Firstly, thank you for such informative input on how Chinese university English teaching is conducted. My problem with focusing on university teaching is that we all know the majority of ESL teaching is done prior to university and so conversation classes to hone ability are often all that's required as an actual language teacher like myself has already laid the foundation of the students understanding of the English language. Especially in China, where corruption is rife, students can bribe teachers or deans to give them passing scores fir their university modules... But they cannot do this with international exams such as IELTS or ESOL as the exams are marked anonymously by an outside body. Although I will concede that perhaps oral examiners can be influenced, but this is why I believe all examiners should be external native speakers who have had no prior contact with the candidate.

I'm a little hesitant to focus on Chinese university teaching, as it is only a small slice of the wider ESL world and therefore offers only a snapshot of what real ESL teaching is. My advanced adult classes focus mainly on discussion and fine tuning their grammar awareness, the hard work is before that, at A2-B2 level when students acquire the majority of grammar awareness. A B2 level of English is often the minimum requirement for English speaking universities, which means the vast majority of English acquisition has happened prior to beginning university.

This is why I say that TCs and private schools do have benefits for ESL learners. The classes are smaller than in state schools wo individual learners get more teacher time and teachers can focus their classes on individual learning styles. It also eliminates the non-native speaker problems of pronunciation that very often arise from state school teachers. The problem for ne is the hiring of teachers purely to make up numbers, not because they are qualified teachers who care about their students. If the process of hiring was better and more regulated then half the problems you find in Chinese TCs would disappear over night. If China had no option of hiring under qualified tourist-teachers and could only hire those of us who are serious about the profession, they would be unable to get away with a lot of the substandard practices they have in place.

For example, in Europe good private schools stringently background check their teachers and only hire teachers who are qualified. They focus on teaching up the CEFR scale and offer exam courses to students. My current school also works closely with the local high schools to offer KET,PET&FCE For Schools exams (for which I am one of the oral examiners). They offer scholarship places to students from low income families and each student is given individual needs assessment at continuing points throughout the academic year. This is a much better and professional set up to anything I saw in China, however that doesn't mean that it couldn't work in China. It would just mean cutting through an awful lot of red tape. I spent two years teaching in this manner at TCs; it was difficult and it got me in trouble quite often, but I still did it as that is my responsibility as a teacher. Another reason I say ultimately what is taught in TCs is the responsibility of the individual teacher. You can either make an effort and do it well, or you can coast by and blame the system.