Job Discussion Forums

[Sashadroogie]

Ah, Fluffy, you are putting words into my mouth there. I must call a foul.

[fluffyhamster]

Not quite your words, sure, but your thoughts, hmm, I wonder...

[Sashadroogie]

No need to wonder, Fluffy. Check my very own words on this very forum, posted many times over. With regard to this topic I frequently preface my comments as 'I have not worked anywhere in the Far East' or 'there may be very good reasons for such and such' etc. At no point did I ever say that I could do the job better than teachers already on the ground there.

But what I will say is that I have experience teaching learners from China, Korea, and Japan - outside of their homelands, sure - so I know a little bit about some of the issues involved firsthand.

I do not presume to know how to deal with the challenges faced by teachers in those countries. But what I can say, based on my own experience and shared by all my colleagues too, is that the communicative competence of most learners coming from those three countries is virtually nil when they arrive in Europe. The reasons for this? You tell me. But I harbour suspicions that the learning environment is not conducive to language learning. Whether that is because classes, in China for example, are huge, or that the methodology is seriously flawed I couldn't say. But something is quite wrong somewhere.

My European students, on the other hand, make great leaps forward. And not just in learning English, but all manner of languages - even Chinese and Japanese! Why is that? Any wonderings there?

[Denim-Maniac]

I have had wonderful times in China, have met some wonderful students, and find that most of my students communicate very willingly (opposite to any stereotype TBH) and are able to share ideas and experiences quite easily.

I post such things on the Chinese forum quite often. And I did consider posting some positive feedback about certain classes and students I've had, but I didnt see it really fitted into the theme I was posting about TBH. I was really posting to try and give an insight to why teachers from Asia may struggle when working in Europe. I think I was quite positive because I did point out that given time to adjust, and some TLC and support, teachers from Asian EFL contexts are quite capable of teaching decent classes in the EU. Its just going to take a period of adjustment, which would also be true if the roles were reversed.

[Denim-Maniac]

I should add I also have the same concern over the terms 'deductive / inductive'. I also have to google them before commenting on them because I get them mixed up.

I dont use either one exclusively though. I believe an inductive approach is probably more common in grammar instruction in the EU amongst FT staff and their materials. Just pointing out its the opposite in the contexts Ive worked in when in China, and due to their unfamiliarity with it, students can be resistant to it.

And Im sure by now Mohassanach, as the thread starter, is thinking he probably doesnt want to go to China :-p

[spiral78]

Fluffy:

[Glenski]

If I may join in from the standpoint of teaching Japanese students (in conversation schools, in JHS/HS, and university)...

[santi84]

I'm from Vancouver. In Vancouver, most EFL teachers who return from Asia are recent (non-TESL) college graduates who did their quick Disney English stints in the big 3 (China, Japan, and Korea). They struggled to adapt to the style that is required in North America. Of course, the vast majority of them have zero interest in continuing ESL as a career anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

There were a few teachers with mostly Asia experience who were fantastic and could adapt easily to various classroom methods - but there was always one thing in common with them. A decent amount of experience and additional education (mostly MA TESOL).

I agree that there is a stereotype of the dancing monkey vs the amazing teacher (with a big gap in between!). Unfortunately, in Vancouver, that stereotype was pretty accurate EFL is pushed a lot to graduating college students in Vancouver - the dream of paying off student loans with close proximity to Asia/growing up with a large Chinese/Korean population, it's a good opportunity.

[Glenski]

[santi84]

I have to say, the immigrant intermediate/upper-level ESL Chinese/Korean students in Vancouver are an amazing bunch. They had such strong outgoing opinions, unlike the stereotype of the mute Asian. The beginners had this problem, but that was more of an issue of ability and being new to Canada (I'm guessing).

A lot of Asian students come to Canada with low-level ability. Once their confidence has grown and the shyness fades, I found them the same as the students from a more western background.

[santi84]

[spiral78]

[Denim-Maniac]

[fluffyhamster]

I've had a slower, more careful read back through this thread in order to see where things might've been a bit vague or contentious and therefore "gone wrong", and here's what I've found (all laced of course with a bit of helpful editorializing from me). Might be TL:DR for many, in which case zip through to the more recent actual block quote bits maybe.

@OP (Mohanssanach), midway down pg1: If some of your friends have done online certs and gained employment from them, why aren't you asking them for more detailed advice (e.g. what courses exactly? And then what jobs? And how are those jobs panning out? Genuine gold in them hills?). And would it really matter if some on these forums viewed it as pure luck, not the norm, etc etc? (The fact that AFAIK none have yet addressed that particular question implies it is a "difficult" one to answer LOL).

