Job Discussion Forums

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

How long have people been teaching English outside of England (UK) or an English speaking country?

Were there French traders in the 14th Century who learned Elizebethan English from ex-pats, who spent their free time smoking flowers, drunk and visiting the lady of the evening?

Did the new settlers to the New World teach the native peoples English?

Were there native speaker English teachers living in Nazi Germany, or Fascist Italy? Any English teachers in Japan before WW 2? There has to have been some.

I have heard that it was the last 30 years that this field has become popular with expats, first in Europe and now in Asia.

Tell us your opinion,

Senor

[Dazai]

Senor wrote:

[Stephen Jones]

[leeroy]

Hola senor

Como estas? Lo siento por mi espanol lamentable...

I have my End Of Year univerisity exam tomorrow, curiously enough I have just read about the Globalisation of English...

The English Language (although it wasn't know as that back then) started to be globalised around the 12th century - when it was exported to Ireland. Mind you (verily Sir..), back then what passed for "English" wasn't the sort of thing that we could make head nor tail of these days.

"English" as we know it now only really came about as a result of the printing industry (I have the exact date somewhere, it was c16th century). A little later on it was imposed by the British overlords in India - using the God Awful Grammar Translation method among others.

It was probably colonialism that really saw the formal "teaching" of English per se - the British saw Spoken English as a way of converting the intellectual/financial elite of their colonies to "their side" - anyone who spoke English would think in a similar way to how they do. In a sense they were right...

[Glenski]

Regarding Japan...

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

That was a drunken post. There is a question in there somewhere.

Senor

[JosephP]

I've been swanning around classrooms since 1990. I've probably introduced the concept of the past perfect about a million times at least. *Shrug* it's a job...

[Roger]

English came pretty late to China.
In the 18th century, Brits were unwelcome here. Lord McCarthney's embassy to Peking was received less than ceremoniously though the impression was created by the Chinese that those "barbarians" were coming as tribute bearers...

Only when the English started importing opium into Canton, now better known as Guangzhou, did the language of the English Queen or King take a foothold here. Precisely because the CHinese emperor forbade foreigners to...study Chinese!

They were confined to Macau and Shamian Island off Canton; as a result of the opium war the Brits gained Hong Kong and a number of concessions in other Chinese towns - Weihai, Ningbo, Shantou ("Swatow"...), Shanghai, Wuhan and others.

The Brits, later other westerners, introduced to China western technology, professional know-how, modern banking, trade, and even the study of Chinese (later becoming sinology).

The Brits set up hospitals, missionary outposts, clinics and schools - and English was widely taught.
In Hong Kongh until 1998, English was the medium of instruction at most public schools. With resurgent nationalism, English-medium schools have had to take a backseat. It is claimed, students learn better using their first language.
Parents, however, prefer English-language education...

[hamel]

i read a couple of years ago about this. there is a really good book on the subject--the history of esl teaching. brits were teaching on the european continent in the late nineteenth century (berlitz et al.)and it seems that japan was the starting point for asian esl in the late nineteenth century as well.
interesting history

[Roger]

Postscriptum:
It is worthwhile to note that English was taught in China even between the so-called "liberation" and U.S. President R. Nixon's visit in 1972 (?), albeit RATHER DIFFERENTLY, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

I happen to know that some Chinese studied English before it became the craze we know it is today. But English at that time was one among others, with Russian being primus inter pares! If you studied Russian you had the only chance of being allowed out of the country (with few exceptions for those who needed speciliased training in Europe or medical treatment elsewhere).
What's more, during the 1970s, China was even more cosmopolitan than it is now, i.e. students chose a foreign language with a view of studying in a particular linguistic community and return to China with freshly-gleaned modern know-how in a professional field. That's why in the 1970s and early 1980s, Chinese were seen studying at as diverse universities as those in Finland, Italy, Rumania, Cuba, Albania; they mastered those extremely rare or difficult languages more perfectly than most handle English today!

We have come a long way, ineed!

Unfortunately, this was soon found to be very cost-ineffective. English was finally imposed as the only foreign language and a compulsory subject within the last ten years. Other languages can be studied too - as second foreign tongues. Most popular are: Japanese, French, German.

[dmb]

[Auntyjack]