I'm a fairly new teacher in my second year, and I have moved to China to teach first grade English. I love my school and my job and am loving ESL, it's always been in the back of my mind that I'd specialize this way and so I'm very happy for the opportunity to do so.

One of the things that I'd be interested to hear others opinions about is immersion classrooms. In teachers college, we learned that immersion classrooms are quite harmful for ESL students, and that "Speak English" is quite racist in the U.S. context. But this is also in the context of draconian "English Only" school laws passed by ballot referendum that essentially expected kids fresh off the boat to just soak up the meaning of complex things through osmosis without real scaffolding or support.

In China, the expectation is that it's English only in English class, and the Chinese English teachers at my school say they enforce this policy, although I'm sure they use Chinese here and there . My Chinese is quite limited but I do occasionally use a phrase here or there when it will communicate an expectation without me having to take the time to sit down and play charades to get them to sit right.

To me this seems much less harmful if not harmless, as we are in China, and there isn't really the same context to make this practice harmful to the students. I'm not sure if it's terribly effective, although our phonics lessons have gotten them quite good at reading so far so evidently it's doing something.

Curious to hear others thoughts.

Hi all,

A couple of times, I've ended up explaining syntax trees to my advanced (C1, C1+ or C2) students.
This has typically gone down quite well, as it allows you to recontextualise and understand a bunch of other grammar, rather than just follow the rules.
This has often been a real "lightbulb" moment for some of the more theoretically interested students.

I mostly teach in higher education, where the aim is to take students from B2 (sometimes B2-) up to C1 or above over the course of 2-3 years of study. I'm considering adding a session on general principles of grammar, where we'll talk about parts of speech and syntax trees, to my BE1 courses.

Has anyone else used syntax trees in their teaching?
If there are any studies on this, I'd be especially interested in reading those.

Have my TEFL and looking for job in Asia or South America. I heard I can sign up with agencies to help get a job for free. Anyone know of legit agencies that don’t charge or how to find them?

I have no experience teaching English, but I have a degree in psychology, 4+ years or teaching guitar / piano / composing and I speak 3 languages (English, Spanish and German). I want to teach serious adults and not babysit. I also would love to immerse myself in topics such as cultural sensitivity with businessman and professional adults. By having no english teaching experience, am I stuck having to do the low-end, lots of hours and no free time jobs? Any tips would be great, thank you guys

Currently, I'm on a career qualification course that I am performing awfully in.

The whole thing has left me feeling pretty hopeless. When the course ends in January/February, I am now considering doing a CELTA course and moving abroad to teach English while planning my next steps. The alternative is working part-time for my old company while living with my parents, so I'll probably do this.

If I complete a 1-month CELTA course by the end of February or March, when am I likely to get a job? I was hoping to get one pretty quickly, just so that I don't spend ages living with my parents at 25 while working part-time for a company I was once desperate to leave, but I do not know if that is realistic. Europe would be ideal, but I only have a British passport, which could make that problematic.

I hope to write features articles while doing this so that I can build up my experience as a journalist, so it would be a bad idea to go somewhere with a lot of laws against journalists. Still, I don't think that I can afford to be too picky.

I have a first-class honours bachelor's degree in English from an impressive-sounding university, and I have two years of tutoring and educational content writing experience, so those two things could possibly give me an advantage and speed things up. However, I also have some disadvantages: as I stated, I only have a British passport; I also don't speak any languages other than English.

I've read into TEFL/CELTA enough to understand the process, but I don't know enough. That's why I'm asking you guys.

Hi, I am looking for a TEFL job in Taiwan and was wondering if anyone had any experience or advice? What type of schools or jobs would you recommend to apply for and pros/cons? I have applied for a few jobs already online but I haven’t received many responses yet. I can’t seem to find a lot of job ads either so I am not sure if schools are hiring this time of year. I am a native English speaker and have several years of TEFL teaching experience elsewhere but I am not ethnically white. Would this hinder my chances of being hired? I know in some schools or countries it would be an issue. Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated!

Hi everyone! I'm an English teacher trainee, and I'm exploring a potential dissertation topic. I'd love to hear your opinions and experiences, as well as any suggestions you might have about my topic.

How do you manage mixed-ability classes when students have to prepare for a high-stakes national exam at the end of secondary school, while you also have a syllabus to finish?

For example, when some students understand the lesson easily while others struggle with the basics, how do you balance everyone's needs and keep up with the syllabus?

Does the pressure to prepare students for this exam affect the way you teach? Do you sometimes have to prioritise exam preparation over giving students individual support or adapting activities to different levels?

