Chinese bosses pay TAs average wages at best. They make much less than qualified teachers in China. That's the major negative, and why most TSs are recent college/university graduates lacking in proper teacher training. Many of us who've taught at Chinese colleges or universities too also know that academic standards in higher education are often much lower than at western institutions of those two kinds. The lowest here are so-called vocational colleges, which aren't really colleges at all in a western sense as their students are equivalent in age to senior middle school students, and such colleges are nowhere near key senior middle schools in academic achievement levels on account of their student intakes being low in ability and possessing little education. The initial quality isn't there, and neither is the experience, except in the case of a few agents who train their TAs week by week, or monthly, on a Saturday or a Sunday. That makes a lot of difference, in-service training, as it were.

It all sounds like waffle to me; these ordinary girls who become TA's seem a lot better educated than their counterparts in the West- great numbers of them speak another language for starters. It seems to me that FT's are self-centred and arrogant in their attitude towards these girls- why on earth should we expect them to be perfect, when most of us FT's are certainly not; and certainly not experienced properly trained teachers are we (present company...) Give them a break, that's what I say. Go home and spend years training to be a real teacher ,then start throwing your weight around demanding properly trained TA's. You may say, I can control a class myself and have no need for a TA....bit selfish? Won't it mean that another little human being will not have a job?