What kind of compensation could I expect for teaching English in China or elsewhere overseas?

That really depends on where you apply. Some places are really fly-by-night.

Generally, government sponsored programs pay about the median, and also take care of you. They definitely aren’t going to vanish overnight or leave you stranded in the country (so far as I know).

The JET program for Japan pays, I think, 30k non-taxed and provides a place to live.

That’s all I got. I have a friend who went, but didn’t go myself.

It all depends—it always depends. What are your qualifications to teach English to English speakers? How much experience do you have? How good is your Chinese? What dialect/s do you speak, read and write? How’s your experience with Chinese idiom and customs?

I would second Cyanotic Wasp’s answer. If you have your TEFL or (at least) an undergraduate degree in linguistics, your pay is going to be higher. Also, speaking Mandarin is a plus.

Whatever the pay is – it wouldn’t be ‘amazing’ in terms of US living. If you make and spend it in China, you’ll do fine.

I suggest you tutor Chinese kids. Get in contact with parents and provide tutoring services. My friends in Japan and China have profited generously through this medium of teaching.

Teach Chinese to classes for the main job, and have a better paying side job.

Good luck!

I do not speak Chinese.
Our neighbor’s son went to China in 2007 without any knowledge of Chinese and has been there for four years. We are a bit older and in a transition state and this came up as a dinner time question, can we do that?

Thanks to all

You don’t need to speak Chinese to teach English.

I mean to say teach English to classes for the day job, and tutor English for the part time.

Sorry for typo.

I don’t see how you can teach language at more than a primary school level if you don’t speak the language of the student. How would you do more than elementary language instruction, for example, to a junior high or high school student who was starting to develop some abstract thinking skills. You have to do more than vocabulary and simple tenses of verbs, don’t you?

I’ve visited China, and I only speak a few words of Chinese, and can’t recognize any of the written ideographs, but the people I visit speak at least moderately good English already.

@CyanoticWasp Alot of it might have to do with teaching them the right pronunciation, as well as commonly used phrases that might not be apparently from their typical Chinese teachers.

yen