I'd love to hear about your experiences, the challenges you face, and how you deal with them. I'm also open to any opinions or suggestions on whether this would be a good dissertation topic and how I could narrow it down or approach it differently.

Thank you!

For TEFL teachers from the US teaching abroad: Who do you guys use to do your taxes? Or do you do them yourselves? I saw H&R Block does like expat taxes, is that what I should be looking at? How much does it cost you every year? Thank you

*China!!

I was just offered a job 24-25 k to teach at a decent University, free housing, tier 3 city.

Most of these University jobs I believe require 10-12 hours, my job would be 20 hours teaching plus 2 hours office hours. For one semester it is entirely oral English, the following semester it is building essay writing skills etc. I have lots of experience at both.

I also have to submit "paperwork" inc teaching plans etc... I would get 150 students to look after, 30 students per class.

Anybody with University teaching experience in China is this too many hours/ class size too big or is it manageable? (The salary is high because I have a PhD / 8 years higher education lecturing in UK, but that was in a subject). Tia.

NB I'm not looking for those working in schools to jump on me about manageability for 20 hrs lol, solidarity to you -- and I could never do that job -- this is a different context / my energy is very low hence looking for University teaching

I recently had a phone call about an opportunity to teach in Thailand or China, which is something I’ve been trying really hard to make happen. However, they mentioned an upfront deposit of either $800 or $120, which made me a little skeptical. I’m not sure if anyone here has experience with these types of programs, but I’m new to this community and have been trying to find real opportunities to teach abroad without falling victim to a scam. I’d really appreciate any advice or insight from people who have been through this process!

I'm in my late 20s, worked in Shenzhen, China doing TEFL jobs for the last 7 years. I've been working for an agency for the last 3 years which placed me in a primary school. They let me and a few local teachers go and my agency wanted to place me in another school. I decided not to, so they didn't renew my visa/contract and I decided to come back to the UK for a bit of a break from China.

I came back to the UK in July thinking I'd be here for a month or two, but I forgot I would need a new non-criminal background check. The ACRO process took over a month due to delays and it was late September by the time I received the certificate. Getting it apostilled took another 2 weeks.

I've been applying for jobs in Shenzhen for 2 weeks (only looking for Shenzhen due to personal reasons), and have added like 12 recruiters on Wechat and they've gone nowhere.

I'm a brown British guy which obviously doesn't help, but I was hoping to have found something by now. Maybe my appearance in my self-intro video isn't great - my hair's gotten longer and lighting makes my eyebags show more and honestly I hate recording these, feels like just a test to see if you're white.

Is it harder to find a job now or is it just the timing?

I've been teaching for 4 years in a provincial city in Northern Vietnam, and things have been getting bad over the last 12 months. We used to have lots of classes in public schools, as well as evening work at English centers. You could easily get 100 well paid hours.

The headache started in September last year when the public school program was suspended. At first, the city was overcrowded with desperate teachers but many left so eventually more hours became available to those who decided to stay.

Starting this September things have gotten worse. With many stranded teachers in Hanoi, my boss decided to hire more teachers. We used to be 3 but now he's hired 2 more people and our weekly number of hours decreased as a consequence of that.

Am I the only one who's facing this problem in Northern Vietnam?

Hi, all,

I was looking to see what the job market in Taiwan is like for someone (US citizen in my case) who just got a Spanish master's in Global Higher Education. My job opportunities in Europe have fallen through, and I was in Taiwan before at a buxiban (not looking to go back to that).

I would like to work in something like advising, study abroad, and marketing/admissions but would also be open to international school teaching or private sessions with students.

I'd also want to know what area of the island to look for jobs in when I arrive. I've heard that Taipei would be my best bet given the economy there versus what I saw in Kaohsiung when I didn't have a master's.

Thank you!

Hi!
I like to use actual literature in my classes a lot - both fiction, non-fiction, articles and longer texts, etc.

I've graded a few of them myself, but it's very time-consuming.
Is there a database somewhere online for downloading already graded texts that could become useful in the classroom?

I want to introduce my students to texts that could spark some interest outside of the classroom. I have used an essay by William Burroughs and a story by Borges, among others. I'm thinking of introducing texts by Shoshana Zuboff as well.

In other words, I want to use adapted literature by real-life authors, instead of materials made specifically for textbooks.

I'm already familiar with Penguin graded readers books.

Thanks and all the best!

I am getting a bachelors at SNHU, and I am not 100% sure if I qualify. I did search this question, but it was answered several years ago and I’m not sure if that still remains to be the case.

Thanks!

