If you’re interested in travel & speak fluent English, I have heard that is it possible to make excellent money teaching English, even without any kind of credentials. I personally only tutor 1 child because it is all I have time for, but I make about 125 RMB per hour, which translates to about $20 US. While my pay is not great (for the US), I have heard that if you get a group of 8 or so kids together & teach them in bulk, you can make upwards of 800 RMB per hour (~$127 US). This would also be tax free. Not quite on par with the high-end college-educated call girl, but I’m guessing most of us aren’t suited to be one of those.
I always thought it’d be cool to pair this offer (guaranteed English teaching job in the country of Georgia, with housing, airfare, and stipend) with working on some kind of internet business. One teach-in-Georgia blogger (IIRC) wrote something like “I’ve got so much free time, but the government won’t let me work any additional jobs!”
Oh yeah, and the Georgian visa laws are really nice. And things are probably pretty cheap there.
There’s also Startup Chile--$40K if your startup moves to Chile, IIRC.
I am not convinced that this is morally superior to selling opium. This depends critically on how much use the marginal student actually gets out of English.
Now SAT tutoring, that is certainly morally inferior to selling opium. (Inferior, not equal, for obvious utility reasons.)
One thing I can tell you is that if a child has a native English speaker teaching them, their English is pretty much guaranteed to be better than if they don’t. At many schools, Chinese teachers who have never been outside of China will be the ones teaching the kids English—their English is horrible & often they will be punishing the children for getting something “wrong” when they are more likely than not the ones mistaken.
Yeah, but China is like backwards land where all of the things you should do are all of the things that are illegal. For example, it is illegal to bring life-saving medicine into China, illegal to vaccinate infants against diseases which are likely to kill them, illegal to tell the truth about political injustices, etc.
Plenty of people are doing things of questionable legality in China and not getting in trouble, the government may or may not turn a blind eye depending of the issue, and of whether you’re Chinese or a foreigner (a common complaint of foreigners trying to start businesses in China is having to deal with regulations that their local competitors don’t seem to comply with). Selling drugs to kids would be an extremely stupid move, but as far as I know the government used to close it’s eyes to foreigners selling drugs to each other (though that was pre-olympics, I wouldn’t be surprised if they cleaned things up since then).
Selling English tutoring to kids shouldn’t be that risky (unless you’re sleeping with them, or converting them to Christianity, or black, or something—or unless there’s a big story in the news about some evil foreigner abusing his position as a tutor to sleep with his students, sell drugs and convert them to Christianity).
I did give lessons in China, but as far as I know it was legal (or in the grey area).
If you’re interested in travel & speak fluent English, I have heard that is it possible to make excellent money teaching English, even without any kind of credentials. I personally only tutor 1 child because it is all I have time for, but I make about 125 RMB per hour, which translates to about $20 US. While my pay is not great (for the US), I have heard that if you get a group of 8 or so kids together & teach them in bulk, you can make upwards of 800 RMB per hour (~$127 US). This would also be tax free. Not quite on par with the high-end college-educated call girl, but I’m guessing most of us aren’t suited to be one of those.
I always thought it’d be cool to pair this offer (guaranteed English teaching job in the country of Georgia, with housing, airfare, and stipend) with working on some kind of internet business. One teach-in-Georgia blogger (IIRC) wrote something like “I’ve got so much free time, but the government won’t let me work any additional jobs!”
Oh yeah, and the Georgian visa laws are really nice. And things are probably pretty cheap there.
There’s also Startup Chile--$40K if your startup moves to Chile, IIRC.
I am not convinced that this is morally superior to selling opium. This depends critically on how much use the marginal student actually gets out of English.
Now SAT tutoring, that is certainly morally inferior to selling opium. (Inferior, not equal, for obvious utility reasons.)
...and how much utility people actually get out of opium.
One thing I can tell you is that if a child has a native English speaker teaching them, their English is pretty much guaranteed to be better than if they don’t. At many schools, Chinese teachers who have never been outside of China will be the ones teaching the kids English—their English is horrible & often they will be punishing the children for getting something “wrong” when they are more likely than not the ones mistaken.
Er, that seems pretty massive to me. Access to the English internet by itself seems worthwhile.
Yvain taught english in Japan with minimal/no certification and blogged about it. It seemed to work pretty well.
Did he ever write about what happened in Japan? It just seems to stop after he gets the job.
At any rate, the teaching English market has become more competitive since 2006.
Isn’t that illegal?
Yeah, but China is like backwards land where all of the things you should do are all of the things that are illegal. For example, it is illegal to bring life-saving medicine into China, illegal to vaccinate infants against diseases which are likely to kill them, illegal to tell the truth about political injustices, etc.
There’s a widespread gray market for English tutoring in Asia and the South Pacific.
How concerned should one be about doing something of questionable legality in China? My prior for this is not to go near it with a ten foot pole.
Plenty of people are doing things of questionable legality in China and not getting in trouble, the government may or may not turn a blind eye depending of the issue, and of whether you’re Chinese or a foreigner (a common complaint of foreigners trying to start businesses in China is having to deal with regulations that their local competitors don’t seem to comply with). Selling drugs to kids would be an extremely stupid move, but as far as I know the government used to close it’s eyes to foreigners selling drugs to each other (though that was pre-olympics, I wouldn’t be surprised if they cleaned things up since then).
Selling English tutoring to kids shouldn’t be that risky (unless you’re sleeping with them, or converting them to Christianity, or black, or something—or unless there’s a big story in the news about some evil foreigner abusing his position as a tutor to sleep with his students, sell drugs and convert them to Christianity).
I did give lessons in China, but as far as I know it was legal (or in the grey area).
If there’s enough interest to get this throwaway five upvotes I’ll do a discussion article on teaching English in Shanghai.
Talk about the dating situation, please?