Is teaching in China all it’s cracked up to be? There are certainly a number of people who seem to think so!
I’ve heard my job being described as “one with fewer hours than a retired pensioner” and “not a real job”.
It supposedly involves cracking jokes, playing movies and enjoying long vacations.
What could be so hard about that, right?
Well, today I’m going to set the record straight. Here are 13 reasons why teaching in China isn’t for everyone.
1. The exam-oriented culture
Chinese students have exams coming out of their ears.
For practically their entire childhood, it’s drummed into them that passing the Gaokao – the final high school exam – is their ticket to a good life.
So, what happens is that students study to pass exams, not to acquire useful life skills.
This means that your students won’t care about anything that you might be trying to teach them over the semester.
They may secretly play games on their phones, come to class with no stationery or never take notes.
They forget everything you teach them and repeatedly make the same mistakes.
All they care about is the answers to your exam questions so they can memorize them.
Teaching in China is definitely not easy when your students refuse to learn what you teach them.
2. Students can be very lazy
If you teach at a Chinese college or university, your students will have had to pass the exam from Hell just to get a place there.
As a result, they may be quite lazy. They might not do the homework you set, come to class late or skip class for the pettiest of reasons.
This is frustrating for passionate teachers because we know that if the students don’t pay attention or do the work, it’s likely that they won’t pass their exams.
3. College students are powerful
Recently, I was reprimanded by my boss because I was apparently too strict with my students and they didn’t like that.
I was even directly told “We know that your students’ attendance and punctuality leaves a lot to be desired”. What I’m sure my boss silently added was “But we don’t care”.
I was also told that grammar isn’t important in an oral English class.
Finally, I was told to prepare a backup lesson plan in case my students hadn’t done their homework.
In a nutshell, college and university students may come to class late or not at all, play games on their phones or not do their homework without any consequences whatsoever.
4. The ‘no failures’ policy
In most Chinese colleges and universities, students can’t fail their exams. However, the implementation of this policy may result in a number of problems.
Chinese students compare their grades to those of their classmates.
If you award 60% (the minimum passing grade) to a student who couldn’t say a word in an oral exam, those who passed on their own merits will complain that it wasn’t fair.
Often a 60 isn’t going to be enough for a student to retain their scholarship. I’ve been called “heartless” for not considering the impact of my grades on my students’ lives.
5. No open and honest feedback
At some Chinese schools, the management has secret meetings with class monitors to get feedback on teachers.
But as a teacher, you might not be informed of this feedback perhaps out of a desire to give you ‘face’.
So, you happily plod along thinking that everything is fine. Then when your contract is almost finished, the school drops a bombshell:
“Sorry, we can’t renew your contract because the students said XYZ about you”.
Teaching in China is definitely not easy when you can’t get any feedback on how you’re doing.
6. Exploitation by schools
Once you sign a contract with a school in China and they have arranged your visa, residence permit and foreign expert certificate, they pretty much own you.
I’ve written at length about this – you can see my blog about how a teacher can get screwed over by their school in China.
And if you’re unlucky enough to work for a school that exploits you, there is very little you can do except to grin and bear it until your contract expires.
You may even be forced to accept that in China, it’s quite normal to be asked to teach evening and weekend classes, or to work on public holidays for no extra pay.
7. Students won’t ask questions
If you ask your students if they understand what you just said, they’ll nod. If you ask them if they have any questions, you’ll often be greeted with silence.
A Chinese student who questions their teacher is seen as being disrespectful because this implies that the teacher hasn’t explained a concept well enough.
The prohibition of making someone lose face is so strong in China that students would rather ask a classmate when they don’t understand something than to ask their teacher.
And if they still don’t understand after that, they’ll complain that the class is “too difficult”.
If it’s your class that they complain about, your job will be toast!
8. Cheating in exams is widespread
As a teacher in China, not only will you have to prepare lessons but you’ll also have to conduct exams at least twice a year, maybe more.
Students might try to cheat in your exams and you’ll need to be very watchful and vigilant when conducting your exams to make sure that no-one cheats.
