Those in Wine Often Make Gaffe

Chinglish is funny. Most of the time the translations are funny, but they don’t really affect your life other then to provide you with a little laugh as you’re walking down the street. It becomes less funny however, when you are given 20 minutes to answer 100 “psychological” questions in an online test and your work visa depends on it.

In their infinite wisdom, the Chinese government created an agency to screen anyone coming over to teach English, and I presume other jobs, who don’t have some sort of certificate with an official looking red stamp that proclaims you an expert in the subject. Because I was never formally trained in teaching, I had to go through the system to make sure I’m not a wacko or something. The first part consisted of an online test of two parts- psychological questions and informational. I can’t really do the test justice, other than to highlight some of my favorite questions I copied down.
These were in the “agree,” “no opinion,” “disagree” style.

#6) Facing with the every days work is the root of my pain and baldness
#47) Those in wine, often make gaffe
#33) As a game putting forwards person, it is difficult for me to motivate others’ enthusiasm
#34) If I considering with the self absorbtion, I cant give the heart to the thing which is totally not related to mine.

They were literally all that ridiculous. I mean, they’re making all of the English teachers who enter the country take this test, and they didn’t think to have just one of them look over the test and correct it?

Moving on to the informational questions, which were just about as bad, but not nearly as much fun… At one point I had to decide how to classify Asian people’s skin a)white b)black c)brown, or d)yellow. I really had no idea what they were looking for on that one. Most of it was simple enough though, like “where are the 2008 Olympics going to be held,” and “If it is now 2006, how many years ago did 9/11 happen,” and also “What is the smallest continent;” only all the answers were oceans.

The second part of the test involved a 3-on-1 interview which basically consisted of informal chatting, peppered with inquiries over how I felt about physically punishing the children, and my teaching styles. They were clearly trying to get information about the company that hired me as well, and there were questions asked about how they decided which age I would teach. As far as I could tell this process was absolutely random, so I made something up about how I told them I had experience volunteering with young children.

I’m really not sure how I fared, but hopefully I won’t be deported. Or executed for having this blog.