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[Cobra]

Recruiting "qualified" English teachers for China has become very difficult. The demand has always outpaced the supply thus requiring employers to accept some U.S. high school graduates just because they are "native speakers" who have more knowledge and ability than most Chinese Ph.D.s in English and Linguistics.

As China is opening new fronteirs in private education investment and expanding English curriculum to its primary schools, this trend is likely to continue as every school is under the mistaken impression that it needs a native speaker to enhance its program.

In the last three years China is receiving more and more applications from Cameroon, Nigeria, India and the Philippines.

In my humble opinion, at least in China, the fault lies with the Ministry of Education. A philosophical change is needed. China should try hiring qualified ESL professionals to teach the Chinese English teachers and forget about putting a native speaker in every school.

Financially capable Chinese go abroad to improve their English. Putting a native speaker in each school in China does not replicate this foreign experience. Let me give an example from a Chinese university:

You are forced to trudge up three to five flights of cold concrete stairs to reach your assigned concrete cubicle where you are required to sit on a 17� high backless wooden stool with an 81/2� x 11� seat, in front of a 30� high wooden bench. The cold concrete floor is swept daily by merely pushing the dirt into a corner where it stacks up. Water is splashed on the floor to keep the dust down. There is no heat to ward off the freezing cold of winter nor air conditioning to provide relief from the sweltering heat of summer. The walls are dingy-yellowed with time, dirty and in disrepair. The lighting is bare flourescent tubes just like a sweat shop. In the front of the room is a Chinese language sign that roughly translated means [only speak manadrin in this room]. There is a second Chinese language sign on a side wall that roughly translated says [no talking in this room].

This cold, dank, concrete box is surrounded by construction noises on one size, and from another side the machine gun rapid-fire pops of hundreds of dribbled basketballs on the concrete exercise yard and the sound of popcorn popping as 50 ping pong balls are slapped with bare wooden paddles and bounced on concrete tables located under the your windows; and from yet another side the sounds of people noisily clomping up and down the adjacent stairs or people in an adjacent concrete cubicle playing a Chinese movie on the television loud enough for the entire building to participate in the audio bombardment.

Inside the concrete cubicle you sit theater style facing the front of the room for nine hours each day. There are no English signs or notices posted on the walls, no decorations to instill any thoughts about the West, its culture, or its language. No maps or globe of the outside world. You are deprived of any and all English newspapers, magazines or periodicals. There is no western music or television. And worst of all, no one speaks to you in English, not even those sitting next to you, let alone any of the other forty plus occupants of the cubicle. You are forced to watch Chinese movies or be bored completely.

Suddenly, but on cue, an authority figure enters your cubicle and announces that you will now learn English as a second language and you are snapped into the reality that you are now in an environment where you are required to not only learn but to �master� English as a second language. No, this is not punishment, not a prison, not a concentration camp, not a re-education camp or some other type of detention facility. You are a free spirit! Free that is to �master� English and do it within the next three years.

Outside your cubical you are constantly bombarded with Mandarin over the campus-wide loudspeaker system and in the written notices and bulletins posted on the public information boards around the campus, but nothing in English. Even the notice posted advising of an impending English Corner is written in Chinese characters. You note the absence of English reading materials in the College library; the absence of English DVD movies or television programs; the blaring Chinese movies in the cafateria; the total absence of English signs or decoration anywhere on campus; and the lack of any inducement to speak English. When you go to the English department offices, all of the staff and students are communicating in Mandarin. No staff in the college library, cafateria or store speak English.

There is nothing special or attractive about being an English major and there is no inducement to acquire English as a second language, just learn it as it is taught to you by your Mandarin speaking teachers who predominantely speak and teach in their L1 using a �chalk and talk� pedogogy.

[Roger]

Cobra,
a very realistic snapshot of a student's experience, yet it is not the whole picture!
I fully agree that the non-Chinese faces are not what makes Chinese tick the English way - it takes far more than just the illusion of being surrounded by at least 'some' non-Chinese speakers.
It takes a different outlook from Chinese learners themselves.
First, so long as people call it "foreign" it is going to be "foreign", and will never become part of what they can identify with. Internalise English in a way that it becomes one of your many dimensions! It adds to your identity. A Chinese English speaker essentially combines two lifestyles or cultures, not just one language on top of his own culture.

But for Chinese to become proficient at English, in essence: bilingual, they need to learn differently!
Expat teachers would never teach any language the way CHinese teachers do with English - often telling the students "by Friday this week, you must have learnt by heart 20 adjectives..." In advanced societies, students are prodded and prompted into actively using their target language. Chinese teachers merely "lecture", using nothing that the students cannot see in their own textbooks. There is no action, no dialogue, and all students do things together on cue from their teacher, irather than doing things as individuals.
It is not teaching and learning, it is demonstrating (orally) and training as if people were acquiring Pavlovian reflexes.
Acquiring a second language is like installing a different software in one's brain. You cannot use one software to run the programme of another software. Likewise, students cannot think in Chinese, while they express their thoughts in English. You must have noted that Chinese speak English rather sluggishly, and often misinterpret English. The result is that we get mixed messages, and they get wrong feedback as they cannot cope with our English.

I have on many occasions said we should be training Chinese English teachers, and perhaps preschoolers - primary school and middle-school students should be taught (in a more enlightened fashion!) by their own teachers!
My beef is with the division of labour: Expats doing "oral" English (only!), while Chinese teachers do the "substantive" subjects, for which most of them are not trained well enough!

I find it ridiculous to claim students need exposure to "native English speakers"; I think, they all need teachers with an understanding of English, no matter what their first tongue is, and an understanding of how Chinese or any other foreign students acquire a good grounding in it!

I also think exams should be done with examiners that are not identical with the teachers that have given the lessons throughout the year. There should be a streamlining and standardising of curricula, objectives and assessing.

To improve English exam results, English should be an elective major that earns successful students credits; those who only take compulsory English should get no credit. Credits could open the way to universities or IELTS/TOEFL exams with a view of studying abroad.

To optimise the learning experience of Chinese students, I suggest that secondary students take English Liteature. At least those who take English as an elective should have to pass a literature exam.
It will be found that those who have learnt to read and understand novels, short stories and journalistic pieces have a far better grasp of the language.

China needs people who UNDERSTAND English, not necessarily people who perform well in chitchat sessions in Chinglish.

[Dr.J]

I for one would be a little depressed if TEFL became more professional.


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