My experience as a foreign teacher in China
2015-10-21Alicja
Hello!
My name is Alicja and Im an English teacher at Mei Shan Middle School in Shenzhen. I was born in Poland, a cold country next to Germany, but live in England now.
I first came to China in March 2013. I taught English in a small Chinese town called Pingyang, in Zhejiang province. This was a very small town and I was one of the four foreign teachers who worked there. The children I taught were 5-14 years old. We had a lot of fun together and played many games during our English classes.
I also met my boyfriend Nick in China. He teaches English in Beihuan Middle School.
In September 2014 I went to teach in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I liked it a lot. The weather was beautiful and people were very friendly. I bought a scooter (小型摩托車) and drove all around the city to teach in different small language schools.
Two months later, in November, I came to Shenzhen. It was a big surprise as it is one of the biggest cities I have ever been too. Whats most surprising about it is that, barely 40 years ago, it was a small fishing village. Its growing so fast! There are over 12,000,000 people in Shenzhen and “only” 8,500,000 people in London.
Last year I was a teacher at Yi Tian Primary school for a year, and taught English to young students in grades 1-3. The classes were very big! On average, there were 50 students in the classroom!
I think Chinese children study very hard. They always have additional classes after school and study until late. They can also draw beautiful pictures and are very good at maths!
This year I teach at Mei Shan Middle School in Shenzhen and I like it a lot!
The English class size is much smaller, 25 students on average, which gives oral English teachers more time to focus on individual students and help them with their listening and speaking skills.
We always play a lot of games during English class and have a lot of fun!
I think learning English becomes easier when classes are fun!