Cal poly tesol Alumni International
Below are excerpts from recent graduates of the Cal Poly TESOL program. Responses have been edited for clarity.
Alex thomas
I graduated in June 2016 and since then I've spent all but seven months outside of the US, traveling, studying, and working.
How are you currently using your TESOL certification?
I used it to get a job teaching English in Kunming, China. I just finished an Indonesian language and culture program in Indonesia, and while there I taught English and helped to create English learning materials for a university.
What are the benefits of getting certified in a university rather than online?
It depends on the job you're applying to, but I think there are two main benefits. The first is that your credentials are seen as more legitimate because your university's name is attached. The second is that, in virtually all cases, you'll have had real hands-on experience teaching, which is incredibly valuable for becoming comfortable in the classroom.
What surprised you most about working in the TESOL field?
I spoke with some Koreans recently who told me that in Korea, foreign English teachers must be certified and usually have to have teaching experience to get any kind of a good job. In fact, most adult Koreans nowadays prefer to learn from other Koreans because they have the same background and can more easily make connections to the student's native language. However, There are many places that still don't care about your credentials.
In China, the norm is slowly shifting in that direction. My school required a letter of recommendation, one year experience, and a university teaching certificate. Many schools aren't quite so strict, but the government is putting pressure on schools to hire more qualified foreign teachers.
In Indonesia, I was offered a job because I was a native speaker. My job was teaching an intensive TOEFL prep course to masters' students. All they wanted was for me to lead speaking sessions once a week with my own curriculum, and for that I was paid a wage that was ludicrously high compared to local salaries.
In short, I had no idea that there was so much variation in what was expected of the foreign teachers. I have the sense that the field will slowly shift toward the Korean model, and the unskilled teachers will be left behind.
What are some of the challenges?
I've taught only adults so far, so I haven't yet had to deal with much classroom management. The biggest challenge so far has got to be how some schools will move your schedule around or give you extra students with no forethought. Sometimes 25 students will show up, sometimes 15. You have to be able to think on your feet and be ready to alter your lessons on the fly -- and sometimes the students are just going to be bored.
My students in Indonesia were taking English classes six hours a day, six days a week. My listening and speaking sessions were on Friday afternoons, so it was often a challenge to get everybody's attention. I had no idea which students were going to attend and which were going to skip before I arrived. The result was that I learned how to come up with a general topic for the day, and then modify it based on who was there and how interested they were.
What has been the best part of working in TESOL?
My favorite hobby is learning languages. Studying TESOL has given me the opportunity to kind of build my life around this hobby. Now that I've built up quite a few teaching experiences in several different countries (along with other skills!) I feel confident in being able to find some kind of job wherever I want.
I've also experienced personal growth from studying TESOL. I'm much more comfortable speaking in public than I used to be, and I'm better at empathizing with others. As a teacher, you constantly have to think about how you and your lesson are perceived by the students. Developing that skill of self-monitoring and self-awareness is beneficial to whatever you decide to do.
Difficulties of living in China
Although I've only been in this job for two months, I've visited China five or six times previously and been able to cover lots of ground. In total I've probably spent seven or eight months here. I wanted to mention that China, especially in the cities, is very safe. Public space is kind of corralled and guided in ways that prevent the problems you might imagine when you think of the huge population.
The pollution is a real thing but efforts are being made to control it. Some days it's perfectly clear, other days it really is like a thick fog. In my experience it's regularly pretty bad in Chengdu, while here in Kunming at its worst it's comparable to the kind of distant haze you see over the Bay Area or LA from a distance. The only time I visited Beijing there were clear blue skies, and out in the northwestern provinces the air quality is also excellent.
The Internet is slower and filtered, as you're probably aware. Most Chinese people have no idea what YouTube or Skype are, though most have heard of Facebook and Instagram. I pay about eight dollars a month for a VPN that gives me access to the unblocked Internet. This is not illegal but there's always the chance that the VPN will be blocked.
Difficulties of living in Indonesia
I lived in Yogyakarta for ten months and briefly visited Bali, Surabaya, and Semarang. Southeast Asia is more hectic than China by a large degree. I was able to get used to this and enjoyed that culture very much. I experienced a moderate earthquake and, later that month, a volcanic eruption that spread ash all over the city. There is always a slight danger from the traffic, as the streets are in poor condition and the roads are crowded--though nobody drives much faster than 20mph in the city.
Language difficulties
Indonesia has a higher overall level of English. I would say most university students in Indonesia are comfortable with English to a large extent, though of course individuals vary. In China, most people are very shy about any English they have, to the extent that when you go into a restaurant the staff might do a little shuffle of "you speak to the foreigner, I don't know any English."
Indonesian is very easy for English speakers in several syntactic and phonological aspects. Most "advanced" words are direct loans from English. I saw a translated book by Max Weber called Etika Protestan dan Semangat Kapitalisme. It took me about eight months of regular self-study to gain enough ability to take the advanced university course taught exclusively in Indonesian. It took me at least six months of being in-country before I was able to easily conduct all my day-to-day activities and understand most of what I heard around me. In other cities many people use regional languages more than they do in Yogyakarta, so that would present an additional challenge.
Knowing zero Mandarin in China is likely to strongly affect your impression of the country and greatly restrict what you feel comfortable doing. It is quite intimidating to be illiterate in a new environment and very isolating to feel that you can't communicate with others. Despite that, many people live and work in China with virtually no Chinese, relying on locals to do everything for them. This is easier in more cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai and Beijing. I began studying Mandarin at the start of 2015 and dabbled in it for a year or so before taking two classes at Cal Poly. Since then I've barely gone a day without using it in some way--even in Indonesia I regularly spoke with Chinese exchange students. China has many, many regional languages and dialects but virtually everyone has the ability to speak Mandarin to some extent.
Professional requirements/visa requirements
I was regularly offered under-the-table teaching jobs in Indonesia simply by virtue of being American. When I was offered the position at the university I asked if it was okay to work on my student visa and was told yes--this was patently false but I had plausible deniability and knew that I was unlikely to run into any legal trouble if I just did my work on campus. There would likely have been no problems at other institutions. It was not particularly seen as an asset that I had a background in linguistics and TESOL. They were going to hire me anyway and it was just a bonus to them that I'd done it before. I was paid about $25 per 90-minute class.
In China, teachers are required to have a clean criminal record, a university diploma, and some form of a TESOL certificate. Schools that are prepared to hire foreigners know this and will work with the foreigner to get all these documents through the extensive red tape of authentication and verification. Anyone actually going to China is welcome to contact me for advice on this process. Teachers willing to work under the table are usually offered rather staggering sums, as much as $30 or $40 per 45-minute class (you can eat well for a week on $40). However, the risk of being caught, fined, and deported is much larger, and I personally won't risk it. My work visa and contract has a clause for me taking on side jobs with my boss's permission, which he has granted for me to give test prep lessons for college students.
Speaking of test prep, the last thing I will mention is that knowledge of IELTS or TOEFL testing is extremely valuable. High school and university students in China are getting richer and richer, and they are prepared to part with hundreds of dollars for a native speaker to guide them through these tests. However I recently spoke with some Korean teachers who said that urban Korean students now prefer to take classes with native Koreans who have scored highly, as they can explain more efficiently in the student's native language. A trend to watch out for.