10/29/2021
hello hi welcome to another live session my name is linda from i t t t and as you
can see today we're going to talk about china's ban on private esl tutoring
everything you need to know what we know so far there's still a lot of ambiguity
but i've done a lot of research i talked to a lot of people so hopefully i'll be able to tell you something you might not
know yet and give a little bit of clarity into this topic but uh disclaimer
you know things change all the time and there's still like i said a lot of ambiguity around this whole topic
a lot of even experts aren't sure yet how everything is going to be implemented how it's going to look like
in the future so just i want to say that up front and ittttt this is also not something that
we have control over or we are particularly like involved with or have
you know any sort of uh uh you know what i'm saying so
this is all based on my own research and what other people from china who are in
the esl industry have told me about this so i just want to say that upfront thanks so much for
tuning in oh somebody says facebook sound is not working can you hear me can you is
everything all right is the sound working on your end can you hear me can you see me clearly i hope
you can uh let me know if you can't and then maybe i'm gonna try and figure it
out but uh we'll just go with it right now
cool so before we jump in um do let me know where are you guys
right now where are you watching from um i would really love to know
and i am in south korea i'm about an hour and a half south of seoul it is 10
30 a.m friday morning i'm super excited to be here today again and super excited
to talk about this topic even though it is a little bit um you know ambiguous and wishy-washy at the moment uh even
though it's been a couple of months since this has been out it's not super fresh fresh but i wanted to wait
and see you know this band was introduced in the summer and it's october now so it's been a
couple weeks and months since then and we have seen a little bit of the developments that's why i wanted to wait
until i talk about it but do let me know uh guys where are you
hi we have byron from ecuador hi there then gwen is back it's been a while gwen
yeah so glad to see you again juliana is here as well hey there
great okay adam everything is clear now i'm glad good we have someone from india oh
and also zaka from india we have carlos from punta del este in
uruguay awesome and eg from dubai
cool very nice a pretty international group here everywhere around the world
that's awesome thank you so much for tuning in um also ara from mexico
awesome cool very nice so i guess you're all here because you're super curious about what's happening in china
uh gwen is tuning in in malaysia great thank you so much for being here
yeah and um as always i like to say please don't forget to like and subscribe you're
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that's about it and you already told me where you are so we got that down
don't forget to like and subscribe we got that good okay
perfect then i think we're ready to jump in there will be a q a section at the end
as always if you've watched before you know how it works but also at any time during this live session feel free to
add your comments you know if you are maybe teaching in china you taught english in china
um you are in china right now or you know anything else that you want to add add it
and also just ask away at any time feel free and then at the end during the q a
you can ask any other questions that you might have that maybe don't fit with today's topic
that's usually how i do it and it works and i always say don't be shy there are no stupid questions i like to have a
conversation i like to engage with my viewers i don't want it to be just me talking i want to have a conversation
with you guys all right okay cool then let's jump right in i always make
myself a little bit smaller i'm still here i hope you can still see me so that you can see the slides i have a lot of
information prepared coming your way today um as i said in the beginning
disclaimer um [Applause] we are not in any way affiliated with
this ban we are just reporting um on this ban it's
information i found from speaking with esl recruiters people who are in china
teachers in china but also from a lot of news articles reporting on this issue okay
so things change all the time and like i said there's still so much ambiguity around this whole topic so we might not
have all the answers that you're looking for i also have a lot of more questions about this that i don't have answers for
and we were not provided any answers yet so today what i'm going to tell you is just everything that we know so far
about the situation okay all right so let's start and i just want to introduce
myself real quick before we jump in i think we have a lot of new people here watching today so
um my name is linda i'm a travel writer and content creator under the name linda
goes east um you can also find me at lindagose.com and on instagram at linda
goes east i love sharing a lot of my photos on instagram um so if you're interested in that i'm from
germany in america but i am based in south korea for the past i've been based
there for the past six and a half years and before that i also lived in china
actually and i also taught english in china i lived in china for um
i lived in china first in 2012 and then i went back again 2014.
