Hello people, if you want to contact me about anything, don't hesitate to leave a comment on one of my posts. If it's too important or secret, you can
email me
or you can
follow me on twitter
or you can
become a fan of my site on facebook
Also subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking on the scroll down menu named posts on the top right of the screen. Then select the option which says atom. On the next page it will tell you how to subscribe! Do it now. I don't post often, and when I do, it will pop up on your screen and it will be a treat! Do it now!
Copyright Sammy Corfield 2011. Powered by Blogger.
3 comments:
Hi Sammy,
This is coming from a hopeful ESL teacher in China (looking to start Sep 2015). I was really hoping you could help out a fellow young-person-in-need, as I have in fact been in contact with the very same person that found you your position at NDI - Arnold Vis.
As I'm sure you know there is an increasing number of scams running for this stuff in China now. I was hoping you could just tell me how the whole experience of your teaching in China was - was Arnold reliable and how involved was he? Did he ask for/claim any money? Was Visa stuff and everything okay? If you can let me know how it all went it would be a huge help to me :). Thanks for your great articles, keep writing!!
James
Hi james, glad to hear from you, I accepted your friend request on linked in although I didn't read your message here on my blog until just now, so apologies for the slight delay. I don't check my blog comments as often as I should.
Anyway, I great to hear your coming to China to teach ESL, China needs as many good ESL teachers as it can get. I'm in a bit of a rush at the moment so I can only answer your questions briefly, if you have any more questions, just email me.
Arnold Vis is legitimate, the only money he charged me was a refundable deposit of 180 pounds which was returned to me after I'd been working at NDI for three months without running away. He gets paid by the Chinese schools for reliable esl teachers so if they quit before three months, they don't pay him so I think the deposit is fair enough. He charges a lot for his orientation classes which I didn't attend and couldnt imagine why on earth anyone does. You learn everything you need to know when you get here anyway. The visa stuff was tedious, you can read about that here, http://sammysgenericblog.blogspot.jp/2012/11/finding-job-placement-teaching-english.html but it wasn't Arnold's fault, it was down to the incompetance of the school, NDI whose staff were so impatient to get me out there, they applied before they had my documents and got me rejected. Second time lucky, I was supposed to be working in Wuhan but they sent me to Zhengzhou. I recomend working for a university to bypass this nonsense but you might have to work a year in a training school like NDI as i did to get enough experience for a uni job. Any, have to go now, It all went very well really. I'm still here so, can't complain. Choose a nice city. I didn't now I'm stuck in smoggy Zhengzhou.
Hi Sammy, Thanks for accepting my linkedin and your response. That's extremely helpful :). I'll be sure to keep the city of choice in mind!
James
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment! I love hearing from people who take the time to read my ramblings! I wont even make you do one of those annoying "type the letters you see" things! Promise!!!