Teaching in China
I'm teaching in Xi'an, China at the moment! Have been here since September 2009 and was part of one of the weekend TEFLs in London with you in April 2009 I think.
I'm working at a polytechnical university at the moment, in an English Major department as an oral teacher. The actual teaching part is GREAT and so much fun but obviously the rest that goes with it is a little less so!! I'm teaching a wide range of courses over the year from British history to Debating, so the variety keeps me busy. The TEFL course (20 hours) did help me a lot to start with in terms of getting my head around the lesson planning and manoeuvring the classroom so I'm glad I did it. Wished I did a longer course though because when I arrived I still felt like a bit of a headless chicken! In fact, that feeling rarely goes away completely lol
The students in China are SO very polite and respectful - you hardly have to worry about crowd control like in Europe and the students love to talk to foreigners and just practice English whenever they can with us. If you look blonde hair-blue eyed though I would say prepared to get mobbed by students at English Corners and also stared at a lot on the streets!!! Chinese people are very interested in foreigners because a lot of them (especially in Western China) have never seen on before. I, on the other hand, escape from this as am British Chinese! Students are still keen to talk to me though because they are often shocked that someone Chinese could have a native English accent! Anyways, to sum up I can't say that Xi'an is particularly a sunshine state to get away from the English weather but I'm still enjoying this new adventure and my stay in China :)
Thanks for getting me started!
Cory Lam
