Teaching English in Nanjing and in General

[simonlaing]

Here is an advise email I wrote to a friend of a friend who is planning to come teach in Nanjing. She is considering Nanjing Normal or some other University in Nanjing.

Hi Susanna,

English teachers are still in Major demand herein Nanjing . If you are looking early you have a lot of choice.

On class sizes and types of classes.

You should ask if you will be teaching English Majors (i.e. smaller classes, more engaged, majority female students who work more though and is more enjoyable experience generally) , Ielts /toefl prep class (often rich lazy students who only sometimes do their work but will often not care much) , non-english major classes ( can be huge 30- 100 but with very few requirements for the teacher to get results, students sometimes sleep in the back , not very enjoyable). writing classes ( 20-50 of with the better schools like nanjing U, lots of essays to grade at home pretty tiring unless you're used to it. I would advise against too many of these). and english corner classes (10-60 free form classes where you bring in an article or pictures and talk in small groups sort of like an practice speaking english club than a class)

Most Universities have downtown and (45 min commute) suburban campuses. You should also ask where you classes will be and how many days a week do you commute there. Nanjing normal has shuttle buses but they don't run all the time and it is still a tiring commute.

You can ask about the housing as well. See if they can send pictures. I think the Nanjing Normal housing as I remember seemed like an extra large hotel room with an extra living room attached. You will have access to the several years of accumulated DVDs that past teachers brought. It is also really downtown, where the Forrestry one needs a bus or taxi to get to shops and bars.

I think if you know people here that's good. because it is much cheaper and fun to travel with a small group than by yourself. Also if you go out to bars it will be safer, though Nanjing and China as a whole is a pretty safe place.

I had a very good experience at the Nanjing Audit university Shenji xueyuan, It is just outside the downtown but close to a soon to be openned subway stop and bicycle distance from all places downtown. you'd probably take a bus to the forrestry university as the forrestry U 's on the other side of the city and then away a bit. I taught English major students there 2 years and only stopped because I became a full time Chinese language student.

The classes are taught 3 days a week in a suburban campus. Last year they offered me 5,000 plus free housing (I do have a Master's degree and lots of experience). The Housing is also really nice A big two bedroom appartment with kitchen and dinning room. The bathroom was small. if you're interested you can email maggie maggieni@nau.edu.cn.

Food and other essntials will probably cost 1,000 RMB a month if you mostly eat Chinese food. This nice housing would be rented for 2,000-2,500 RMB a month depending on location.

Also since it is small they can be more flexible some times, like schedule your classes so you have Fridays or Mondays off. They say you should teach 12-16 hours a week. One semester I had 10.5 it is not taht tough espicially if you can teach the same class to 4 different sets of students. 18-20 teaching hours is extremely tiring and you're regret taking it espicially if they are hard to teach classes.

There are several smaller less well-known Universities xiaozhuang, hohai Uni, but they vary as well.The other two big Universities are Nanjing U and DongNan or South East University. They may have better students but will lack as nice housing, or positive professional treatment of the teachers, the salaries will be the same or lower than others most likely.

One last thing is that you can ask if you can call a western teacher currently teaching at their school and ask what it's like teaching there.

Good luck,

Simon:)

P.S. I am also on skype chinesetutor88 if you want to talk that way.

[abcdefg]

That's very interesting and helpful. Thanks for posting it.

[guanfei]

My experience with NAU slightly differs from Simons and I'm sorry that this will be my first post on this site but I highly advise people to avoid Nanjing Audit University. In the course of two terms they fired 3 other foreign teachers and personally broke every promise they ever made to me. Being an audit college most foreign teachers will be teaching 3+2 year students who are paying "extra" for a bachelors degree because they could not get into a normal 4 year program. Their English is poor and the classes are of 60+ rich spoiled brats playing with ipods during class. There is also a 1 hour commute to work each day followed by another 1 hour wait for classes to begin. Their is no sweet schedule, you will waste 20 hours a week just sitting on a bus or waiting for a bus or waiting for a class after that you will wait for the next bus. Lastly in the tradition of audit-minded people you will be required to write lengthy evaluations on all of your classes each term that nobody will seriously read.

Life is somewhat random and your experience may be different than my own. B)