Hi Turnoi,

First or second voice - it does not make me believe any of your words!

You are right to be cautious about believing me, there are many schools who post on boards promoting themselves. I want to assure you that I am not so vain as to log in anonymously to support my own claims, that was probably somebody who also worked at EF Changchun, maybe even a friend of mine, but I don't know either.

I do not know about EF Changchun, but what I realise are the many job ads placed by EF Surabaya in Indonesia in the job section on this site here. This happens in regular intervals and so frequently that I am led to conclude that there must be high fluctuation of teachers who do not stay there for long.

I can't speak for EF in Indonesia, it is a franchise and there are many bad schools so please be careful with your choice and do research online as you are doing now. However, think of it this way, EF Changchun has approx. 15 FT as far as I know, most of whom are on 1 year contracts. Changchun is a relatively small city and most teachers, after 1 year like to move on and leverage their year of experience to get a position in a school in a larger/nicer city. So you can imagine that the school would naturally have approximately 1 new position per month. Now, every year new teachers come and at least one or two leave before the end of their contract. In the time I was there I can tell you that any teacher I can recall who left because of a serious problem with the school, was the source of that problem.

EF in general has had too many negative reviews in the past years here on this site and at Dave`s esl cafe and some others sites. I think there are serious reasons for this, and working for EF would certainly not be considered a highlight in one`s career as an EFL teacher by many other employers.

EF China encompasses hundreds of schools as far as I know. Like I said before, there are bad schools and you should be careful but people who have been burned by one branch often tar the whole franchise with the same bad brush, which is simply not true. Any good employer will appreciate any teacher who has experience spanning all age groups and all levels of ability and has also created most of their lesson plans themselves. I know that I would not feel comfortable working for a school that provides me with detailed lesson plans that I must follow and restricts me to 3/4 TPR movements, so I can imagine that such a school would also not want someone like me.

Why should EF Changchun be now so different from all the other EF places excelling in "excellence" amidst a lot of other places that have been known as the worst of their kind? Maybe, it depends on the what you define as "excellence". Sometimes, something is labelled as "excellence" that is quite mediocre or even less thajn mediocre... for example, knowing to read and write your own name after 40-45 years of intensive and hard full-time study. I managed to do achieve the latter, and yes, I would claim....I am reallly "excellent".,...lol.

I agree that the level of the ESL industry in China is not very high in general. All I can say is that given the extensive supplementary resources of the school I worked in, with an online database of past lesson plans and supplementary materials of other teachers, and the help of other teachers experienced at teaching all of the levels and ages mentioned above, I considered it an excellent learning experience. Why should EF Changchun be different from other schools in EF? As I said above, it is a franchise, they have very little communication with each other and no influence over other schools. I consider it a good school.

Finally, I've been accused by another commenter of being a corporate lackey. Believe that if you want, I have nothing to do with the school anymore but I get incensed at the kind of accusations levelled at it because I know who the people are that claim to have been mistreated there. Good luck with your future career, try to keep an open but cautious mind when looking for work.

Owen