JISHOU, HUNAN — If you have not caught on by now, there is a huge demand for native English-speaking teachers worldwide. That demand is especially acute here in China.

Here’s why. Every student has to take English while in middle and high school. College students have to pass an English competency test in order to earn a four-year degree and/or obtain a decent white-collar job.

Yikes! That’s a lot of students, and consequently there’s an enormous demand for English teachers. You have no idea.

To teach here as a “foreign expert,” you only need to show you have a bachelor’s or higher degree and a willingness to teach. There are hundreds of these jobs advertised every day on hundreds of websites.

I signed up with one website several months ago, www.seriousteachers.org. At the time, I was in the States and I got no offers. Once I changed my location to China and my availability to “immediate,” I started getting at least four job offers a day!

Of course, I turned them all down, since I am under contract here. And I had to pull out of the email notification service, or I’d be spending all my time saying, “not now, thanks,” to all these desperate employers.

It’s not just the government schools and universities that need English teachers. The English language graduation requirement has spawned an entire industry here of private English academies and tutors, catering to middle- and upper-class parents who believe the investment will ensure their children decent jobs in the future.

Most of these academies are in the big cities, but every school in every province needs English instructors, so I have been surprised each day at finding Americans, Canadians, Brits, Ozzies and Kiwis spread thinly across the landscape.

At last count, there are four of us here in Jishou. I discovered a blogger today in Huaihua, a city south of here on the rail line, who teaches English as a volunteer at a high school. No doubt there are others “hiding” in other nearby towns.

Back in the US of A, our government has identified Chinese as one of the key languages to be taught in schools. Yet, I cannot foresee the kind of concerted, almost desperate effort to import the tens of thousands of Mandarin speakers it would take to staff the nation’s schools.

Not to mention the near-impossible task of convincing students and parents that it would be necessary to learn Chinese, much less any other language. US citizens figure the rest of the world should just speak ‘Murrican, dammit, and that includes all those Spanish-speaking immigrants, too.

Witness the efforts by various state legislatures and Congressional delegates to make English the “official language” of the USA. These measures have, fortunately, all failed, and would in any event be window-dressing. Practically speaking, if you’re in business, your products and signage have to be bilingual in many areas, or you’ll lose all the Spanish-speaking customers.

China is slowly becoming bilingual in much the same way. To appeal to foreign investors, many cities and businesses in those cities (including remote Jishou) have signs in Chinese and English. Only a fraction of the populace can read, much less speak English now, but if the English requirement remains in place for many more years, it’s conceivable a tourist will find someone in the tiniest town who can manage enough English to be helpful.

In the meantime, I aim to learn Chinese.

September 22nd, 2008 | Tags: China, chinese, english requirement, teaching | Category: China, Commentary, Teaching English | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL