TEFL Alumni - Diane Drey

TEFL, TESOL, TESL, TEFL – and singing for my dinner.

I came to Zhuhai China to take a four week intensive training program with TEFL International to receive my TESOL certificate so that I could efficiently teach English.

The program is administered by an organization called TEFL – which gives the same program in 16 different countries. In fact I could have taken the TEFL program in New York, but being in China is a lot more fun! Even though I do not have any immediate plans to teach – I thought with my desire to continue to travel it might come in handy. Besides - the techniques could be helpful for giving business lectures.

There seems to be a bit of confusion on the initials of these teaching programs - and I think I finally got it straight. When I complete the TEFL program I will be given a TOEFL certificate (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). I can use it for TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language – also know as ESL) or to TESL (Teach English as a Second Language). It took me a while to get all those initials straight, and if you got it on the first try you are far ahead of me!

What I now know is that teaching English is big business. While Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language (1 billion plus people), English comes in second (508 million people). Right now there are more than 2 billion people trying to learn English. There are over five million English teachers and 400,000 job openings.

Many of the teaching jobs are in Asia. Not only is learning English a requirement for every Chinese student starting in kindergarten but Chinese adults realize they must speak English in order to succeed in business. Since China is so desperate for teachers, a TOEFL certificate is often not required to get a job, but being certified helps you get a higher salary.

While I signed up for the course without knowing too much about it, the first sign that this was a serious program came when the school assigned homework even before I arrived. In addition, I was given a list of books on linguistics and grammar to read.

When I arrived, the two head teachers (Meiling and Jenny) made it clear that we would have no spare time – in fact one of the reasons my emails have been slow in coming is that we are busy all day long and into the night.

Our day is divided into four 1 1/2 hour sessions. We painfully made it through a few lessons on grammar and phonetics, but the bulk of the time is spent demonstrating and having us practice different ways to teach English conversation. We perform skits, prepare visuals, and come up with sample dialogues. In the last two weeks we will go to local elementary schools and give seven classes. – That should be interesting!

When I signed up for the program, I anticipated that my classmates would be in their mid 20’s and recent college graduates out for an adventure. I was very wrong. Of the seven participants in our program, only Greg fits that profile having recently graduated from the University of Texas - Austin as an Asian studies major. His goal is to teach in China for a few years and then continue his studies in international relations – ultimately moving into the US state department.

The next youngest TEFL student is Lily (30) a Chinese woman who has been teaching English but who wanted to improve her teaching skills – having her in the class has been great because she is our translator whenever we get stuck.

The remaining five of us are between 47 and 55 years old. Everyone has a different background, but they all want to move to Asia and teach here for a while if not permanently because they believe working in China will give them better opportunities.

Ethel is from the Philippines and had a long career in animation – she says life back home is hard and is committed to staying here. Patty was an aerospace engineer – she worked for 20 years in California before heading to Asia and now resides in Hong Kong. Skip (55) came for love, he met his Chinese wife through friends and after they got married they decided to live in Shenzhen where he will teach. Perhaps the most interesting story in Jim, he has a PhD and had a long career at AT&T/Lucent and lost his job after surviving six downsizes. He worked for a while as an adjunct professor, but became extremely frustrated with the US job market. His goal is to work in Korea where he believes he will be able to have a better life style than he could achieve back home. Jim and I have had many discussions about the changing employment climate at home and there is a bit of bitterness and shock that our country, which was once the land of opportunity for so many, seems to have lost ground to other countries.

The TEFL school is quite small generally only 7-12 participants at a time. However the TEFL administration made a brilliant business decision when they decided to house the program in the same building as an English language school for Chinese students (GLV). The GLV program is very popular and has about 300 students. Since they run an English immersion program, we are only allowed to speak English when we are in the building. In addition GLV has a cafeteria that serves three meals a day. We are invited to eat for FREE provided we mingle with the Chinese students and only speak English; thus I am literally “singing for my dinner”.

Terror .........can be defined as having to face 25 eight year old children solo for 45 minutes

The central part of the TEFL International program is the “Teaching Practice”. During the first two weeks of training our teachers showed us three different approaches to teaching English: conversation, listening and reading/writing. Each process had a variety of lesson plan steps and since I was so overwhelmed with the steps I initially made an excel spread sheet listing all the different items and it came to 268 lines!

