English 1 reviews

There are lots of negatives. Firstly, if you don't have a TESOL or Celta qualification you have to do a 120-hour course that won't necessarily have any validity outside of EF schools. You don't get a contract until you complete this. Fine, you may say, if you're just starting out in EFL teaching. After all, the course is free. Better to do a course that you can use to find work after your summer work is over though. In my case, I had a lot of experience teaching EFL but just didn't have the qualification (just a PGCE) so it would have meant 120 hours of unpaid hours for me just to get a 4-week job. Also, the company doesn't tell you what you will get paid UNTIL you complete the course. I did a bit of research and discovered that the company expects you to do 6 hours of teaching every week day and then take the students out on Saturdays for an excursion. They pay roughly £400 a week so we're talking about £11 an hour (not including prep time). Some people on here seem to think that's a good rate for a teacher. If that's your view, you're welcome to it. I personally found it insulting. If teachers don't push back against language schools like this, then they will always be treated as though they're not worth much. Don't work for a company that won't tell you how much you'll get paid in order to hide the terrible rate of pay.

Each experience is dependent on the environment of your center. For my center, we were quite small in size. There was no clear line of management so when we had an issue, no one knew how to properly handle the scenario. Accounts of racism would often occur that would be targeted towards the international teachers and management would sweep these cases under the rug. All teachers at our center were at maximum teaching capacity, but marketing still opened up more classes. We would often not have a lunch break to properly eat and refuel. There was absolute zero time to properly lesson plan or grade tests. Most of the teachers would often be "winging it" in the classroom resulting in poor teacher-student learning quality. The company is also very strict regarding public holidays. You will not have regular national holidays off compared to other companies in China. You will have to work non-production days to catch up on administration tasks. These days are far and few between and makes it difficult to properly immerse yourself in the culture by celebrating holidays with the rest of the local community. Overall, you are worked hard and you will not see a reward for this (other than seeing the learning outcome of your students). The pay is not as substantial as to make up for what you are giving up. They do promise bonuses around the time of your 5 month appraisal, winter academy, and summer academy, but the company gets away with paying you less for the amount of work you put in.