James Mcdougall
- 2012-10-22
RE: Anonymous
No, I've never worked for the corporate schools.
Many thanks,
englishgibson
- 2012-10-19
Anonymous, have you ever worked at EF Corporate anywhere? I also post a lot and I know what I am talking about :WINK
Cheers and beers
anonymous
- 2012-10-18
James McDougall I noticed you post about EF Franchise schools alot, have you ever worked for a Corporate school in Beijing, Shenzen, Guangzhou, or Shanghai?
englishgibson
- 2012-10-18
The suggestion of anonymous that EF Corporate Guangzhou depends on "parents money" is hilarious. Further more, the poster's delusive approach, in which s/he doesn't mention much or anything about business classes, demonstrates how little s/he knows about the actual EF Corporate (program).
My experiences with the company dates way back, although I know that they have a few Business courses out of which some come with tailored programs from EF Corporate Shanghai and some are taught out of the Market Leader books. Anonymous interestingly neither has mentioned much or anything on the topic of EF Corporate Guangzhou's involvement in the business program correlated with the Corporate Headquarters nor has he said anything about how the Guangzhou's center deals with its business cliental.
So, it's quite obvious the poster is a fake of enormous proportions. All readers ought to be aware of loud EF dogs that bark so desperately.
Conclusively, this is about utter lack of hope that both the EF and EF Corporate have to endure.
Cheers and beers to more qualified and experienced Guangzhou EF business customers than their EF business teachers :LOL
James Mcdougall
- 2012-10-17
Written very eloquently if I must say so myself. It's almost as if EF hired your themselves to post this fabricated nonsense. You have written it in such a positive format, that it's impossible to negate or comprehend the authenticity of this post. Moreover, you have posted anonymously, which raised the questions as to weather you are from Shanghai HQ, as the recruitment applications may be a little lower this year. Unfortunately for EF, Google is not allowed to block or censor topics and material in Europe or the USA, by way of international constitutions. You may well have blocked these sites or this information within China itself, but it does not matter, as the truth is starting to come out. I for one, have never seen so many negative posts about one single multinational company in my entire life. EF has to realise that it operates within an extremely competitive market, and from a business analyst point of view. They do not have the competitive advantage. They work on lies, deceit and the fact that Chinese consumers are not information savvy, as opposed to their western counterparts. Many of the customers are from poorer to rich backgrounds. Therefore they are not educated enough to make well informed decisions. Moreover, there is an issue with national culture, whereby people prefer to be told what to do, as opposed to thinking outside the box and being outspoken, which is what is promoted in the west as being something positive.
I would seriously like to ask you why you have decided to stick up for EF Guangzhou as I am sure they paid you a low salary, gave you a shitty apartment and screwed you over in many ways. The fact is that EF is operating an international job market scam and they know it. They are writing job adverts that are indescribably different from the actual duties involved in the job role. This is against HR policies and blatantly misleading/false representation of advertising. It is misleading teachers into a job role that is not suited for anyone who is not a complete sadist. As a former EF worker myself. I can also say that the posts included are well informed and include inside facts that only someone at EF would know about. Hence I can confirm the authenticity of the posts a genuine and factual experiences.
Posts about EF Corporate are getting a bit old now and some seem uninformed.
I am going to break EF corporate down into a pros and cons list. I worked for EF Guangzhou corporate for a year from Spring 2011-Spring 2012
PROS:
In terms of school resources, they have online materials and books that are readily available. It is all EF’s curriculum, but I found it quite easy to make activities from the materials using grammar points, or vocabulary from the unit. It takes some more time in terms of lesson planning, but former teachers have left loads of materials on the computers and most of them are quite good. You could just teach from the EF book, as parents are paying for the EF curriculum if you want to take the easy route. I just needed to make things a bit more fun.
You have a foreign boss. The DOS is your go to when it comes to problems. Some are better than others and will take up the issues with the center manager. I worked for a crazy woman for a year in Seoul and had to put up with her craziness since she was the owner/manager.
Once you get comfortable with the courses teaching becomes easy. You can recycle so much material so lesson planning is cut in half.
Time off – especially if you have Monday and Tuesday off. Saturdays and Sundays are long days, but you get big gaps between classes (usually). I had Mon/Tues off and then did not have to be at school on Wednesday until 3 or 4pm, which gives you time to get away for the weekend.
I made a large group of friends, who were all in the same boat. Yes we bitched about work but who doesn’t? I met some great friends out there and during time off we took some fun trips.
Travel! After my contract I spent a month traveling through western China. All the hassle was worth it.
CONS
Summer course and winter course are a bit daunting. You do get the afternoon or evening off a few days a week, but your workload goes through the roof. They do have materials and you just “follow the given lesson plan” which is what I did. If that’s what EF wants you to do, then just do it as it saves you time and energy and they look stupid if the lesson plans are horrible (which they usually are for winter and summer course).
The Chinese CR’s (customer relations) are annoying and clueless. They will do all they can to keep kids in class and parents paying. If a child is too low for a class, they don’t care. They will do all they can so the student won’t have to move down and be shamed or they leave and EF loses money. They will also ask you to focus all your time on a struggling child, while completely ignoring other students. Just ignore them, and smile and say you’ll do your best but then totally disregard what they say, they are not the teacher, you are.
Staff training sessions are horrible. When I was there from 2011-2012 they were making major testing changes and book changes and no one in management seemed to know how to implement the change correctly.
International schools pay more and have better hours, but you need higher qualifications. Everyone has to start somewhere.