Surely, but from what little I know of Shanghai the inference that going out and learning English on your own without spending great effort towards keeping this secret is a bad idea or discourage wouldn’t be such a far-fetched one.
So in terms of numbers, the public school students that have to learn English at school would greatly outnumber the individual adults who just want to learn English but can’t do it without a teacher of some kind.
I also suspect that the latter would not be counted as a “demand for personnel”, and that most of it would happen in the shadows such that we’d be unlikely to hear about it.
Probably. I’m not sure how large a market it is, though.
The obvious problem is that of finding teachers, or for teachers to find students. A large public website might attract too much government attention. Word-of-mouth friend-knows-someone methods alone sound like each case would be isolated, and so we probably wouldn’t hear about it.
A large public website might attract too much government attention.
Host it off-shore. Hell, you can even live in another country while teaching Chinese people English. I’ve heard of people who do that, though it’s harder to make a living that way than teaching in person.
Surely there are adult students of English?
Surely, but from what little I know of Shanghai the inference that going out and learning English on your own without spending great effort towards keeping this secret is a bad idea or discourage wouldn’t be such a far-fetched one.
So in terms of numbers, the public school students that have to learn English at school would greatly outnumber the individual adults who just want to learn English but can’t do it without a teacher of some kind.
I also suspect that the latter would not be counted as a “demand for personnel”, and that most of it would happen in the shadows such that we’d be unlikely to hear about it.
Given the (apparent) desire for Shanghaiese to keep it secret, wouldn’t an at-home method of learning English (e.g. over Skype) be perfect?
Probably. I’m not sure how large a market it is, though.
The obvious problem is that of finding teachers, or for teachers to find students. A large public website might attract too much government attention. Word-of-mouth friend-knows-someone methods alone sound like each case would be isolated, and so we probably wouldn’t hear about it.
Host it off-shore. Hell, you can even live in another country while teaching Chinese people English. I’ve heard of people who do that, though it’s harder to make a living that way than teaching in person.