for us, we loved to travel, but even so, going to a country like China, which was basically an unknown, was seen as something rather radical. Nevertheless, we researched the possibilities and decided we would go.

We had no teaching experience or qualifications. So we attended a local TESOL college, studied for the next three months, passed our exams and were awarded our qualifications. This gave us access to work in thousands of schools and universities in China.

ESL stands for English as a Second Language. Another acronym is TESOL, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Even though our English was very good, we knew it was going to be a totally new ball game for us.

Both my husband and I were trained public speakers, confident, had raised five children, were well read and had an excellent general knowledge base. This, along with the training and teaching manuals we received proved to be adequate resources.

To find a suitable job, we searched the internet. There are many sites these days where recruiting agents advertise teaching jobs in China. But when we did this, in 2005, it was more or less up to us to find the jobs.  However one of the websites was huge, with job boards for all the different Asian countries and we found thousands of teaching jobs advertised. Where to go was the next problem, after all, most of the names meant nothing to us; we didn't even know where these places were.

Eventually we settled on Longyan university in Fujian Province, where the weather seemed similar to our home town, and the city was not too big. We were a bit worried about getting lost in a huge city, when we couldn't speak a word of Chinese and we didn't know how much English would be spoken there.

We planned everything very carefully. We packed what we thought we might need, and with our heads full of dreams and ideas for teaching we had a goodbye party and took the jet stream to China. We planned to have four days holiday first, to get our heads around being in such a new environment.

Was it a good idea? It was a fabulous idea. Where there problems? Of course! The first major problem reared its ugly head as we left the airport having just touched down. Being super organised I had printed off the hotel’s address in Chinese. We were horrified to find that none of the taxi drivers could read Chinese! If they couldn't read Chinese there wasn't much hope of finding English speaking people. After a long, frustrating and temper raising experience with several taxi drivers, a security officer, and a help desk lady that spoke almost no English, we made it to our hotel, only to find out I had printed all the instructions in Japanese! What an idiot!

Staff from our new university collected us after our four day holiday, and took us to our new home. It was about two hours from the coast, way up in the mountains. We had to go through endless tunnels on the road. Hot, tired, and with a monumental headache I arrived at the campus.

Students were delegated to drag our bags up the six flights of stairs to our apartment. There were no elevators here, and we got very fit going up and down those stairs several times a day. We puffed up after them to find ourselves in a three bed-roomed apartment with a view over the city to the mountains.

We were left to unpack and rest, with instructions that we were to meet the other teachers at the school gate at 6pm and they would take us out to dinner.

We sat on the bed, my husband and I, and grinned at each other like school kids let out for the holidays.

‘Well, we came for an adventure, we’re going to get it,’ my husband said.

He was right. That year became a life changing experience, for us, and for the wonderful students we taught.

If you’re bored, in a rut, can free yourself for a year or so, why don’t you consider taking the plunge too? Teach English in China. It will be one of the most rewarding and exciting things you could do.

If you would like to read more about this topic and our experiences, go to www.englishstoriesforfun.com

Do I need to speak Chinese to go to China as a teacher?

No you don't.   When you go to a school as an ESL teacher, there will be other English teachers, and even if they are not foreigners they will be Chinese English teachers with good spoken English.  So you will have some others you can communicate with.  They will help you out with translators if necessary.  Many of the older students will be happy to act as interpreters.  We made many good friends of university students, they visited us in our apartment, and helped us endlessly with shopping etc.  They consider it an honour to help out.


It will be much easier if you can say a few basic words.  Also learn how to count to at least 100.  You will need this for shopping.  You are probably better to get a good phrase book, and a good Chinese English dictionary.  If you buy a dictionary make sure it has the Chinese characters as well as the Pinyin, the word written in English, plus the English word.  


Many schools provide lessons in Mandarin for teachers, and others will be happy to teach you the basics.  But it is a very difficult language to learn.  After a while you will gain confidence and be able to do many things on your own, getting buses and taxis, shopping etc.  For complicated things like banking or government offices take a translator, it will be much easier.


On the whole though, I found that after a while I got very confident, and with very basic Chinese language skills and lots of sign and body language I did very well.

Getting your first teaching job.

There are many different ways to get your first job.  Once you have been there for six or twelve months, you will be aware of the system, but until then it can be a bit of a minefield.

If you Google 'teaching ESL in China', you will come up with dozens of sites to choose from.  One of the most widely used is Dave Sperlings site.  He has jobs for all over the world and it is kept right up to date.  He also has a special job board just for China.  There are jobs advertised for every kind of teacher from kindergarten to top universities.

The first thing you need to decide is what age do you want to teach?  If you love kids, then go for the younger ones.  If you are a bit past young ones, then go for high schools with students aged 15 to 18 or universities.  You  will know what is best for you.  Once you have decided this, then look for jobs within your preferred aged.  If  you have been a teacher in your home country, you know what you want.  If not, then be aware that the younger children are usually in what by western standards are large classes, 40 to 60 children, and many of them have become very spoiled.  Chinese people are often noisy when they are relaxed, and Chinese children are very noisy in break times, so be prepared for that.

There are four main ways to get your job.

1.   Apply to a school through a link on a website.  You will deal directly with the school and eventually sign a contract between the two parties. The person you deal with will probably  have pretty good English.   I will talk about contracts later.

2.  Apply through an agent.  You may get a reply to a query from an agent but you won't know this.  There are many independent agents out there.  They make their money by saving the school the hassle of dealing directly with the teacher.  They will send you the contract and act as a middle man between both parties.  For their efforts, the school will pay them, generally equal to one months pay for the teacher they find.  So if your job will pay you 6,000 RMB that's what the agent will get.  It's very good money for them, often for very little work.  However, although there are some good agents out there, there are some real crooks too.  Avoid an agent by the name of Frank  Zhang from Shanghai.   Be very aware that what the agent offers you, may not be what you actually get at the school.  My advice is, once you are settled on a school, ask for the email address of one or two foreign teachers who work at that school.  Email them and ask for their opinion of the school.  If everything is above board, they will oblige.  If not, they will beat about the bush.  In that case, think carefully.

3.  You may know someone who is already teaching there, and they can recommend a school.  Assuming you trust your contact, then this can be fairly fail safe.  Even so, study the contract carefully.

4.  If you are just gaining your TESOL qualifications now, your school will possibly have contacts with schools they recommend.  This is also a pretty safe bet.  But they may be limited to the schools or cities you could choose from.

Also keep in mind that the Chinese mind set is not to think too far ahead.  Forward planning is not big.  If the Director of  Studies you are dealing with is not Chinese they are usually better organised.  But the Chinese bosses often leave things to the last minute.  If you need to do something next week, then we will think about it next week.  So, sometimes they advertise for teachers, starting yesterday.  Don't fret over it, this is one of the things you need to adjust to.  If you need the school to get you a visa by the 30th, you'll probably get it on the 29th or 30th. 

When you first start looking for a job you will be totally bamboozled by the possibilities.  In the end, to get my first job, I decided what age group I wanted to teach and approximately what part of the country, then I applied for many jobs.  I got tons of replies, saying, yes we want you, come here, come now, we love you, blah blah blah.  To cut the hassle down, I just started asking for them to send me a contract to look over.  I would email a school, get a reply and immediately ask for a contract.  Once I had seen the contracts I could sort out those obviously unsuitable, and concentrate on 2 or 3 that really appealed, and worked from there.

I am not an agent, but I do have a few contacts.  If you want some help, just ask.

Posted by China Chris.