and i taught there but a lot has changed since then as well um and also obviously this new band it's
all fresh so just keep that in mind and then also i am a tefl and tesol marketing
professional for itt which stands for international tefl and t sol training
and um you can find itt at teflcores.net and on instagram at international tefl
training and we are a leading teflon tesol course provider worldwide and i know that many of you watching are
already a tefl a itt tefl certified or tesol certified or from a different
provider um so that's awesome that's your first step towards teaching english abroad
so good and so why is um you know this ban
interesting because china used to be the biggest esl market there is right
china is so big uh their english education industry is
very very big as well we're going to talk about it in just a minute but that's why this is such an important
thing for us in the esl industry because now
things are looking very different things changed literally like overnight from one day to another a lot of
especially online teachers um have lost jobs from one day to another i've read
many articles from people um especially people in north america teaching they were teaching english to
chinese students and from one day to another it just stopped so a huge part
of their income just ceased from one day to another so it was a huge shock for many people many
people have lost an important income avenue
and so um that's what we're gonna talk about today but first let's see
what's the fuss all about so what is this ban exactly it's just always referred to as the china esl ban or the
foreign teacher band the online teaching ban but what does it actually say
what does it actually what's what's it actually called and who does it actually
um affect right so that's we're gonna talk about first so let's see
the policy is officially called opinions on further reducing the burden of
homework and extra curricular training for students this is the translated name
of this policy that was introduced by the chinese government in late july
of this year and it affects students from grades 1
through 9 it bans tutoring on core subjects such as chinese english and math
late at night on weekends and during school breaks and it also prohibits
hiring foreign foreigners based outside the country so those are the most important things
about this policy right so as you can see it does not only include english it also includes other subjects
so this does not only affect foreign esl teachers but it also affects
a lot of local chinese teachers who work in after school
institutes or schools programs things like that so they uh
are also facing a lot of problems i've read articles where now all of these teachers who used to work at uh these
private institutes after school institutes are now looking for jobs in public schools
and there is this one position for can remember it was math or what subject it was it
was not english but it was like math or science or something and they have applicants they all hold phd degrees
and they cannot find a job so it's a very bad situation not only for english teachers but for
a lot of other teachers in china as well local teachers as well because of this
so this is what it looks like this is what it's called officially um and let's see how this will affect um
esl online teaching because that's what we have heard the most of first
so first what you need to know about china's esl market what i already mentioned in the beginning it's huge so
there are 400 million people learning english in china today
booming and also the esl industry in china is worth 120
billion dollars it's a huge industry and it also gets a lot of foreign
investment coming from companies or investors from all over the world and this also has an effect
and um is connected to this band i'm gonna talk about that in just a minute
but yeah so it's a ban on private esl tutoring but also other subject as i
subject as i mentioned but basically companies that profit from
teaching school curriculum subjects including english and private tutoring companies will be
unable to hire foreign teachers from overseas so that's how it is affecting at the
moment
now let's have a look at why is china limiting private tutoring what is their argument for doing that
um there is two uh maybe a third one but these are the two
main reasons why china the chinese government has implemented these this
ban and this new policy so one is safeguarding for children's mental
health if you have any experience with china
teaching chinese students or this is actually not only china but also it's it happens in
korea a lot as well and in japan but chinese culture and education
are incredibly competitive when i was there i mean i taught young
children and many of them were going you know to
school and private schools from a very young age and then they would go to all of these after school programs they
would do english camps and english class they would have a tutor they would also learn how to play the violin and the
piano and all of those things so it's very competitive because everyone wants to make sure that
their child has the best um yeah opportunities of getting into the
best university and then the best job at the best company and so on so this is
why it's so competitive for these young students and the government says with a severe
reduction in esl lessons or in after school lessons children have more
opportunities to relax and behave like children
so it's for so let they want to let their children be children and reduce their
stress on their young children in china and on the other side it's also an
incentive to help families um it's a huge financial burden to pay
for all of these extracurricular um lessons and the private tutors it
