Job Discussion Forums

[MW]

What is your opinion?


ASSUMPTION: All native English speakers with a college degree are qualified to teach ESL.

China recruits approximately 100,000 native English teachers each year (source: http://www.chinatefl.com) �According to a certain statistics about 100 thousand teachers will be needed every year in China.�). English teachers from Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States of America are heavily recruited through the Internet (http://www.chinatefl.com; http://www.tefl.com; http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo).

Generally speaking, in America, a University Bachelors, Masters or Doctorate Degree, in any discipline, merely qualifies a native speaker to enroll in a teacher training program where they will then receive a teaching certificate or Masters Degree, which amounts to a license to teach.

Unfortunately, there is no universal recruitment standard for ESL teachers in China other than the requirement that they are native speakers and have a college degree, in some recognized discipline. There is no teacher training requirement or even any teaching experience requirement to become an English teacher in China.

[email protected] Xin Pai Foreign Language School Date: Monday, 20 January 2003, at 10:08 a.m. More Job Vacancies Four more teaching positions are now available at Xin Pai Foreign Language School � but even those with no experience, who would like to try their hand at teaching, are welcome, as we can provide on-the-job training and assistance.

http://www.chinatefl.com/abroad.html; Frequently Asked Questions: 1. What qualifications should one have in teaching in China? The basic qualifications are: being a native speaker of English, having a minimum BA degree and commitment to teaching, loving China and its people. Clear, well-spoken English and a good knowledge of the fundamentals of English grammar. Teaching experience/certificate is preferred but not a must.

Most ESL teachers are recruited to China with very attractive bait (Travel/Teach English: The Global TESOL Institute, http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo/asia/sefer.cgi?China;
Looking for a well-paid job to explore China? Come to TDM! Posted By: TDM Language College [email protected] Date: Thursday, 16 January 2003, at 10:04 a.m. But you are very well paid. Your salary will be more than enough for you to live comfortably, to explore the exciting China, its history, its nature, its people, its culture, its language and its food).

The recruit is usually very young with no prior teaching experience, away from home for the first time, in their first cross-cultural experience, and under the belief that they are about to embark upon a China vacation, which of necessity, must be interrupted occasionally for a little work.

There is little or no advance training, preparation or indoctrination for teaching ESL in China. Far too many recruits never finish their one-year contract, some leaving within the first week, month or first several months. The reasons for disillusionment are almost as many and varied as the number of disillusioned (http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo/asia /sefer.cgi?China ). In a two year period 113 FE�s published over 400 complaints, mostly about Chinese owned and operated primary schools.

�Too many people with no real interest in the job come here (China) for a good time (very easy to do) and leave the real teachers trying to clean up the mess and repair their image. A white face and a degree, even a fake one, land a job.� (Tamblyn, Andrew, 1/15/03,

�The tragedy is that some folks come here not to teach, but to travel, so they get all romantic and misty eyed. They can�t teach, don�t want to teach, and want to party like in the good old USA. This devil-may-care, happy camper attitude unfortunately leads them to make immature decisions and to be placed in schools that can not wait to capitalize on these �Rage Against the Machine� look-a-likes. They also give serious teachers a bad reputation.� (H. Jones, (2/25/01)

There is no evidence that the native English teacher produces students any better equipped to speak English than their Chinese English teacher counterparts. This is partly due to poorly designed curriculum and partly due to the fact that too many native English speaking teachers are simply not trained to teach anything, let alone ESL.

Middle school and high school students of Chinese English teachers are subject to objective evaluation through the college entrance examination process. University students of Chinese English teachers are subject to objective evaluation through the Band 4 and Band 6 testing program. However, private college or business institute students taught by native English speakers are not subject to any objective evaluation testing process. The effectiveness of these private educational programs is an unknown factor and hence their contribution to the Chinese society is also an unknown factor. The only thing really known for certain about these private English schools is that they are draining an appreciable amount of yuan from the local economy (China Daily, HK Edition, 10/9/02).

This situation cries out for and demands an empirical study of the real benefit of private English colleges and business institutes in relation to their economic profiteering. The 16th Communist Party Congress discussed the advisability and merits of allowing private educational institutions to begin engaging in business for profit, as if it was not a current reality. Acknowledgement that private educational enterprises are making a financial killing in China already is a prerequisite to developing appropriate Governmental regulation and quality control standards for the private educational sector.

[Dragon]

Yes, comarde I completely agree with your pedagogical argumeent that naive native english teachers with no experience or even a degree should come to China. To come to China and explore? They probably only want to take our innocent young Chinese girls away. It is a disgrace that inexperienced teachers come here. The 16th Communist Party decree should be upheld as the 4th Represent.
Comrade, you are doing a great job in illuminating those not qualified to even enter the ESL field in the motherland. They should all get that experience before coming into the great country of China. Who do they think they are? Comrade, keep posting. We wait with grdeat vigor for your next posting on the status of the ESL Industry in China. I applaud you for all your work and your dedication to the Chinese students. If I could give you a medal I would. Lei Feng and MW are here to show all of those who do not take this ESL teaching serious that they should not even think about coming here for a good time. Comrade, I admire you and wish you 10,000 years of life
DRAGON

[arioch36]

Master Dragon? Perhaps we could allow young nubile female foreign teachers? We need better basketball players to show our country's natural superiority (plus foreign babes are hot!)

[Dragon]

Dear Arioch 36,
I am not a master nor ever intend to be. I am just an ESL Industry teacher. Please do not misconstue my comments. I only work for the glory of the ESL Industry in China. Financial renumeration is not my goal nor is foreign babes. Perhaps you should address that question to Comrade MW. I will look for his next posting, as we all should
DRAGON

[Bertrand]

I'm really at a loss as to how to respond to this post. All I can say really is, "what do you expect?" Can you imagine a forum for fast food workers in which someone lamented the fact that not all fast food outlet workers were qualified experienced French chefs! China can not attract professionals; there are too many students and the salaries, standard of living, and quality of life are all too low. Anyway, what is of the utmost importance is native speaker input, primary linguistic data to borrow an expression from generative grammar.