Just before that, Sasha had suggested simply reading some books, as if not doing an on-site cert was now fine by him (and for no reason other than the OP doesn't yet want to do~fork out for one). I wonder why Sasha is allowed to say that and I'm not? (Oh wait, I know, I tend to give reasons why these certs might not be as good as one should hope). Spiral also chimed in immediately thereafter with a similarly "capitulatory" statement. I thought money was no object to you guys?!

TiR at the bottom of pg1 opined that "not all online certs are bad!", which made me think of the online/distance CELTA. Cambridge seems to have been re-designing their website to make it as slow and uninformative to navigate as possible. Does anybody know what the online CELTA entails in terms of actual face-to-face time? Does one have to do at least a weekend of observed TP at some point? Is the qualification still being offered even? Shame there hasn't been much posted about it from those who may've done it.

Turning to page 2, Vabeckele in so many words reckoned that one doesn't really need to do a cert to realize if one is a complete wallflower and thus unsuited to teaching. I'd disagree with Spiral that experience doing business presentations wouldn't be at all relevant or indicative to LT - students won't after all speak in the way you want them to without you somehow first making it clear quite what's required. As for Spiral's "I've never taught in a situation where 'giving a presentation' equals 'good language teaching' myself", have certs really moved on so far from, what's it called, PPP? (I never liked the model PPP given by trainers, but I guess even the most slavish advocate of it would've been told mere years later that times were a-changin' in the blustery world of ELT). Spiral closed that post with "Maybe this is the perception some places, but I'm used to students demanding much more from their learning experience than playing a receptive role" - Could it be that your students are probably going on advanced already, and have had more than enough listening practice?

Things then start to get interesting with the introduction of the "Let's rag on teachers and learners in or from Asia" theme, from midway down pg2. I'm not sure if Santi84 is talking about other teachers or him or herself when saying "teachers who come back from (exclusively) teaching in Asia and think that their students will learn English by listening to them speak so much", but the keyword there is obviously 'exclusively'. I and most of my fellow teachers in China had done certs and taught in the west or countries other than China, and we adapted (somewhat, but not totally) to Asian (Chinese) students, who were more up for CLT than too many a generalized post here suggests. Glenski responded by pointing out that "One of the mantras over here is that teachers should speak as little as possible" (something that I don't agree with, in the sense that I think that mantra is too simplistic and excuses the teacher thinking much about what they actually might [otherwise could] say). The key point that Glenski made however is that "Sadly, too many westerners come here and think that teaching English = giving a lecture instead of giving practice time for students. Is it that different in other parts of the world? Perhaps here in Japan where credentials are not all that important, we have a reason for such misunderstanding". That is, sure, people without a cert may tend to lecture, but do they really need to do a cert to have that pointed out to them? And sometimes a lecture or similar may be just what was required or indeed requested (but I mean a halfway-prepared one, from a knowledgeable or at least trying teacher). And returning to my point about PPP and the like above, it isn't just untrained teachers who can "hog" the talking time! Perhaps we need to make a distinction between uninformative or unnecessary versus informative or necessary lectures. (But for the record, I don't myself lecture much, preferring instead to quickly point out key things e.g. "Notice how with words like 'horse', you'll need to add an extra vowel-like sound [to form the plural]...two horsssss-s-s-s? No, two hors.iz").

Sahsa then went on to deplore the posts from teachers in Asia, but I can't say I've read too many deplorable ones on the Japan forum at least. Deplorable in what way? Spelling and grammar? Too basic grammar questions? Bad work attitudes? Perhaps dig out a few examples Sash, but not AJ Hoag again please (who is hardly representative, and doesn't post on here anyway!).

I'm not sure if Japanese "team-taught" English lessons in public schools are sufficiently non-lecture based, but rtm's comments about eikaiwa (private conversation school) ones are relevant: "These, by definition, are not teacher-centered, since the whole point is for small numbers of students (around 5 or so) to have discussions" etc.

At the bottom of pg2, Spiral seemed to suggest that very few or none of those who return to the west "want to return to any part of Asia". Hey, I'm a (qualified) teacher who's returned from Asia but who'd prefer to return there than to teach in the west again! (Too many cooks or rather cordon-off blurgh no-no-no "you" want to cook it this way chefs in the west...a bit like watching Masterchef not-at-work, in other words). But seriously, I think the difficulties faced by ELT teachers ANYWHERE are more financial~generally exploitative (hours worked, cheating over pay etc) than pedagogical. They enjoy little more than twice minimum wage (entry level ELT wages in the West), despite living costs being a fair bit higher than in Asia generally? The academic support must be amazing. (<Irony alert>).

