Job Discussion Forums

[No Moss]

Well, I've been here five months now, and I have done OK. Things look pretty good for work after the Spring Festival. Here's my question.

On one hand, I think the future for ELT in China could be explosive. It looks as if it is limited by the number of people who can afford tuition, not the number of people who desire it.

On the other hand, the Chinese seem to want to do it themselves (however bad the results are) rather than to depend on foreigners to help them.

I'm voting for the first, if the Chinese keep getting rich at their current rate.

[Roger]

If you were a Chinese, why would you want to hire an expensive foreign English teacher? I too would want to learn on my own, at least as far as I could manage; they CHinese are used to learning in groups, not by themselves. That may explain why the English one encounters in this country is so uniformly bad. What can one foreign teacher do against this?
Strictly nothing!
In time the CHinese will see their money does not buy better English; they have to find out through trial and error that only their own efforts matter.
And since the benefits of knowing English ae highly fictitious and idealised, the more realistic Chinese will soon give up.
The current euphoria will ebb away as the Olympic games approach!

[NumberOneSon]

[Peter]

I agree with Roger that Chinese learners often have nebulous ideas about the benefits of learning English.

When i did begin to probe for this, I found it made my charges uncomfortable; it seemed more a matter of someting on a CV than anything else.

As a rough estimate only 10% really wanted to work at it, the rest were lemmings ;jumping off the cliff en masse.

It was something you had to do as being part of the general line for the worker ants

[Wolf]

Is English over-valued? It is in Jaingxi province. Every year we churn out graduates with English degreees. Even if you weed out the hangers on who "graduated" for reasons that have nothing to do with ability, there are still far too many "English speakers" compared to the number of available jobs. They all want to go to Shenzen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, etc. As if the developed areas don't have a healthy (over) supply of their own.

When the WTO kicks in and that 16 day event is over, I'd say that the artificially created demand will ebb. I don't see it disappearing, but not at the d@mn the torpedoes full speed ahead we've been seeing so far.

Just a guess, really.

[sallyann]

As far as I can see, the majority of my students won't get a chance to use the English they've learned. As we know, if you don't use a language regularly, your fluency will decrease quite quickly and a lot of your vocabulary will fade into the dusty, dark corners of your mind. It used to make me sad, to think all their work was for nothing, but now I've changed my perspective. I see learning English as a sort of personal development exercise for them. It may give them a broader outlook or open their minds a little. Plus there is a feeling of satisfaction for anyone who reaches a level of proficiency in another language, so I think that's worthwhile thing to do.

I'm not talking about the Chinese students from wealthy families who'll have the chance to go abroad. I'm talking about about the majority, the average kids are are the bulk of the student population. Do I think learning English will be of practical use to them in their lives? No. There's simply no-one here for them to speak it to. In the area where I live on the East coast, there is a community of 20,000 Koreans living here doing business. The number of native-English speakers, on the other hand, is less than 300! Yet my college doesn't offer Korean as a subject. Its all English, English, English and I also believe that they have an unrealistic view about what it can actually do for them.

The students always tell you "English is very, very, important" but as another poster mentioned, if you ask them why, they can't give a real answer. I agree that this obsession with English is an artificially created demand. It leads to this fanaticism that you see in some students, the kind that always turn up at English Corners, or approach you in the street or on the bus, desperate to "Speak English" as if its going to give them an orgasm or something.

I work at a Government College, which is soon going to be upgraded and the name changed to University. The Dean of the English Department can't speak a damn word of English, and it doesn't seem to have done his career any harm! So I question the value of English language to a Chinese person, unless they are one of the small percentage that will get a job where they can actually use it. Obviously though, I don't mind if they continue to think this way, as it provides me with a job.

[Roger]

"They have no chance of using it (English)..."...
What makes you claim this? Nonsense! If they want to, they can use it to broaden their minds, to read opinions or, horribile dictu! - some truths about China in publications not readily avaiable (though obtainable for perusal in a public library).
Don't forget, a government investing funds in the teaching of a foreign language must have a good reason for doing this. It's a business decision, no less than that.
The reason why the party (or the government, almost synonymous) wants the public to be bilingual (or "know" English) is in line with China's moderinsation programme.
Ten years ago, almost every person would tell passing foreigners "We need to learn from the West"! Nice and flattering eulogy to the "enemy" of then (and now!)! Of course, China needs to learn from the West. How would this nation find jobs for its millions of newborns every year? How could this nation make more bucks when so many peasants are losing their farmsteads? 99% of all newly-created jobs can be attributed to technological progress - Western inventions, and to a lesser degree, foreign investments!

Thirty years ago, an elite few studied Russian, fewer still Japanese, and still fewer were permitted to study English. Then came Deng. He was the man who realised China had to reorient itself - away from the SU, towards the West; English was not adopted at once, but Western languages in general were: close to 300'000 students were allowed in the early 1980's to study abroad; many had to acquire a solid foundation in as disparate languages as Finnish, Italian, Spanish, German, to study other subjects at European universities. Later, the country concentrated on English as a medium of instruction for those who went abroad.
Some 300'000 students never returned to China.
But let me add that those students who had to acquire foreign languages in those days did it a lot more effectively. Otherwise - how could they study in Finnland or Spain?

These days, English is a compulsory subject. And you can see the results: no proficiency. It has to be "fun" learning it - foreign dance bears, Ken and Barbies - but no genuine English lessons!
Somehow I feel they lost their bearings!

[No Moss]

Well, I guess the concensus is that the Chinese don't really need to learn English, and that there are plenty of English-speaking (after a fashion, at least) graduates for any all the jobs that require some degree of English.

But I wonder what happened to those arguments in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan? The attraction of English is that it is useful, and that speaking English is both the key to foreign travel and a status symbol.

The key to the ELT market is disposable income, I believe. Markets took off and then matured in other Asian countries based mostly on the rise of incomes.

[Taishan]

Why do Chinese want to learn English?
Prestige mainly...and the hope of getting a better job.
The reality is tough in the Chinese labor market and people need to find any avenue they can to get ahead.
Luckily it can massively open the minds to new ways of thinking and new literature most of the Chinese and I think most would consider it worhwhile in that respect anyway (as I do learning Chinese).
I am a little concerned that there is a growing oversupply of foreign English teachers, some people want to invite their friends over here so they can pocket the wedge for a finders fee, but I don't think this is in our best interests. The slightest lack of interest with the local Chinese could lead to a postion where jobs could be hard to get, wages lower and qualifications need to be proven causing a big exodus. Lets hope the demand keeps growing, and also we don't get too greedy.

[naturegirl321]

I seee more english kindergartens, real ones, like taiwan

[batman]

[batman]

oh yeah, i almost forgot, the biggest reason they learn english, is to get the f*** out of this country and go to america, canada, england...etc. so as long as people want to live better, make better money, and escape communism, we will all have jobs. its all fun and games for us laowei, but live a day in their shoes, and you will understand that to have no choice is no fun.