Well .. the context is I’m currently in China, Hubei province and my salary is 14,000 rmb after tax. So far I’ve not had the full pay because I came mid August. Then for this month 2000 rmb was deducted because 1000 for rent deposit and 1000 as I took a bit of money in advance. My next full pay should be November. I don’t pay rent. But my winter is unpaid .. apparently I should be getting paid for the national holidays but as the schools closed no pay. I just want to know if anyone else has accepted such an offer or am I the only idiot ??

I had my first day today at the kindergarten I work for. I have no experience teaching kids this age, much less kids who have no comprehension of English. I’m also starting to think my personality isn’t suited for kindergarten as I’m more reserved, but wanted to put that factor aside and just give this a try. I had my first lesson today, and I feel like it was horrible. It was boring, and the kids didn’t willingly interact with me unless their Chinese teacher told them to, because they don’t know me (which I understand at that age). I’m sure many people have been in my position, so can you please share some advice? Or game ideas? Seriously! anything would help me right now.

I'm desperate to move. I'm excited and keen. I can't wait to leave.

But VUS and ILA have not responded to my application - and ila strives to get in touch within two weeks... It's been a month now.....

I'm south African. With online English teaching experience and corporate experience. I thought it would be slightly faster. Is there a reason for this? Should I be worried?

Do you think it's possible to get a contract within a month? Is there a better way to apply other than on their websites?

I would love to be in Vietnam in Jan

I recently got denied from SINE due to my accent. I am from the Caribbean but I do hold a British passport and speak standard English.

I am not that disappointed but I do feel weary that this may be a bigger hurdle than I thought to jump over.

Has anyone faced this problem before? Should I try a different country? Are there other agencies? (SINE said to try others). I do have an MA Education degree, and I’m doing a level 5 TEFL. Though I do not have teaching experience. I’ve spent the last five years being a supervisor, training and leading new staff. Which made me interested in teaching.

Any advice would help. Thank you!

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I’m looking at options for teaching English abroad. I have a Bachelor of Teaching and a Masters of Education (Management and Leadership). For the last 4.5 years I’ve been teaching casually at a private tertiary business school.

So, not English language teaching but a variety of teaching experience. I’m looking at getting a TEFL certificate as my partner and I are looking to travel in the next few years (mainly Southeast Asia). My thought is to give the TEFL a go, and if I like it, maybe upgrade to a CELTA later on down the track if I need it. I’m also looking at the TEFL.org 120 hour online course.

People with more experience than me in this - is this a good idea to do? Is TEFL.org reputable?

I am in a unique position where I was introduced by a friend to a family who owns kindergartens and wants to hire a foreigner teacher. With a degree and TESOL, I have legally worked in Taiwan as an after-school English teacher for almost a decade. I have more experience with 8/9 year olds, but I have also taught 5/6 year olds. I prefer teaching kids over adults, like to sing and make kids laugh, and love repetition... so I think I can do it.

The thing is they are completely new to this and don't know what's standard, and don't really know what they want. They keep asking me what I want. At a friend's suggestion, I asked for $25,000 since it gives me more room to negotiate. They also don't have a curriculum like my former school and basically asked me to come up with whatever I wanted to teach. They want me to work 3x a week full time and on the weekends with older kids. I said I couldn't do weekend mornings and they were cool with that. But I am struggling to figure out what the actual weekly schedule and workload should look like.

I want to make them happy, while also not underselling myself.

I know everyone is busy so I appreciate any advice, experience, and perspective.

I'm hoping to learn more about a realistic salary expectations, benefits to insist on, reasonable office and teaching hours, how to handle curriculum freedom, and what you wished you had negotiated before signing.

I want to be fair to them while also making sure I'm not setting a precedent that hurts future teachers. If all goes well with me, they will probably be more inclined to hire foreigners for their other kindys.

This week I will do a demo and hopefully discuss the contract.

Thank you in advance!​

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I'm currently doing a MA in education, I'm in the UK so the course finishes in august, I applied for a job last year and was told that I couldn't be accepted until the next interview cycle as I didn't have my degree on time. Now I've gotten my degree, I've been offered a job in Japan as an ALT in December.

I currently have a CELTA, a year as a teaching assistant, a BA in Japanese, TESOL and Linguistics and I taught as a TESOL teacher for a semester in Japan when I spent a year there as an exchange student and my Japanese is halfway between N4 and N3.

My future goal is to work in a university, I'm just not sure if education should be my focus now or if I should start my career now and do a MA in Japan where university is usually cheaper. I've not paid the course fees yet so I'm not too far in now.