About LINKS International
LINKS International is a non-profit educational company that has been serving China for over 20 years to bring native English speakers to public and private schools where English is a required curriculum. These projects are short-term and are made up of 5 to 10 volunteers who do not "teach" English grammar but allow students to meet and hear native English speakers and make cross-cultural exchanges that have long-term affects long after the projects are over. Our vision is to build friendships between countries and people through communication around the commonly learned language of English. Our method is to create a deeper desire in students to learn English through personal interaction with native speakers during their English class experience, making those motivated students more ready to learn from their teachers going forward.
LINKS commonly engages in three-year agreements with schools at their invitation, with different teams returning for a one-week project each year over that period of time. We have watched how not only students grow in their love of learning language, but how much their teachers are helped through these projects and lasting relationships with native speakers that they often stay in contact with long after the projects are completed.
We understand that schools all over the world work on limited budgets, so our teams pay all of their own expenses for travel, lodging, visas, meals etc. and neither LINKS nor or volunteers receive any compensation from the school for their teaching time. The only thing asked of schools is to provide local transportation as needed, lunch and dinner during the five days we are on their campus, and some activity time with some of the English teachers in the afternoons. Those activities range from seeing sites, to making local crafts, to walking around the local area and learning how people live and work there. These activities do not need to be expensive, but merely ways to learn about the local culture and country from some "real" people and build on those lasting connections with teachers.
LINKS International provides the connections to schools and all the information, training, travel arrangements and visa application support that you will need to serve as a conversational English volunteer.
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