costs a lot of money and also this tuition the tuition along
with the high um cost of living in big cities where
everybody wants to live everybody wants to live in the big city people are moving away from the countryside to live
in the big cities because there you have access to good education
but the cost of living is so much higher so it's a huge financial burden and so a lot of families are reluctant
to have more children and there's actually a lot of people now in china that don't want any children because
they're so expensive and this is not only obviously china it's a huge global phenomenon right
so um but this is why they are also introducing this and so they think that
in uh restricting private tuition they will also fight a declining birth rate and
china is struggling with this a lot at the moment a declining birth rate
so this is what um the government has said as an argument
why they introduced this ban and it's good right that they care about the kids
mental health and that they're trying to limit this right but obviously it's not so great
for uh all the teachers who work in this industry so that's what's happening at the moment
yeah and juliana says yes actually children do not have any free time
yes yeah it's very sad um especially when i was there like i
said when i taught at this private i taught at a private english language institute in china and
yeah all of those kids they would come to this institute and then they would already have like their ballet bag where
they would go after this english class and then they would go to piano class and then it would go home and they would
have all this homework they would do until after midnight and they're only six years old so it's it's very crazy
and um very competitive and definitely so this is a good thing right
um then we also have liturg here who says hi linda this is an interesting topic
thank you for sharing this to us so many esl tutors are affected yes absolutely and if anyone here
watching is um affected do let me know and maybe you can also share how this
affected you and how you've been dealing with it that would be very interesting as well
good so then let's move on let's see what is up next yeah so this is what we're going to talk about now how will
this affect online esl tutors or how has this already affected online tutors and
there's three ways how uh five ways actually three and then we're going to talk about two more how this already
affected tutors or how this will affect tutors so as i mentioned oh no i didn't mention that yet so there's also a
curfew on online classes so the chinese government already has a 9
p.m curfew now on online classes so 9 p.m china time
and depending on where you teach online a lot of north american teachers they
teach these children in the evenings often until late at night and this is one of the most busy times
for teaching and this will be completely cut so no more classes after 9 pm they are
all falling away so this is a huge problem for a lot of teachers then also with this comes the salary and the
effect on even more of the schedule so not only after 9 p.m but also
how it affected the schedule and salary of esl teachers so many teachers have already lost students
because of this and it is also expected that online classes will be unavailable during
weekends holidays and school breaks so and especially on weekends and sometimes
china has like two week long holidays which used to be very very busy times
and great times for esl tutors this is all gonna fall away now
then also the age group of students so we talked about that this ban involves
children students from first to ninth grade
all of these restrictions but online teaching for preschool children has been banned completely so no more
teaching students younger than first grade at all
so that's also something a big thing to keep in mind
and then we also have the type of contract so a lot of
teachers are obviously employed as employees with official employee
contracts but now many esl chinese esl companies they have to switch
their teachers working for them as independent contractors and with that obviously comes a lot less
job security a lot less of the bonuses that you would normally get so it's not a good situation
and then also for the companies if a company is offering private
tutoring it will now have to register as a non-profit organization
and so this will obviously reduce the the cost of the classes but also have an
effect on the business models of many of these esl companies and this means that even
if foreign teachers are able to teach the salaries will be affected um a lot
so those are the five biggest things how this will affect or has affected online esl tutors already
um so a lot of changes here a lot of stuff happening
um it's yeah and just from one day to another it's just crazy to think
now let's talk a little bit about the affected chinese companies and as you can see lots of ambiguity so
still even months after there's still lots of ambiguity and some companies are
looking for loopholes and so i read that it may be possible that some companies
are also exempt from the new chinese regulations especially if they aren't
teaching curriculum-based subjects so what i read a lot that if um they are
only teaching for example speaking then this would not um
be fall under the new policy but a lot of these have textbooks and
uh full like english lessons with grammar and all those things so this would be affected
and here are three companies that have already been affected hard um go go kid is one of them and they
have completely halted and suspended teaching
chinese students from august 5th so they're not doing anything anymore also
