The Chinese Online ESL Crackdown

On 9/1/2021 at 1:04 PM, Jillie Norman said:

I have a friend teaching Chinese Students and according to her, Chinese pay less compare to Taiwanese and Japanese. Despite of this, she treats all classes equally fun.

Hehe, yes indeed. I've had some real Cheap Charlies, compared with what they expect from the teaching.

The other day I had some exec from an Asian investment bank needing help with her public speaking, for the presentations she must do to close their multi billion dollar deals. For this important skill she chose the notoriously cheapest teaching platform, and for our enlightening session I got a whole five US dollars. Other times I get students in need of IELTS test prep, who I must kindly inform they're not going to get the same level of what such prep usually commands, around $30/hr.

While to be fair, and not perpetuate the stereotype, in a past life I did sales for a small, Asian family business in the US for many years. They were quite generous, paying out bonuses, throwing parties, and putting us up in hotels for trade shows. Then that industry took a dive, leaving me crawling into retail, then back to university, and now I'm in the LOS teaching.