Teaching French in China

[mpin]

I received a message today and which tells it seems possible to teach French in China, but there are less jobs. I think the best for me would be to find a job as an English teacher (easier) and once in the country (Taiwan or China) try to find students interested in French private lessons. I have looked on the Web to try to find job offers for French teachers. So far, I have only found offers for a French international school which requires qualifications I do not have since I have no teaching diploma. Thank you for your very useful comments. :-)

[Peter Greer]

It will be very difficult for you to find a French teaching job in China or anywhere for that matter if you have no qualifications. Best bet would be to teach English like you mentioned and then source private students that would like to learn French.

If you are comfortable teaching English, then is there really a need to teach French? I mean, there's plenty of English teaching jobs available, so I think you will have no time to teach French.

[mycolumbus]

Even here in Japan there are very few French teaching jobs. A friend of mine from Switzerland came to Japan and started to teach English. Then after a year or so, she slowly started to accumulate some German classes.

Best to forget the French teaching idea until you arrive to the country. Just don't rely or get your hopes up on teaching French.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by Peter Greer

If you are comfortable teaching English, then is there really a need to teach French? I mean, there's plenty of English teaching jobs available, so I think you will have no time to teach French.

I don't think that the OP is restricting him or herself to jobs teaching French unreasonably. In fact, the OP's original posts on this forum were regarding the possibility of teaching English as a foreign language.

Most likely this new question has arisen as a result of my pointing out that in order to get a legal job teaching English in Taiwan, and China also in the strict sense of the law (although China can be a bit more variable), the teacher would need to be a native speaker of the language. Afterall, there are already plenty of second language learners in both Taiwan and China who can teach English, namely local Chinese teachers.

I went on to suggest that OP investigate the possibility of teaching whatever language it was that was his or her native tongue and it appears that this language may be French.

I don't have a lot of information about the French teaching market in either China nor Taiwan, suffice to say that it is likely to be very restricted. The fact that the OP doesn't have teaching qualifications is going to make it all the more difficult. An ability in Mandarin may help.

I would think that your best bet in finding work in your situation would be some of the big private institutions that teach other languages in addition to English. I assume that searching the internet in French may help to turn up some leads in this respect.

So, I don't expect that the job search will be easy, but at least once you secure something you can be legal.