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[TawtViet]

I understand that the CELTA course is British English based. Although I respect all varieties of English, there are some things in BE that make me cringe. CELTA seems portrayed as the best and most widely accepted certification possible. However, after completing such a course I would want to teach my variety of the target language. What is expected by the Vietnamese after one has completed a CELTA? On a visit to VN, all I saw were BE texts. What do some of you CELTA certified Americans in the classroom do after the training?

[Snaff]

[Gordon]

[hoodooguru]

This battle for supremacy between British and American English has been raging probably since the EFL industry began........and it's extremely tiresome.

For some reason most of the schools I worked at in Bangkok were overun with Brits who seemed to think that the whole universe revolved around the Cambridge and Oxford mafia.

Then I came to HCMC in 1995 to find that although the British Streamline series was the darling of coursebooks in most schools in Vietnam, most students wanted to study with North American speakers. I ended up in TOEFL hell for a few years.

Then the IELTS started taking a stranglehold on the exam prep market and my Australian nationality was finally acknowledged within an EFL context. I still find many US teachers griping about this sad state of affairs (in their eyes). It's the same thing that happened to the French when their beloved language took backseat to the rampaging dominance of English (at least that appears to be the case in post-colonial Vietnam)

The Russian influence can also be found in a generation of English speaking students who studied in the former USSR - they are instantly recognisable as they sound like the Count in Sesame Street.

Now the wonderful world of EFL has been forced to reconcile the different accents and dialects of the "international language" - it doesn't please the diehard pommys and yanks who still claim to have a dominant hold on the language.

Sadly, it's now a reality

[Gluestick]

I teach with my NA English unless the students specifically want the British stuff. If they don't care, I'll sometimes just tell them the different ways that things can be said.

[junkmail]

This argument is retarded.
The difference is negligible. There is no American English, or British English anymore, it's a language that gets learned and adapted much like any other language. The difference adds up to a few minor spelling changes.
It's this sort of argument that's making me leave the world of pedantic teachers for a real career.
I teach English to the staff of a merchant shipping company at the moment. Most of them use their English to talk to other non-native speakers, and it is them not us who will shape the international English of the future.
I'm British myself, but personally I like Australian accents. Funny, how the Australians see no need to call it 'Australian English'.
Tawviet, to answer your question, there are American instructors who teach Celta to Americans in America. It is not biased towards a particular accent, it's more about teaching methodology.
If anyone really cared about progressing the language they'd start by removing the redundant features like irregular verbs, and make it read phonetically like Spanish or Korean.

[hoodooguru]

Interesting comments Junkmail but are you serious?

You wrote:

[spycatcher]

FYI

There was a version of Headway made in Australian English. Think it was pre internediate level.

[Rice Paddy Daddy]

what are the wages - housing - etc?

[Mr Wind-up Bird]

As a Brit I agree it's a retarded argument.

Firstly, there are as many differences in dialect and vocbulary within the UK itself as there are between the UK, US & Australia - listen to a white inner-city London teenager speaking with a semi-Jamaican accent, then listen to a Geordie, and then a Scouser, & you're almost hearing three different languages.

Secondly, below upper intermediate level I don't think Vietnamese students can tell the difference between UK/US/Australian accents, and I don't believe they even care. My Vietnamese wife speaks English almost as well as me but can't always hear the difference.

Thirdly, the issue of an international business language is a moot point as, whatever one's country of origin, business English is fairly standardised. I might say "Hi", an American might say "Hey" and an Aussie "G'day", but in a business context we'd all say "hello".

Fourthly, any student who spends several years learning English is highly unlikely to have the same teacher, or a teacher from one country, throughout that period. They will inevitably be exposed to different accents and terminology during this period, if only by accident rather than design.

Finally, we invented the language so we're always right

[lexpat]

Actually, as far as I'm concerned, the major issue here is that most textbooks written in Britain seem to focus on the EU and are not really suitable in Asia. I'm a Yank but I've worked in a couple of IELTS sausage factories that used Headway (supposedly written with IELTS in mind) and INMHO the upper intermediate Headway is one of the worst ESL texts ever written. I love the chapter on the ten most important events in the twentieth century, which all happened in Europe and NA of course.

Would that enough students reached a level that it made any difference!

There are a few good texts that focus on Asia. Business Explorer is pretty good for pre-ints, but most of the chain English schools have a contract with a text writer (sort of like the military industrial complex). I personally think 'international business English' resembles American English more than it does British English.

[spycatcher]

Most of the large publishing houses in the UK produce eurocentric books as this is where their main market is. Europeans that come to the UK during the summer to study English.

Also when you are talking about upper intermediate level not many non Europeans make it to this level so they have little incentive to deeurocentricise it.

[Mr Wind-up Bird]

There's also the point that no publisher is going to publish a Vietnam-orientated text book when they know that schools are only going to buy one copy & then make photocopies...

To be honest any teacher with a brain can take a Eurocentric text or lesson plan and tweak it so it's relevant to a Vietnamese class.

[spycatcher]

FYI

Oxford University Press (OUP) has a lot of experience selling books in developing markets (even though I said in an earlier posting that publishing houses don't care about them much).

About 7 years ago they came to an agreement with Phat Hanh Sach Thanh Pho (Fahasa, the main EFL book sellers in HCM City). To sell original books cheaply in Vietnam.

They realize that if they sold at western retail prices here no one would buy original copies of their books. So to get market share they agreed to sell books here very cheaply and were in fact losing money on every book sold here. The more books they sold the more money they were losing.

In their agreement, I believe it says they will increase their prices by a few percent every year. Books here by OUP are still less than half the price they are in the west and believe OUP is only at breakeven on books it sells here now.

Other publishing houses were less committed to Vietnam than OUP, but still sell much cheaper in Vietnam than they do in more developed countries.

Believe there was a 3 million usd project funded by someone for McMillan (could be wrong about the publishing house) to publish a book that was Vietnamcentric. In the food section it has "pho" etc. This is a book for use by the masses and is not a nice glossy book that is used in the language centers.

[No Moss]