Dazao English Review Summary

PLEASE NOTE (30/05/22) – THIS COMPANY HAS CEASED OPERATING SINCE THIS REVIEW WAS PUBLISHED. YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER THESE NON-CHINA COMPANIES INSTEAD.

Dazao doesn’t have any qualification, nationality or minimum hours requirements, making them an easy entry point into online teaching, though their pay is amongst the lowest around. This impartial Dazao English review will help you to decide whether they’re worth your time.

Dazao Pros and Cons

Pros:

• No formal qualifications required
• Can help you acquire a TEFL/TESOL certificate
• No minimum hours
• Potentially high booking rates
• Teaching materials provided
• Popular option for South Africans (though Landi pays more)
• Have started hiring Non-Native Speakers (i.e. Filipinos)

Cons:

• Low pay (for both Native and Non-Native Speakers)
• Not many reviews available from existing teachers
• Must be prepared to work weekends

Is Dazao Legit?

Dazao English is a relatively new but legitimate online ESL company, founded in 2018 by Hangzhou Danyue Technology Co., Ltd. (the same group as Landi and ABC360). Dazao online teaching emphasizes spoken English coaching over traditional instruction, and helping learners speak the language as much as possible. They currently serve over 100,000 Chinese students.

Dazao Salary / Pay

According to the Dazao website, their teachers can potentially earn up to US$1000 every month. However, they do not publicly specify how many hours one would need to work to achieve this figure or what their hourly rate is. When we received an email from the company following registration, we were told that Dazao pay starts at just 90-110 PHP (approximately US$2) per hour (they’ve recently begun hiring a lot of Filipino teachers on lower rates).

This is significantly less than the already low $5-$8 per hour mentioned elsewhere on the internet. Therefore, to match the advertised amount with what we were quoted, one would have to teach 500 hours a month (125 hours a week), which is totally unrealistic and smacks of false advertising.

Dazao does say that they also offer additional paid opportunities, including content editing, picture naming, with teacher partners and their referral program.

Any class lateness is penalized and deducted from your pay, though such practices are common in the industry.

Dazao payments are directly deposited into teachers’ bank accounts on the 10th-15th of every month.

Dazao Hours

Dazao appears to have changed their minimum hours policy (as of early 2021). Their website still states that a ‘Teacher needs to offer a minimum of 10 hours per week within the peak hours’. However, according to more recent listings on the company’s official Facebook page and information in the email we received upon registering, there are now ‘no minimum hours‘ required. The peak hours have also been amended to 6pm-9pm, Monday-Friday, and 9am-9pm at weekends.

Dazao classes last 25 minutes and are conducted one-on-one with children between the ages of 3-12 years.

Dazao claims to offer a ‘Booking rate as high as 90% within the first 3 months’ that lends itself to stable income, though you’ll have to be willing and able to ride out the fallow months as you become more established (a common scenario at many online ESL companies).

Dazao Requirements

• Senior High School Graduate
• At least one year of experience teaching young learners
• Have a neutral accent with outstanding verbal English skills

Some Dazao job ads on social media state that teachers must be between 18-45 years of age, which would indicate an element of age discrimination. However, this criteria appears to have been removed from more recent postings, and a Sourcing Manager at Dazao has assured us that teachers over 45 will be considered, so long as they are technologically proficient and are energetic/lively during their test lesson.

Dazao is less strict when it comes to formal qualifications, with a Bachelor’s degree and a TESOL/TEFL/CELTA certificate considered a plus but are not mandatory. Chinese government regulations do require the latter for all teaching hires, however, Dazao says they will help you acquire a TEFL/TESOL if you do not yet possess one.

Regarding nationality, the Dazao website seems to again be out of date compared to information available on Facebook. Whereas they used to specify Native Speakers only, as of February 2021 they are now open to hiring Filipinos with neutral, fluent accents. We cannot say yet whether this policy shift extends to all Non-Native Speakers, but if your English accent is neutral and you meet Dazao’s other requirements, then you’re likely to be considered.

Dazao also specify the following soft skills, which you’ll be expected to demonstrate during the interview process:

• Energetic
• Interactive
• Pleasing personality
• Patience
• Passion for educating children

Technical Requirements

To operate Dazao’s teaching platform, you will require the following technical setup:

• Be computer literate with a working knowledge of Microsoft applications
• PC/Mac with at least Windows 7/OSX 10.12, Intel i3 processor (or equivalent) and 4GB or more of RAM
• Computer/power backup (in case of power outage)
• Stable, wired DSL internet connection with a minimum download speed of 5Mbps and upload speed of 1 Mbps (you can test your internet speed here)
• Wifi (to be used as a backup only)
• Smartphone access for company communication

Dazao English Application Process

There are five steps to the Dazao English application process, which should take around a week to complete:

1. Register your email address and password here.
2. Complete and submit an online application form with your basic info (details below).
3. Pass the interview and sign the contract.
4. Study the training materials and undergo orientation.
5. Begin teaching.

Once you’ve completed your Dazao English tutor registration in stage 1, you will then be able to log in to your account where you’ll be presented with the following timeline:

Below this are boxes for filling in the your basic information, including your:

• Profile picture (upload)
• Full name
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Nationality
• Residential Country
• Mobile phone number
• Skype account
• How you heard about Dazao
• Highest level of completed education
• Teaching certificate (if applicable)
• Teaching experience (yes/no)
• Whether you’ve previously worked for Dazao
• Expected number of available teaching hours

Once you’ve submitted your Dazao teacher application, you should receive an interview invitation within 2 working days via email.

Dazao Interview

Dazao doesn’t publicly provide any detailed information regarding their interviews or what’s involved. The account timeline says to expect a ‘phone interview’, though candidates also report having to conduct an L5 ‘test lesson’ on a ‘sports theme’. This sounds similar to the demo class required for Zebra English, and you can see a recorded example here. As you’re expected to teach younger children (3-12), make sure you utilize lots of energy, TPR, props and a reward system.

Typically in ESL interviews, expect to face questions regarding your professional experience, qualifications, teaching methods and philosophy. You can find an extensive list of real ESL interview questions here to help you prepare. 

Dazao Reviews

There are only three Dazao reviews on Glassdoor, though they have all been left recently (at the time of writing). They give the company an average rating of 3 out of 5, and 100% would recommend the company to a friend, which is quite remarkable, even for a small sample size. The main complaints concern the low pay and need to work on weekends, while there is praise for the students, teaching platform, lesson materials, flexible schedule, company support, and booking rates:

For more insight, you can view a less impartial perspective in videos published on Dazao’s Facebook page:

Conclusion – Is Dazao Worth It?

If you reside in a country with a lower cost of living, don’t want to commit to a minimum number of hours, and a lack of formal qualifications limits your options elsewhere, then Dazao might be worth considering. However, you’ll find plenty of higher-paying options in our other reviews, for both Native and Non-Native Speakers.

PLEASE NOTE (30/05/22) – THIS COMPANY HAS CEASED OPERATING SINCE THIS REVIEW WAS PUBLISHED. YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER THESE NON-CHINA COMPANIES INSTEAD.

A full list of other online teaching companies can be found here.