What you said is true also BB. I know I am very critical of ESL, but admit there are some good jobs. Yes, for teaching oral English a degree is probably superfluous, but experience is needed, especially at a decent public university ( yes, I'll admit there are some in China that are ok ) I think some degree in English is useful for teaching at a university in Asia, but no, don't need a teaching degree, that's for sure!

You shouldn't need a degree; however, I wouldn't object to a thorough test(by skype) to prove you can speak the language clearly. There's an awful lot of FT's, many of them with degrees, whose English is just not good enough to be understood by the students, and so that eventually the students will be understood by the rest of the world. Having said that, out of the blue one day a Chinese boss-woman thrust a telephone at me and said speak to this Englishman and tell me if he'll be understood. The bloke didn't have a regional accent, he had more of a council house yob accent. I only understood about half of what he said. At the end of that conversation I was asked if he should be employed- I did say yes he should be, he sounds a good teacher. I lied because it was not my job to decide this bloke's future. I digress, oral tersts for FT's instead of degrees. Not that i really care that much, it's up to the Chinese. PS. The teacher in question had a few degrees as it turned out, but to my mind should not have been a teacher.