Well, I mean, I certainly don't know how it goes in China... I do teach in my home country though (non-native speaker here, so it's a kinda like TEFL but imagine you speak fluently their native language, which makes everything a thousand times easier... And harder, too, at times) and I feel safe to say that we can't really homogenize. There'll always be students who'll want to learn, even if it's only one "odd" student in a whole class of students who don't care and there'll always be students who hate English, who view it as pointless or too difficult a subject and who'll never learn nor study anything.

You certainly can tailor your classes. The fact that you're an oral English teacher makes everything a lot easier. Basically, you don't have to do any grammar and you can talk about what they find interest in. If you want to do some serious teaching, I think the best would be to research techniques for oral classes. For example, when I was in Iceland, a common practice was to hand out a semi-difficult articles (depends on the abilities of students, but we were given articles, such as nutritional value in different types of food etc.) and then, we either discussed it, had a presentation on it, or had a full-on discussion. I'd strongly advise not to focus only conversational English since, after all, you are on academic ground and the English there should be a bit different. Then again, it depends on what does the school and the students expect from you. Also, academic English'll help your students while taking certificates like CAE/CPE or TOFEL.

One thing I also found out is that who you are, as a teacher, reflects in your students. But, I'm starting to feel like I'm writing only what everybody knows anyways... :-) Just my two cents...