There are numerous ingenious methods which can be used by students to cheat in their exams. I once caught a student with notes hidden beneath her exam paper!
At some colleges, especially the private ones, students may even openly whisper the answers to each other, knowing that the teacher or examiner can’t punish everyone.
9. Your image trumps everything else
Chinese university students don’t go to class to learn, they go simply to get the ‘credits’ that they need in order to graduate.
If many students pass, that makes the teacher and the school look good. That enables schools to attract more students and charge higher fees.
Foreign teachers are seen as ‘experts’ in English in China. It took me years to understand this but I’ve finally realized that my role isn’t really to teach but to make my school look good.
If you’re a passionate and professional teacher who wants to go China to make a difference, the realization of what your role really is can be demoralizing.
10. Little support
I was really shocked when I first arrived in China to take up my first teaching post.
Firstly, I was given a subject to teach instead of English. And secondly, I was just thrown into a classroom with no induction or training whatsoever.
I was pretty much left to figure everything out for myself, such as the local teaching and learning styles, and what made the students tick.
But it can go the other way as well.
At one school I taught at, management were controlling and I was told exactly what to teach and how to teach.
This was frustrating because I realized that my students didn’t have the ability to cope with what I was being asked to teach them.
11. Huge class sizes
Another reason why teaching in China isn’t for the faint hearted is due to the large class sizes.
Some universities are degree mills where up to 70 students might be packed into a classroom.
If you teach a subject with a written exam, conducting this exam is not a problem but it’s impossible to conduct over 70 individual oral exams within two class periods.
It’s also impossible to reconfigure tables and chairs in Chinese classrooms. They’re often bolted down, which isn’t conducive to group activities.
One of the first things the TEFL courses tell you to do is move the tables around. If only they knew what China was like!
12. The CELTA is practically useless
Speaking of courses, the CELTA – which is much more thorough than TEFL – concentrates heavily on eliciting as a teaching method.
(Eliciting is when you get the students to provide the information themselves rather than telling them.)
I quickly realized eliciting wouldn’t work in China. Chinese students dislike being made to figure anything out for themselves.
When new teachers realize that what they learnt on their CELTA courses won’t work in China, it can be quite daunting because they might not know what else to do.
It’s also demoralizing given the investment in time and money that you put into the course.
13. Housing problems
In the first school that I taught at in China, my apartment didn’t have air-conditioning. It was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer.
Then at my third school, I was put in an apartment with a temperamental stove and an electrified shower. I couldn’t even bathe without getting an electric shock!
The teachers’ apartment block was due to be demolished but the school didn’t do anything until the workmen arrived and started tearing down the building with us still living there!
At one school, I was only given a bedroom with an ensuite bathroom and kitchen whilst at another, I was made to share an apartment with another teacher.
So why do people go and teach in China?
It should be obvious by now the scale of the challenges and problems faced by foreign teachers in China.
Since it’s not easy to obtain job satisfaction from working in China, many aspiring teachers decide to come here for other reasons, the most notable of which is money.
They teach in the huge megacities with all the pollution, crowds and high cost of living that are on offer there for the 25,000 RMB monthly paycheck.
And they obtain pleasure from travelling around China in their spare time, which is a truly beautiful country, by the way.
Some of the male teachers meet the Chinese girl of their dreams, end up getting married and going back to their home country.
Others fall foul of the law and get arrested for seeing prostitutes in China. That’s a whole other story!
If you decide to teach in China
You’re going to need a virtual private network (VPN) on your devices so you can access the Western internet and keep using Google, Facebook, Instagram, and even read the news.
Visit this page for a review of China VPNs or go straight here for the one many expats use:
Just remember to download it before you arrive in the country or you won’t get access.
Anyway, I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on the dark side of teaching in China.
The bottom line is that it most certainly isn’t easy. And it isn’t the cushy spot of subsidized travel that some people think it is!
Next, check out my article on Chinese cultural norms you probably don’t know about.
Main image credit: Supplied by Kim Ooi.