Job Discussion Forums

[JZer]

[theincredibleegg]

Students won't pick up your accents. They will however pick up expressions, idioms etc that are related to your accents, but other than that: No, it doesn't matter.

Vocab-related stuff is easy to counter as textbooks pretty much sets it up for you.

Sadly, many employers in China thinks that accent is relevant to the success of an English teacher. You will meet employers who won't hire you for whatever accent you have.

Non-natives. Unless you have a degree in English from an English speaking country, it's going to be a bit tougher to get a god job, but it's possible.

If you look Asian, you can forget about it.

[JZer]

The funny thing is that I am a white American and have been turned down for a job because of my accent before. I never was outside of the US/Canada until I was 21.

[sharpe88]

Sorry folks, despite what one of the posters here says, there is no "easily identifiable ABC accent". (Wishful thinking by some hoping that their skin color gives them special linguistic authenticity perhaps?) I have personally known hundreds or thousands of ABCs in my life and there is no accent which distinctively separates these individuals from other people in their geographic region. Perhaps some of you are confusing those who immigrated young (aka 1.5ers) with American-born Chinese. If there is such an accent, I would like to see the linguistic studies that have been done with it.

Most instructive to me was when I attended the "Love Boat" (Overseas Chinese Study Program) in Taiwan many moons ago. This program had about 1000 overseas chinese, almost all ABCs or CBCs. These people's speech was not noticably informed by their parents' tongue but by their regionality - Californians, Midwesterners, Hawaiians, Canadians and Europeans that had their region's accent.

The poster that said he could sniff out Western-born Chinese on the phone must have some really special powers. Can you give specific pronunciation differences which you detect ? R's and L's said differently? Longer vowels perhaps?

[mcl sonya]

Oh man, you did love boat. I never did that, but I've heard awesome stories.

The advantage to having a native speaker teacher is it helps students develop listening comprehension to a native accent (which is harder to understand than a non-native one) and exposure to a native from an English speaking culture. It's more interesting, and engages them more, to have a foreigner tell them about their culture and daily expressions and what such and such means, than their Chinese teacher who they know has never left China tell them about this culture far far away. It's like automatic interesting good teacher points, to be a foreigner.

I think all of the difficulties or lack thereof individuals have in the whole whirling, merry-go-round of China is very case by case. Look at me and I totally had no problems finding work. Being Chinese American was a huge plus for myself and the handful like me that I knew. But, my blond Israeli ex boyfriend had trouble finding work for a couple months, although his English is fluent and he lived in the States before, because he refused to say he was American or Canadian. Meanwhile -- you hear all these stories and people who say fugettaboutit to Asians. So, who knows? Maybe the key is to go to Qingdao. (Awesome, awesome place, btw -- maybe not as happening as some other big cities, but a good hapijo chigala lifestyle and environment). Whatever you do, don't listen to the people who say huaqiao can't become good foreign teachers and get discouraged.

[wangdaning]

I think there is way too much over generalization here. I will agree that there is no ABC accent, and usually an ABC will speak like those from the region they grow up in, but to claim none have an accent. Crazy. I lived in the SF bay area for 6 years and can tell you some ABCs still carry their parents accent in English. Not all but some.

This is of course irrelevant, because most Chinese learning English will have a Chinese accent unless they move abroad and try hard to change it to the local accent.

Who knows why some Chinese employers shy away from native English speaking Chinese. There are too many possible answers. The fact is that this type of employer would suck anyway, so they are actually giving you good reason to avoid them.

One thing I thought about after getting a degree in Chinese but being unable to get a related job was that employers who didn't know Chinese were more confident in a Chinese person. They knew their English level and could assume their Chinese based on appearance.

[JZer]

[JZer]

[Zero]

Well, just to weigh in with my 2 cents, I have talked to a lot of Asian Americans and in cases where they were born in the U.S., I have never heard a distinctive accent. Just the local accent of wherever they came from -- often California. If they came here as children, they sometimes have an accent, depending on their age when they came.

I only remember one case where I heard a foreign accent in an American-born Asian. It was a segment on 20/20 or some similar news magazine show about a boy, born in the U.S. to Korean immigrants, who was a genius. He was entering college at like age 10. And he carried a bit of his parents' accent. I have to assume that was because he spent nearly all of his time with his parents and did not socialize with other children much.

[alter ego]

[JZer]

[A'Moo]

[Zero]

[wangdaning]

[alter ego]