In addition to learning the techniques, we had to prepare a written lesson plan and find visuals to accompany our seven sessions. We did a lot of coloring and color printing. The more creative in our group came up with wonderful props. My classmate Peggy made a fishing pole and attached a paper fish to illustrate her session on “weekend activities”.

The big test came in week three when we were brought to different local schools to teach on our own. I have faced a lot of challenges over the years in running SnowBird, but I broke out in a total sweat knowing that I had 25 students to entertain and teach and hold as a captive audience for forty five minutes.

In total I ran seven different classes with students in grade three to seven (age 8 to 14). My lesson plans were simple: covering body parts, occupations, how to order in a restaurant and my favorite topic, desserts. During the dessert lesson I thought a bit of bribery might be helpful so I started the lesson by giving each student a lollipop and ended by handing out huge almond cookies - needless to say I was very popular that day.

I am happy to say that my teaching DID improve between the first and the seventh lesson. My teacher said – I had good “classroom management skills” – which is a polite way to say I did not let anyone get away with anything. My success in part was due to the fact that I abandoned the suggested “volunteer system” since I found only the best students raised their hand… Instead I used the army approach and selected the volunteers myself.

What was amazing is that we were only given HALF a class to direct. In a normal Chinese classroom there are 50 to 60 students. I would have thought managing a class of 60 totally impossible, but I did see it with my own eyes and from my viewpoint the lone Chinese teacher worked miracles. They seem to have no problem keeping control of the class and the kids sit at their desks and work very diligently. However having such a large class size leaves little room for individual attention. It is easy to see how a Chinese student would be less verbal – they just do not have that many opportunities for individual expression.

In China the government requires that each child attend school for 12 years (6 years primary, 3 years middle school and 3 years high school). The education is free, but students must pay for their own books. However to enroll in the free government school a child must be in the school in which his parents have a “Resident Registration” – called “HU KOU “. If the parents move out of their Hu Kou and it can take many years to transfer the Resident Registration. During this time the child cannot go to the free government school and instead must be enrolled in a “private school” where they must pay for their education.

Naturally there are different levels of private schools – a few cater to the ultra rich and those cost about $3500 US a child. They offer smaller classes of just 20-25 children, but few can afford it – thus the majority of the private schools are for the children of poor migrant families which have left their countryside Hu Kou and relocated to Zhuhai to find factory work.

For these families private school tuition & uniforms are $ 350 annually, plus they must pay $ 60 for transportation and $ 100 for lunch. The total cost of $ 510 is a fortune to the average factory worker who makes between $2,400 and $3,000 a year. We taught at such a school and you could see that the conditions were not nearly as nice as at the government schools – it seemed quite unfair. The inability of migrants from other parts of China to enroll their child in the local school for free is one of the big contrasts I saw with the US education. Many people in China are angry with this system and are trying to have it changed, but it will take time.

In addition - when it comes time for high school students to take the college entrance exam they must go back to their Hu Kou for the test. This causes a lot of problems if they were educated in a different district because all Chinese schools "teach towards the test" and different provinces use different tests. Furthermore if you want to get into a university in a different Hu Kou - you must preform significantly better than the local students. It is somewhat like our policy of charging out of state students more tuition, except this applies to the entrance exams. Students applying to prestigious Beijing University from other areas have a real hurdle to pass.

Finally the connection to your Hu Kou goes one step further because it is also the method through which China administers a resident’s medical care and retirement fund. If you move to a new location, it can take years to re-establish your medical insurance or even collect on your pension. Imagine how restrictive it would be if that system applied in the United States.

However, none of the above seemed to damper the enthusiasm of the students we met. I must have said hello 1000 times each day and the best part came at the end of class when all the students stormed us asking for our autograph – we felt a bit like celebrities.

I am happy to report that my performance (and it was a theatrical event) was considered satisfactory to my teachers Mei-Ling and Jenny and on March 6th, when our TEFL program ended, I was awarded a TESOL certificate. It actually made me very proud to join the ranks of educators and who knows how one day I will use this experience.

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