zebra english here they have completely halted their recruitment and they will not continue
developing their business due to the recent policies they will also not do anything anymore and then we
also have palfish which is a big one and they have had to cut teacher pay and
they also reduced their staff so very bad for a lot of these companies
but there are three positive examples of companies that are inspiring hope in
this situation and that is data abc that is vipkid and also magic ears so what
they're doing is their foreign teachers will be able to deliver lessons to chinese students who have already paid
for the lessons so that seems to be um okay okay if they already paid for the
lessons then they are able to teach until they expire and that's why many
parents they actually already pay for lesson packages months in advance and in
some cases even a year i read in one article that one parent one mom
she after she heard about the ban and everything she actually paid for
500 lessons up front so that her daughter would be able to take those lessons
even after this ban and that was like twelve thousand dollars worth of lessons and that's
one year's worth of her salary from her town so it's incredible
well how also the parents are worried and suffer and really try to do everything
to um ensure that their kids can continue their lessons it's really crazy um
so this way the students will still have the opportunity to finish their paid lessons and teachers will also be able
to deliver these lessons for the time being so this is kind of this ambiguity this gray zone that we're in at the
moment um and who knows how long this will go because i imagine 500 lessons that's
gonna be maybe another year or two until they run out i'm not sure if that
that will be granted that will be okay um i've also read that
um a lot of parents are now oh there because one school actually
shut down it was a private institute and some i can't remember which city but they completely stopped due to the span
and a lot of parents are actually now suing these companies these schools these institutes because they already
prepaid for their lessons but the school's already shut down so that's a big problem now a lot of lawsuits going
on between parents who already paid for lessons but the school shut down so it's
it's a bit of a mess in many different areas um then yeah we also have vipkid here
who's a big big online platform and they are actually exploring a lot of different business avenues uh which they
say could minimize the impact caused by the new chinese regulations and they are
expanding their international market outside of china and are recruiting new teachers because remember this only
affects teaching chinese students right so if a platform
has chinese students but they also have korean students japanese students french students
whoever they are not affected right it's only chinese children right
children that's also important for later but so um there is hope it's not all uh
lost for sure right but um as you can see it's a very complicated situation
and even some of the schools they don't really know what's going on so they're trying to find ways to continue to
develop in different avenues it's a very um interesting time at the moment for sure
um has anyone worked for um dada abc biblicate or magic ears i would be
curious or also these three so go go kid pal fish zebra english has anyone
watching worked for any of those before or is working for them and how is
the situation i'm very curious i'm also teaching online but i teach
um on a non-chinese platform um so i haven't really felt anything i
teach mostly adults so it doesn't really affect that anyway but um yeah it affects a lot of people
for sure i read an article about this one girl she's a digital nomad and she worked for
i can't remember which platform it was but a chinese platform and she was in peru at the time
um you know and working she works that's her job working online for this platform
while traveling the world and from one day to another while she was in peru at
the time uh she just got a message that yeah this is this is all over now you can't teach
anymore we're shutting down basically so she lost all of that from one day to
another um this lifestyle that she created and this is actually something i talked
about a few weeks ago in one other live session about how you can become a digital nomad
teaching english online um so she did that she was living the dream but from one day to another it
just all fell apart so as you can see my tip is don't only work for one platform
you want to have a plethora or different a group of platforms that you work for right not
just one so that could um end up very badly i'm also going to share some tips what
teachers can do now to kind of get away from this um to not get affected
but um yeah let's continue here oh yeah that's that's coming up right now okay so advice for online teachers
so what can online teachers do now what can you do if you are affected or if you're worried that this will affect
you in the future what can you do now so and i shared this before so some of you
might already have this but i wanted to share this again i have this list of 20
non-chinese online teaching companies that you can work for that are not affected in this mess at all
and i'm going to share the link with you um
i know that some of you already already have this but maybe some of you might not have it yet or maybe forgot about it
so you just click here it's a google doc you click on that and then you'll be you can see um the
document
and i'm just going to share my screen so i can show you better
but yeah okay okay yeah so this is what it looks like
and i see a lot of you have clicked on it now um i see you there so what i want you to do is click over here on file and click