I would be interested to know just how many Sasha's oft-repeated "countless" is (last/bottom-most post on pg2). I mean, I could say that "countless" JTEs I've met in Japan are rubbish, ergo they all are, but a quick tot-up puts my sum total experience at no more than a few dozen, and then it was only a minority who were truly bad. (And then there is the counter of "What, so very bad in the Asian context?"). I certainly wouldn't start going on about e.g. all Russian ELTers being rubbish, if a lot of them suddenly decamped to Japan, even if a lot of the ones I then met seemed by some "absolute" standard (i.e. MY standard LOL) to be "not as good".

Then I burst in with my boring tired old spiel about "It's the language we use that matters! With the implication that most TTT, however minimal, is a bit naff and too teachery", which somehow inspired Denim to trot out a lot of well-known generalizations about Asian learners. His defense was that he has actually pulled a fair number of Asian teeth none-too-painfully and apparently only with the help of his beloved inductive Face2Face, and that his posts were merely a warning to his European colleagues to possibly invest in quality pliers if they ever come to Asia without Face2Face. My counter now as then is that CLT will work if that is what you insist be used, and schools will back you up on this if that's what's clearly in the brochure.

Finally, the easiest answer to Sahsa's repeated wondering why all the Asian students he's met aren't "up to par" is simply "Because they haven't met me [Fluffyhamster] yet". A more nuanced answer would point out several factors: that they've spent too long gearing up to play golf rather than speak English (thanks, Denim! ); that a lot of them seem to buy their way through their education, especially when it leads to the west; and that Sasha's "all" is only a tiny subset of millions upon millions of learners. I've met some Chinese students who'd put the ones in that Harmer clip to shame (but perhaps that's a bit unfair, as that is a very teacher-led clip despite it being supposedly "inductive". Quite what the valuable info or rules were also wasn't clear - terminology by itself obviously isn't going to be generative in the sense that good rules might be. And did anyone notice one of the YT viewer's comments? "interesting body language amongst the students. Very defensive". Another responds "perhaps because of the camera?", but could it be due to the method and/or teacher? "Good" as it/he supposedly is).

Ultimately, I think that teachers, even the supposedly qualified, will face pretty much the same problems wherever - problems that are often more linguistic at root than pedagogical. (I don't see that there is much difference in methodology in Asian "versus" western private language schools, for example, nor have I seen that much difference between the levels PLURAL of students in each region. I think if Sasha and Spiral were honest, they would admit that they are probably now dealing mostly with quite advanced and experienced speakers, rather than with intrinsically more capable students "regardless of level" i.e. do they teach many schoolchildren, or adults who may've been deprived of or missed out on much education generally. And as Glenski goes on to point out, it is not totally unusual for Asian students to have not met a native speaker even by the time they've reached university). I will admit however that if Asia were exactly the same as the west throughout history then its educational practices and standards, indeed its languages, would be no different ROFL.

From this point on I'll make actual quotes, as the posts I'm referring to are more recent:

[santi84]

Fluffy, I don't mean to rag on teachers who come back from teaching in Asia exclusively (and by that, I mean they have not taught anywhere else besides China or Korea). I'm from Vancouver - in Vancouver, a lot of college graduates ship out to Busan or Xi'an within weeks of graduating, because the whole "go teach in Asia and pay off your college loans!" is pushed in the 4th year of university.

When you grow up in Vancouver, you grow up with a 40%+ Chinese population around you. You have Chinese/Korean friends, you learn Chinese in high school/college (which I did, and I had better luck practicing in Vancouver then a Chinese kid would have practicing English in China). You'll find a lot of native Vancouverites who have spent a stint teaching in Asia after university, as opposed to Toronto, Boston, whatever.

I apologize for generalizing, but in Vancouver, there really was an unusual amount of former EFL teachers who could not adapt to teaching ESL in Canada. Few of them had teacher training because many of them were in Asia to get the experience to enter teaching training back here in Canada.

It is an unusual situation in Vancouver, again, apologies for generalizing. But in Vancouver, people tend to be either well-educated trained teachers or know nothing beyond the typical teacher-centred classroom. When I took my (full year) university TESL certificate, the instructors had their work cut out for them, trying to break some poor habits that would not be acceptable here.