The ad-hoc grassroots organization, China Foreign Teacher's Union, recently announced they had obtained a secretive ESL teachers blacklist used by various schools throughout China to keep tabs on teachers who become "problematic".
The list, sent to the group anonymously and entirely in Chinese, "contains the names of 796 teachers of which 673 are foreigners. 82% of the foreign teachers listed working in the Beijin…
A few weeks ago I finished my first academic year of teaching Oral English at a university in the Middle Kingdom. There've been ups and downs, yadda, yadda, but it's been, overall, good. Even the work has been okay. Here's a short piece I wrote back in March about my favourite lesson.
This week, in the often frustrating battle to make my students speak English, I’ve been doing a speed dating exercise with my class…
I'm a week away from finishing my first academic year as what can loosely be described as a university teacher in China. Someone told me that I should write some kind of retrospective/memoir, but that sounded like far too much work. I mean, I'm on holiday in a week. I've begun the wind-down and I'm feeling far too lazy for any actual writing. So, in lieu of me working, here are a few of my students' odd comments and …
I'm betting most of us haven't thought twice about what would happen if we shuffled off our mortal coil while living as laowai here in China. Unfortunately, tragedy happens here as anywhere, and this is the situation that David Woolman's family is now forced into dealing with -- from thousands of kilometres away.
The 23-year-old from Nevada was teaching English in China up until his death about two weeks ago. None…
I've given some thought to doing an MA in TESOL. After all, I taught it in China, liked it, so why not earn 5,000 RMB a month instead of a mere 4800?
All I need is a golden ticket.
Luckily, I found one, via a Google ad on a message board. Upon seeing the heading, Master's in TESOL, I immediately clicked through to find a big banner full of jolly students on a pristine campus that has clearly gone beyond the cal…
I'm a huge bibliophile. When I moved to China in 2005, half my luggage weight allotment went to books. I knew that, living in Hainan, I probably wouldn't have access to the kind of foreign language (i.e. English) bookstores you can find in Beijing or Shanghai. So I brought my own. Of course I could never bring enough. Not even enough for the first year that we had committed to, let alone the nearly seven total that w…
I've taught English to two-year-olds in split bottom pants. The trick there is not letting them sit on your lap for storytime.
I've taught English to bartenders and asked them to repeat after me. Bud...Wise...Er...
I've taught businessmen and doctors, flight attendants and fry cooks.
I've taught Little Emperors in large classes, I've taught university students and training school students and done English Co…
I caught this video on Hao Hao Report. Basically, Vahram Diehla is a 23-year-old American who is pleading for some advice on how to quickly raise some money to get the hell out of China.
According to his blog he's working up in Dalian as an English teacher, but the ESL racket has lost its luster and a woman on the other side of the ocean is pulling at his heart strings.
***I WILL DANCE AND SING ON CAMERA FO…
Keith, already suspicious of John, is doubly suspicious now that John missed their dinner appointment. On a rainy Friday, he wonders about John's motives for being in China, as he implements a fresh idea into the classroom: a poetry exercise, where the students go outside, and use English to write a poem about what they see.
Keith started class. He did Tongue Twisters. He had arranged them in such a manner tha…
Our hero is John, who is wandering through life without purpose. This wandering led him to a humanities degree, then to unemployment, and finally, to the great refuge of unemployed humanities majors: ESL in China.
Though Wuhan later becomes an existential swamp for John, here at the beginning, everything is new and exciting.
This is John's first day of teaching, where the incumbent dancing laowai, Keith, school…
Lost Laowai
Tom
Ryan
Travis
Nicki