on make a copy and then you make a copy for yourself and you can edit that your own copy okay
so do that file make a copy if that doesn't work for you let me know but as you can see these are all
companies um that are not chinese so they are not affected by the span at all
and you see like information like the hourly rate here [Music] if there you know some of the
requirements if the lessons are provided or do you need to plan the lessons yourself what about the students age
are there any minimum hours you need to teach do they require a tefl certificate or not do they accept non-native
speakers um do you need to have previous experience are there any additional
requirements and here is the application link so you can just click on that and it will lead you straight through
to that um website so there's a lot of options
yeah and here when it says where there here where there's a star behind it it's a online marketplace so it's not a
platform but it's a marketplace where you just set up your profile and the lessons
you offer and you can set your own rates yeah and this is as of august 2021 right
after the ban came into place so these are 20 platforms
you can choose from that are non-chinese and are not affected by the span
okay so again you can go over here to file
and make a copy here and then you can save it in your own drive and you can edit it you can make
notes etc okay all right
okay then i'm gonna go back to my powerpoint so this is one thing that you can do you
can work for a different company just switch the company you're not married to a chinese
esl company you can just switch so and like i said i recommend not only
working for one if this is your um sole uh income don't only work for
one company maybe two or three or four or however many you can manage right
another thing you can do is you can just switch over to teaching adults as i
mentioned this ban only affects teaching children uh from first to ninth grade right so
there's a lot of um platforms that target or only have adult students and
they are not affected and those are for example a tutor group italki cambly and
cafe talk cafe talk is where i teach on it's mostly adults um and it's a japanese platform but they
also have a lot of korean students and chinese students so kind of east asia but mainly japanese but it's a lot of
fun on there and yeah this does not affect um is not
affected by the new regulations and also what what a plus what's a plus here is that adult students are very
driven they are very motivated compared to children and they most of the time also
have a basic knowledge of english so it might actually be a little bit easier to teach adults compared to children
just one idea i wanted to mention here what else do we have yes you can move on
to independent teaching so you can set up your own uh website or your own teaching profile
you can set your own prices you don't have to give up any uh fees to the platform most
of these platforms they take a cut from your pay so that won't affect you you can also teach your own lessons you can
teach whatever you want whatever kind of class you want you can completely design
your own stuff which is really great and you have an act you have access to an international market not only chinese
students you can teach english to anyone however if you teach independently it
needs some advertising efforts so you need to kind of market yourself maybe on social media
and i actually gave some tips in a previous life about that how you can do that so um go check that out in our
playlist and there also are some setup costs involved like setting up your website
that usually costs a little bit of money or setting up your like teaching space you know with props and things like that
but if you already taught for a platform then maybe you already have some of these props and some of the setup so you
can just use that as well then i think we have
yes this is also what i wanted to mention so all of this before was about teaching online right so i get the
question i ask myself too so what about teachers working in china
if i'm we only talked about this ban from the point of view of esl teachers like
working outside of china but teaching chinese students through these platforms but what about working in china is this
still an option or not how does this ban affect teachers coming to china because it used
to be um the esl wonderland there would be
so many vacant positions more than teachers to fill so how does this ban affect this situation
um couldn't find too much information on that but um also enough to kind of give
you the gist of it uh so there's a lot of new things that foreign teachers working in china have
to go through and um i also believe that now it's going to be more
uh public schools where foreign teachers are going to be working at or international schools not
so much your typical private institute anymore where you work maybe where i
worked it was like you worked wednesday to sunday and you had monday
tuesday off now with this new band where you can't teach these things on the weekend this might also change a lot so
i think we're gonna see a lot more uh public school positions um or
just a whole restructuring of these private institutions and i'm gonna talk a little bit more about this now so um
these institutes private institutes are now required to offer training workshops
to their foreign teachers about domestic chinese laws and ethics
so this is for example and also the teaching activities during class
and the course content must be in line with china's educational principles and
should not undermine the country's sovereignty security on reputation and
