This is an artificial between professional ESL teachers at various levels and unqualified/poorly qualifiied "conversation teachers" only.

I want to concentrate on how much Practical English the teacher knows.

The students don't require an enormous vocabulary to embark upon a conversation if the teacher is skilled. A conversation class is very much a teaching class, because you should be correcting their grammar and choice of words as you go along....but not too often as that can be annoying and kill any conversation stone dead. Reading and writing maybe for next week's class. Or maybe you are only hired for conversation. Some students who attend training centres insist on just chatting to an FT. And that's not necessarily a Chinese person. He or she could be German or French working in China. You'll be surprised how many non-Chinese adults attend English training centres in China. Perhaps you should post that stuff you have earmarked for the Philippines, it may be very useful to FT's?