curious...

magnus1977
October 27, 2008, 03:36 AM posted in General Discussion

Sorry about not being a teacher of Chinese...but I'm curious about being a teacher of Chinese or how to be a teacher of Chinese.

Can you tell me...or us about your experience in being a Chinese teacher.  Your training.  Where you got your certificate to teach Chinese?  Was it easy?  Was it difficult?  Are you a foreigner?  Are you Chinese?  Is the money good?  Where in America or the west are you teaching now?

Sorry so many questions but I am curious.

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teemunford
October 31, 2008, 11:28 AM

My own route to teaching Chinese is London is a round about one....I'm English, I did Chinese as my degree in the 1970s, did a PhD In Chinese History, studied in China and lived for 4 years in Hong Kong in the 1980s.  Then I moved back to the UK and in the 1990s trained to be a teacher but in a completely different subject -- RS (Religious Studies), not a subject you have in the States, I believe!.  At that time, it would have been absurd to even suggest training to teach Mandarin in schools. 

  Anyway, in the last two or three years there has been a boom in interest in Chinese in high schools, so I've stopped teaching RS and now teach Mandarin in several schools.  There are more jobs in the UK than there are teachers at the moment, partly because many native speaking teachers don't have the right qualification (PGCE) to teach in state (government) schools here.   And the different 'classroom cultures' between China and the UK and learning styles can sometimes be a problem for China-trained teachers. There are now a couple of one year PGCE teacher training programmes specifically for teachers of Mandarin, and I should think the same would be true of the US. 

Hope that's of use!

Theresa