Volunteer in China

Volunteer Feedback

Here are some of the emails we have received from volunteers about their experiences in China.


China's main problem in foreign language education is the manner in which foreign languages are taught - students are often taught to read and write excellent English but rarely get any oral practice. As a result English teachers graduate from university speaking poor English and mispronouncing most words and passing along their mistakes to their students. So all the other English teachers and I certainly felt that our presence was needed to expose both the teachers and the students to "real" English. During my 4 months with the kids, I definitely felt their English improved, but of course there are limitations to what you can teach children in only 4 months. However, in addition to the linguistic aspects I also feel that the opportunity for the children to be around and interact with a foreigner is an important educational experience in terms of cultural exchange and awareness of the world around them.

Maria Hole

'My expectations were exceeded.'
'...feedback from the students, watching them become more confident, more relaxed, and have more fun in the classroom with each passing week (had the greatest impact). Although their reading and writing skills were more than adequate, they were not comfortable speaking English and understandably shy and tentative, but I saw steady improvement.'

Harvey Leve

Kids aged 10 to 14 and they have 90 in some classes! Others are struggling with 40-45. How you can work with them is one I can’t figure out. They also see them once a week for a 45minute session. What could they possibly learn? The interesting thing is these kids are very well behaved (in our classes) some are very interested and others just go off somewhere in their own world. The knowledge of English varies widely. In general they can all read English since they have studied it since grade 3 or so. Their Romanized alphabet called Pinyin allows them to sound out any word. When you listen to them read you are led to believe their knowledge of English is very high. However, for most, their comprehension from reading is low and their comprehension of the spoken language is very low. They have been taught using a workbook and an audio tape with many workbook style exercises but they never get a chance to speak except is a unison sing song chant. They experience a great deal of difficulty with spoken English without a written backup. This makes teaching English Conversation a challenge. How to wean them away from their textbook workbook to creative individual conversation when there are 20 plus in a class will require some inventive ideas. They all give each other the answers in the classroom so an individual will not be embarrassed. To get them to try on their own is going to be the key.

Doug and Chris

Teaching has been both more challenging and more rewarding than I ever could have imagined. I am teaching mostly Junior 1's and 2's, so my students are around 13-14 years old. They are, for the most part, totally enthusiasic about learning English. They really participate in class, and we have a lot of fun together.

Elizabeth Willmore

Their school schedule is gut wrenching and would provoke a revolution in either Canada or the U.K. Classes begin at 7:20 A.M. The kids who live in the school get up at 6am every morning.There are about 700 students who live in the school during the week and go home "weekends." We even hear basketballs as early as 5:30 some mornings - when the "we love basketball" group tries to get a few shots in before breakfast.In any case their classes are 40 minutes long and they have a 10 minute break in-between during which time some students prepare the classroom for the next teacher by cleaning the blackboards etc. There's a 20 minute break at around 10pm when the whole school goes out to go an exercise drill which is more arobics rather than traditional Ti-Chi.

Frank Vukovich