I found the school on the 11th floor of Nanjing International Business Centre next to exit 8 of the subway in the heart of town. “Great location” I thought. I had only had email contact with Cameron and, due his Western name and poor English, had assumed he was Chinese. So I was surprised to be greeted by a tall Pakistani, the first I had seen in Nanjing.
I was taken into a small office where I was presented with a questionnaire with questions such as Why do you enjoy teaching? There was no column for I don’t enjoy it, I only do it for money so I put that I wanted to be of use to society. Another question asked What is the best way of evaluating a lesson?; 1. get other teachers to watch each lesson, 2. video record each lesson, 3. have student feedback, 4. Carry out own assessment …and more.
Half way through, I beckoned Cameron back in. I asked him “Perhaps you could tell me something about the school before I finish the questionnaire, I know nothing at all about the ages of the students or level of English or in fact anything whatsoever.” “You have to do the questionnaire first then we when we go through it I can tell you about the school then,” he replied.
So at the end he returned to my little office and started to go through the answers I had given. To the How many minutes of speaking time should each lesson have? question I had answered It depends on what sort of lesson is it. If it’s a writing lesson then not much but if it’s a speaking lesson then quite a lot.
We only do oral English tuition
Well if I had known that before I answered the questions I would have been able to give better answers
We work in companies providing business English. We video all the lessons and the company HR department always watches them afterwards to assess the lesson and to count how many minutes of speaking the students do
You video every class!? Yes. We have promised the companies that the students will have 45-50 minutes of speaking every hour.
That’s very unusual, I have never heard of that before It is our specialism. New teachers do one free lesson which is videoed and then the company looks at it and says whether they want the teacher or not. For every teacher we hire, 3 are rejected by the companies. We have 3 teachers at the moment but we need 3 more.
But if the students have to talk for 45-50 minutes an hour that means that there’s no time to deliver a lesson, to provide the new language, introduce grammar or reinforce existing grammar, build vocabulary or have any sort of feedback at the end. But we have promised the companies that much speaking so you have to do it.
I understand that a lot of teachers get rejected later on in the process but how many prospective teachers reject the school before they are hired? I don’t understand
How many teachers are uncomfortable about having all their lessons videoed, watched by a team of people and the number of minutes spent talking analysed and counted? None, they are happy about that. Do you have any questions for me?
Well would you like to know anything about me? No
But you haven’t asked any questions about me at all, you know nothing about me, whether I have any qualifications or any experience. It doesn’t matter
So you don’t care whether I have any experience of qualifications? That’s right. What we need are managers to manage the classes, not really teachers. If you can be a manager that’s all that we need.
So we parted and Cameron is still looking for extra teachers. Those qualified and experienced need not apply.