In China, I earned 5,500 RMB a month for a 6 day, 40 hour week, most of which - especially at weekends - were filled with screaming, spoilt brats. You have to put up with living in a 2nd/3rd world state and having money that is not worth the paper it is written on and not being able to spend/send money abroad. Now, in Hong Kong, I earn 20,000 HK dollars (22,200 RMB) a month for a 15 hour, 5 day week and I enjoy all the benefits associated with living in a world city. Given that choice, how many people who are serious about their life, work, etc., are going to go for China? Answer: not that many. China is, to me, simply a place where first timers get their experience (usually bad!) with fast language outlets like EF (most of whom contribute to the situation that you rightly highlighted in your post).

Maybe it is in recognition of this fact that EF English First now openly employ NON-NATIVE speakers as DOSs (e.g., Hector at EF Uramqi)

[Minhang Oz]

In response to MW's original question, taken from his broader treatment of the ESL "industry" in China, the answer is a simple "no". EFL is a specialist teaching area, just as knee surgery is an area a GP might know something about, but not be capable of performing properly. [Bertrand used an analogy, so I thought he might like one of mine]

On Bertrand's observations however:
I'm a professional. I currently teach 16 hours a week over four days. I get less than half his salary, but imagine it goes as far, and supports a comparable standard of living. I save 70% of my income without trying to. This is my second China stint, and I'm here because I like living and working here. I still have a permanent, well paid job on hold at "home" which involves 24 classroom hours a week, and as much again in marking, meetings, extra duties etc. Probably the kind of KFC fast food English outlet you mention does many exploitative things to its employees , but I've got no intention of working for them. I don't think many of the posters here intend to either.
So Bertrand, sometimes we need to paint with a broad brush, but the situation on the mainland is much more complex than your portrayal.
And you may be in Hong Kong, but remember, "Yi ge Zhong guo"

ps, how many Michelin stars does your school have?

[Roger]

Yes, MW, a deplorable situation! I read in a book about Henry Kissinger's ping-pong diplomacy with the Chinese that the man who, when he still was flesh and blood and ruled over China's Russian-learning, non-English-speaking blue-clad masses actually told HK that he would be very happy if America took ten million Chinese girls... There was a surplus of them at that time (not so today!).
With 100'000 "native English speaker teachers" coming to China per year, it only takes 100 years, give or take two to take care of the 20% or so who are not males, to export 10 million Chinese girls... Imagine how many of these 10 million girls will learn American English precisely because they are in a liaison with a native English speaker！

[MyTurnNow]

Answer to the question?

A resounding 'No'.
A lot of native speakers here aren't even qualified to speak English, much less teach it. Spelling, usage, etc. are too often abysmal. I just received a highly representative resume of a young woman from NZ whose "relevent" experience includes "privite" lessons.
I see an awful lot of this...

On top of this too many teachers just don't care and don't take what they do at all seriously. They simply go through the motions- or less.

MT

[ESL Guru]

I wonder, out loud, how many ESL teachers in China understand Stephen Krashen's theory about learning vs. acquisition, or have even heard about it?

The Chinese Minister of Education obviously does not understand it, if he has heard about it, because Chinese English majors graduate having learned ESL but not being able to communicate in ESL. The problem is all that teaching in a "hostile" ESL environment.

Just my thought on the matter.

[Kapt. Krunch]

Well said!!! Hostile to "active learning" of any kind!!
That having been said, the aquisition of a certificate, degree or otherwise doesn't make you suitable for the job. I'm sure that I don't have to explain this to those with more than a few months experience.

[chinasyndrome]

Completely concur! Wading through the mass of 'applicants' who can't spell their own names is a waste of time and effort, and it's not just younger people who do this. I'm joining the KKK (Kaptain Krunch Klub). The guru deserves his/her moniker on this one, too. And MTN must have a job like mine. I'll try to make a more concise and wordy whine later, but wanted to add a quick message of support now.

[Bertrand]

[quote="ESL Guru"]I wonder, out loud, how many ESL teachers in China understand Stephen Krashen's theory about learning vs. acquisition, or have even heard about it?

Not in China, but there is one here in Hong Kong who is very aware of him and his (now somewhat old and outdated) work. In fact, an old professor of mine from Durham in the UK had him as their PhD supervisor. Who's that for fame?!?! Personally, Krashen's work (which I had to study for my MA in language acquisition) is just too generative and Chomskyan for second language studies.

[baby predator]

Sigh.
So, not only do I have to question whether I am competent to teach ESL (I've never read Stephen Krashen), but I have to ask myself whether the English that I speak is 'the right kind of English' to teach.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,5500,956010,00.html

Should I tell my students not to worry about those tiresome 'th' sounds? Is the present perfect now truly redundant? These questions are not rhetorical. Is it time (as the author of the above article suggests) to start teaching "global English"?

[ESL Guru]

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.

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 underneath 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 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.

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, concentration camp, 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. 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.

Nothing like teaching ESL in China mates!

[kimo]

Conversation overheard at my favorite coffee shop here in Beijing.

"Yo, Billy Bob, youse iz da ugliest redneck I ever seen. How'd you ever become an English teacher anywayz?"

"Aw, shucks, Rocko, leas I know howta conjeegate my gozintas."

"Gozintaz?"

"Yeah! One goes into one one time. Two goes into two two times. Three goes into three three times. Doan know no more after daat."

"You hillbillys is stupider n a Bruyklyn fuerhydrant."