public interest that's what it says officially so if you want to work in china now as a teacher you need to go
through this workshop provided by your school that basically teaches you
um how you should teach in line with china's uh
yeah china's policies and things like that so it's going to be very different
and also all of these international schools institutes they now
have to there's a lot more stricter control on their course books and teaching materials
so there will not be allowed anymore to use any foreign textbooks they need to
use textbooks that are in line with what the chinese government says
so this is also a big change on that front then there also be a lot more
consequences for legal and disciplinary violations for teachers so they be
punishment or removal of expat teachers from their jobs if they committed crimes
or were found to have used drugs mistreated students or undertaken religious education among other
violations so there's going to be a lot more stricter regulations on
yeah all their foreign teachers in china a lot more strict and also here a lot more surveillance so the new guidelines
they also require the establishment of a national information platform where
education institutions will be able to or they need to register
and report and search for information about foreign teachers so i think we're going to see that a lot more that every
foreign teacher is going to be in this database and yeah information is going to be
collected about them in this database basically there is more it's not the end of it yet
there will also be they're talking about establishing a credit system
where uh law abiding employees will be rewarded with convenient entry and exit
procedures for example while penalizing those who break the law
so um yeah if you're a good uh expat you get points if you're a bad
expat you will get a punishment very interesting right
there's also more requirements that all foreign teachers they must have no criminal record
uh infectious diseases or history of mental illness sexual harassment and
drug use which this is um common in a lot of other countries already
especially south korea you need to do drug tests here you need to provide a clean background check so this
is very similar nothing really new and i think this is also good um
then this was like this before already all foreign teachers they need to have at least a bachelor's degree a minimum
of two years of teaching experience and relevant language teaching qualifications so a tefl certificate or
a tesol certificate and then this is that what i already talked about that education institutions
they need to provide at least 20 training sessions for foreign staff on
chinese laws and teaching ethics before they take up employment
but there are no details yet about these training sessions if they're provided by
the government or also how long they are it just says 20 training sessions but
nobody really knows about this yet more in detail but this is what it looks like
for foreigners working in china so there's going to be a lot more
a lot more requirements a lot more surveillance a lot more heavy punishment heavier punishments if you uh break the
law or work illegally um and this is a big difference from when i
was there when i was working in china in 2012 2014 it was a lot more loose there
weren't that many laws regarding this and a lot of people were working illegally um a lot of people were just
working on tourist visas a lot of people did not have a tefl certificate they were faking tefls
or um so that those people who actually worked illegally at a school uh they would
sometimes there would be checks but usually the schools then would bribe those officials who checked the school
or i think sometimes even the officials would let them know in advance they were coming so that they could um send the
foreign teachers home and things like that so the chinese government is really trying to kind of um
put a stop to all of that uh because this industry is becoming so big now
um or has become so big now that um they just don't want it they just want it to work
um properly and not have any illegal things going on so that's one side
um so yeah and yes this is the end this is what i
wanted to share with you today and also i want to ask a question so regarding
let me just go back to just this um regarding all of this now you've
listened to this to these things that are happening do you think teaching in china is still
a good option after this ban or teaching for chinese esl companies and also teaching in china in person
do you think now after listening to all of this do you think teaching in china is still
a good option i really curi am you really curious about your opinions
um and what you think if you were interested in teaching in china before
but now after hearing all of this do you think it's still a good option to go and teach in china
hey brad ciao brett says there is a lot to think about
yes there is a lot to think about i feel the same way
there's a lot to think about
gwen says thank you so much this was incredibly informative oh i'm
glad so do you think teaching in china is still a good option or not
morgan says i think not really
juliana says i always do not think that this is a good option
yeah brett says still interested though yes i
mean china i think is still gonna be a big esl market after everything but you
definitely need to compromise you know if you really want to go there
you know are you open to dealing with these new things and if you're open if you're okay you
know with compromising and dealing with those all of those new things you're probably gonna be okay you're
gonna have a great time but if you're not on board with these additional
things now then probably china is not for you anymore
