Best english school in Beijing?

[venture160]

my Chinese friend is looking for a top language school in Beijing, spend the summers there when she goes on break and on nights and weekends during the school year. From a learning perspective, without price being a factor, which school is THE best? I went to Wall Street, Oxford, and Stanford today, alot of them seem to be huge scams as they make you pay 30,000 RMB up front etc. Thanks for your help.

[roddy]

I asked the same question some time back with not much response. The only recommendations I got were for a subsidiary of New Oriental that works somewhere around Guomao, called Elite I think. Maybe in Soho, or Jianwai Soho? And also, Language Link - worth noting that Language Link are a training center for the CELTA course - while that doesn't necessarily have a direct impact of the quality of their English teaching, getting the certification to do that means they should have reached at least basic levels of competence.

Roddy

[venture160]

Yea it seems us chinese language students really don't have a clue about the english teaching here in Beijing!!! I myself have only done 3 lessons and decided I didn't like it, I always ended up speaking Chinese with my students etc. It seems all of the schools here are giant scams, these companies and schools are really making alot of money over here, they pay the foreign teachers very low for the most part and the tuition is over the top! At Wall Street its like 30,000 Rmb for "one stage" of learning, those stages are based on "their tests" so they want you start out as low as you can so they can suck the money out of them.....

[roddy]

It's the same old story - largely unregulated market, massive demand, short supply of qualified people, clients who aren't the best judges of quality. None of this makes for reliable service providers.

[chloechandra]

This thread is quite old but the problem is still the same.

I am a CELTA qualified english teacher passionate about english teaching methods and with experience at an international school in Oxford and also in depth knowledge of all international english exams (ielts cambridge, toefl etc). None of this seems to be recognised when I am looking for jobs and I will get paid the same as someone with no experience at all of teaching and with no qualification. I am thinking of teaching my own school which dactually values qualifications and passionate teachers to deliver quality training. In the meantime you can contact me if you're interested in learning english for 1 to 1

Chloe