Are you an English teacher?

Many foreigners are asked this question when they live in Wuxi. There seem to be two occupations for expats here - teacher or engineer. But, within the teaching community, there is a lot of diversity - there are the teachers who have a teaching qualification and generally teach in the international schools, then there are those that have made English teaching their career and have university degrees with further studies into language. There are also those who see English teaching as a good way to see the world and have completed a TEFOL course online, which qualifies them to work in universities, for English language companies or in some schools.

'Real' teachers!

A standard conversation with a taxi driver goes like this ......

Driver - "You are American?"

Me - "No, I am Australian."

Driver - "What do you do?"

Me - "I am a teacher."

Driver (with eyes lit up) - "Ah, you are English teacher?" (said in English)

Me - "No, I work at EtonHouse international school, I am an international teacher."

Driver - look of confusion.

Me - "I teach everything."

Driver - still looks confused.

Me - "I teach everything, Maths, science, history, English." (frantically using the phrase book as I don't know most of those words).

Driver - "Ah, you are English teacher!"

Me - "I give up." (in English).

Are you an English teacher?

But the category I want to write about are the native Chinese people who teach English. My reason for writing about this is that I met a woman in the elevator last night who chattered away to me, despite me telling her that I didn't understand. Then she asked, "Are you an English teacher?" and we had a similar conversation to the one above, but in broken English and broken Chinese. As she got out of the elevator, she said, "I knew you were an English teacher because I am an English teacher too, and we work very late" (it was 9.00pm and she thought I was coming home from work, not dumplings, red wine and a massage!).

National Teacher of the Year awards in Wuxi

This conversation prompted me to think about a train journey I shared with a Chinese man a few months ago, on my first visit to Huang Shan. When you spend the entire night in close confines on a train, you have the opportunity to converse with some very interesting people. The man I happened to share a cabin with on this trip spoke to me in fairly good English and we had the usual small talk which eventually led to the inevitable question - "Are you an English teacher?" The conversation continued (he actually understood that I was a 'real' teacher!) and then he revealed that he used to be a high school English teacher. We continued chatting and then he burst out with "I'm just so excited to meet you because I have never spoken to a foreigner before!" It was an amazing story - he had taught himself English and then gone on to teach English for 15 years, never once having spoken to a native English speaker.

I wonder how many of these students' English teachers have never spoken to a native speaker before?

No wonder that many Chinese people's English is limited to "Hello!", "You are welcome!" and "Please wait a moment." Perhaps I could teach Chinese when I return to Australia?