right gwen says i missed part of your life due to my wi-fi did you happen to cover how this impacts language schools
yeah um yes so probably these language schools what i was saying is that um they
uh those language schools that were profit for-profit organizations they now need
to register as non-profit under this new ban and um
that means the salaries for teachers will be significantly lower than what they are now
and probably the working hours will be very different and they need to provide all of these
additional trainings now for foreign teachers so maybe that will also deter
a lot of institutions from hiring foreigners but again having a foreign teacher in your school
um is very important for a lot of these english institutions because that's what chinese parents want
they want their children to be taught by native speakers um or english foreigners
basically so it's you know it's very hard to say
because it's still so fresh even though it's been a couple of months now but i think we can really not predict
this um how it's going to turn out and i might do another follow-up live
session about this topic in a couple of months from now um you know if there are any new
developments because also about this ban and these many new regulations what i was reading
that in august i think they were announcing all of this with um the
training um the credit system and all those new things and they were asking uh for the
opinion of the public what they were thinking before they actually put this
into um reality so um i don't know where they are in the
process if this has already been implemented but that's what they want and i'm pretty sure that if that's what they want they
will probably implement these things right yeah
exactly manual says yes if you want to follow the rules exactly
so i think um you know there's i've read so many articles of teachers who lived in china
there was this one girl i think she'd been in china for 10 years she taught at the school
but now after this band she and also because of kobe she just left went back home but she was
devastated because she loved living there but now it's it's just not she doesn't want to stay she's going
back home because of this new policy it's it's really sad
yep juliana says i'd love to teach in japan south korea and taiwan yeah so those are also places oh let me
just go over to the q a now um those are all places you know that are still very
stable um even though i'm very curious to see uh because south korea
i know because i live here is also very similar in terms of the competitiveness
for children here so i'm a lot of people were speculating that maybe korea will follow suit with
similar things that china is doing but i personally don't see it yet i don't think um that that's gonna happen in my
opinion but nobody expected that that was going to happen in china either so you you just can't know and i think we
just need to observe keep watching the situation and then go from there
carlos says i'm not interested in teaching in china but for those interested i think it is still a good opportunity why not yeah i agree
especially you know um this is always what i say people are sometimes too worried about going abroad to teach
but i mean if you don't like it you can always leave and come back home right so you can try it out
and if it's for you it's great and if it's not you can just go back home or you can go somewhere else like you don't
need to stay in this place right so and one year if you sign a contract
for one year that goes by really fast one year so
gwen says i predict once chinese families settle in with a new way of getting english classes the industry
will be back to booming in no time i would keep an eye on it for a couple months more at least yeah exactly that's
what i'm thinking but i've also read a lot of articles about um
now because this ban there is a huge uh esl black market
because the thing is this with all of these um chinese platforms
uh they connect the teacher with the student but the for example the student
and the student's family they only know those teachers by the first name so for example teacher linda in my case teacher
linda they don't know any other information they can't contact this teacher directly
and now because most of these teachers maybe don't work for this platform anymore they really want to get in touch with
the teacher and um you know just do they keep continuing with their english classes
like via zoom or skype um but they cannot get in touch with
that student uh with the teacher maybe uh because they don't uh they only
know the first name but also because you need to think about this there's no
facebook there's no twitter there's no youtube in china um
and what else there's no google in china all of this is blocked because the great firewall
and um so they're really isolated and there's no way even for getting in touch with
those teachers in america that's a big problem so those parents
are so eager because one teacher she was saying this happened from one day to another and she
had no opportunity to say goodbye to her students and she had a great relationship with her students and um
she was really sad because she couldn't even say goodbye to her students and for those kids
um a lot of those kids they really enjoy learning english with their teachers in
north america or wherever um and they want to continue doing that but because of all of these things they
can't even get in touch with each other so a lot of these articles were saying they interviewed these teachers and they
were saying oh if for any you know if you can read this uh teacher
so and so is out there waiting for you so please get in touch but they can't even do that
it's it's kind of crazy that's why china is so interesting and that's why i also was so interested in
china because it's very it's a very different um
country and system and everything because they have all their own things right they don't use facebook um
instagram all of those things they have their own facebook and it's just chinese people and then also wechat is like the
whatsapp uh for china so they were doing like wechat um
classes um oh and also if even if they had um these
black market esl english lessons there is even no way for the parents to pay the
teacher because paypal venmo all of those things don't exist in china you can't have a
venmo account in china so it's it doesn't even you couldn't even pay your teacher
because everything goes through chinese systems so it's very very difficult
um and also at the same time for foreigners to register like for wechat it's also
very difficult especially if you're not in china i don't think you can even register i'm not sure but also wechat
pay so it's just really like the great firewall is also making a stop to all of this and
blocking that so it's a big problem
here we have emmy who says hi so for non-native speakers isn't is it possible
anymore what about japan in this case yeah i mean i think um for non-native
speakers it is still possible but i just think for china we should probably wait and
see what happens in the next few months to be sure japan yes is great for non-native
speakers especially the jet program which also accepts non-native speakers
into their program so that's really great so i recommend maybe looking into japan
yeah yeah and quinces that is so sad that is really sad
okay and then i just want to mention this um 30 percent off one more time
in case somebody uh missed that but we have a 30 percent off discount
during our live session you can scan the qr code to get the discount or i just
shared this discounted link once again here so you can apply through that
and get your teflon t-cell certificate 30 off
and that's also an interesting thing about um teaching in china so when i was there in 2012 2014
a tefl certificate was not a requirement to teach english in china
it wasn't it was introduced a couple years later so now it is a requirement if you don't have a tefl or a tesol you
can't teach english in china so those are things that are changing all the time and that's why i always say it's
just good to have the certificate in your portfolio for things to change
also for korea in korea a tefl is not a requirement but what if you know one one
day they decide okay now let's make it a requirement because it gets too competitive um so it's um you know
better to have it okay gwen says i have a meeting now but i'm so glad to have had the time to
catch to catch you today linda a great life you always leave us with so much to think about oh thank you that's so sweet
have a great meeting it was good seeing you again it's been a while bye
awesome yeah so this was it today was very interesting
and like i said it's very um just ambiguous
lots of things to think about oh lots of things to think about um
and we just like i said we just need to observe keep watching the situation i'm gonna keep um
following it obviously keep talking to recruiters there teachers there to see
how this develops but um this is what it looks like at the moment
so
if there are any other questions do let me know we have a little bit more time for q a
um um
yes amy says that's just terrible news for me japan is still not fully opened to
foreign applications yeah it's a you know difficult time right now for
sure difficult time morgan says thanks for this opportunity to know more about china cheers yeah
thank you for joining and for sticking um through this live session today thank you so much
we do go live twice a week uh me usually this time on friday and then my colleague lisa who is a non-native
english speaker from russia she goes live usually on tuesdays and she also taught english in china
actually but now she's back in russia and she teaches mostly online so if you are a non-native english speaker
interested in either teaching abroad or teaching online specifically you should also check her out
she shares a lot of amazing content and it's actually her that got me into teaching online after one of her lives
when she talked about the different platforms to work for i found a great platform that really suited my needs and
preferences and i signed up and i've been teaching for them now for six months and i just reached 200
classes that i taught 200 a big milestone
because i don't do this full-time i do it just a couple of hours a week but it's been so much fun
so i highly recommend checking that out all right i think uh if there are no more questions i'm gonna say goodbye
soon i hope you enjoyed today's live session i hope you learned something um
you know and we're just gonna like i said we're just gonna observe and further investigate and see what's going
on uh thank you brett brett says it's great to keep up to date thank you linda sure
thank you so much for being here every week it's great juliana thank you so much it's
informative and great video i'm glad i'm glad you find it
informative cool okay well now it's the one hour mark we've been
live for one hour this is usually um around the time where we say goodbye so thank you guys so much for watching i'll
be here again next week same time same place please do like and
subscribe if you haven't yet do check out that 30 off discount it's in the
comments if you're listening to this as a podcast it is in the podcast description as well
have a lovely weekend thank you so much for watching today and i hope to see you again
next week and stay happy stay healthy and then i'm gonna say bye bye
thank you guys bye bye
