Job Discussion Forums

[MW]

ANY OPINIONS?


ASSUMPTION: Chinese ESL speakers without western cultural experience are capable of teaching ESL

Language and culture are inseparable, on this there is no apparent disagreement between linguists. How then can an L2 ESL speaker, without any actual immersion in, or exposure to, the L2 ESL culture, possibly expect to be an effective L2 ESL teacher? They are certainly capable of dissecting the grammatical rules, analyzing English writings, reading extensively, and memorizing vocabulary, but this will enable them to do nothing more than teach a �DD� form of English. Additionally, in far too many cases, (especially the primary school teachers) their own pronunciation is so atrocious that they can not possibly correct a student�s improper pronunciation and they are so steeped in Chinglish that it is impossible for them to recognize it and correct it in their students. (Yanping Dong, (2003)

The L2 students of L2 teachers will not have any appreciation for the cultural or environmental context in which the native speaker actually uses the language. The student will speak, if at all, in a �DD� form of English that the native speaker will find very strange, bookish, stiff or formal, and unintelligible; or, the Chinese student will use a form of Chinglish which is universally understandable by other ESL speakers and L1 English speakers alike.

Chinese English teachers at the middle school and high school levels are themselves so unaccomplished in proper English pronunciation that they discourage and even intimidate their students from attempting to speak in English (He Mei, (9/28/00) When these students reach the university level they have little or no practical speaking ability and have very poor pronunciation, making the university oral English teachers job almost an impossibility. This situation has also been fostered by an English curriculum that is test result driven rather than driven by practical conversational ability. Middle school and high school students focus on learning only that which is required to pass the college entrance examination, which does not include oral English.

A flawed L2 curriculum, taught by L2 speakers who themselves are deficient in their L2 language understanding and production ability, constitutes an educational program doomed to less than stellar results. In fact, the results are so poor as to require a very lenient grading standard to avoid failing more than half of the Chinese English students in each class.

EXAMPLE #1: (Cultural Ignorance and Dictionary Definition, Chinese English Teacher talking to Foreign Expert, Feb. 24, 2003)
CET � �Tomorrow you will �fetch� your Temporary Residence Permit from the Public Securityy Bureau.�
FE � �Why do you talk to me like that? I am not a dog!�
CET � �What do you mean?�
FE � �In America we command our dogs to �fetch� when we want them to retrieve something for us.�
CET � �But the dictionary says that �fetch� is used to refer to going someplace and bringing something that is there back.�
FE � �Yes, but in actual daily usage we only tell our dogs to �fetch� when we throw something and have them chase it and bring it back or when we are using dogs while hunting for birds. It is an insult to tell a person to �fetch.� You insinuate that they are a dog.

EXAMPLE #2: (Dictionary Definition and Cultural Ignorance, exerpts of inappropriate conversational English randomly taken from an English textbook published in 2001 and written by a Chinese L2, �Interactive Speakers.�)
It�s time to say our farewells. P55
Could they make me known the exact time the plane takes off? P69
Have I got the go ahead to put out the fire? P119
I wonder if you�d excuse me for a moment. P152
� I�m afraid. P183
I�m afraid �. P 24, 167, 182
Will it be convenient if I call upon you at seven this evening? P220
To be openhearted, your denial that you had witnessed the accident dumbfounded me. P 249
He chooses to look into the matter till the truth is out. P264

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade,
I am not sure if the Chinese teacher is competent to teach ESL but I agree with you! Please keep posting as your insights are tantalizing. If you could refer more to the party I would greatly appreciate it.
May comrade MW live 10,000 years.
DRAGON

[yaco]

Dear MW

We have a very big problem in China ?

Native speakers are not qualified to teach English and neither are Chinese teachers ?

Are you suggesting, that China drops English totally from the school curriculum ?

[MW]

Simply stated, if you have to ask, maybe you need to re-read the posts. lol

No - really -

L2 speakers who teach the L@ without any cultural or environmental exposure are not competent to teach the L2. That is obvious from the poor result they obtain.

L1 speakers teaching their L1 as L2 without any training in teaching, much less ESL teaching are not competent to teach ESL.

Yes - we have a very big problem with ESL teaching in China and if we do not clean it up, Roger is correct, China will close the door to FE's teaching in China as a waste of their money without results. The FE will be blamed for all the faults, not the Chinese Emglish teachers who fail to provide the adequate foundation for the students long before the FE gets them.

[yaco]

Are you joking MW ?

L1 teachers need training in teaching or similar to teach L1 to Chinese students ?

Please MW have a rest !!!!!!!!!!

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade,
You are absolutely correct. Pay no heed to those who are against your facilitation method.
Dragon

[Roger]

Well argued, with excellent examples, MW!

I do not mind if I have to "fetch" my residence permit or teaching materials; I do mind, however, that at least half of all Chinese English teachers mispronounce:
- divorce ("divoyce");
- theme ('zeme'), thorough "sorrow") etc.;
- sleep ('slip'), this ('zis') and these ('zis' see 'this');
- company ('com painy');
- fifteen ('fifty', and of course, 'fifty' becomes 'fif-ten);

and are unable to teach English grammar EFFECTIVELY (plurals and tenses in particular!

I have said on this board time and again, native English teachers should teach and train Chinese English teachers, not so much primary school pupils and college students!
It is the Chinese teaching and its underlying philosophy that need input from outside!

[Gouki]

MW, what's your point?

Chinese teachers, with the experiences and knowledge can teach English as well as anybody else. If they could kick ass teaching Maths or Science, then they could very well master teaching other languages.

"Fetch" is a term not necessarily used on dogs, who the hell gave you that narrow minded idea.

I bet you anybody on this (China) forum would not be able to master Chinese in 2 or 3 years, especially if you had lived in an English speaking country (such as Singapore). Chances are, your progress would be so much slower than those studying in Chinese speaking countries.

[noyb]

Gouki asked:

[MW]

NOYB -

Please tell me you are not really teaching ESL or that you are just a practical joker or that well......

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade MW,
Yes attack that no good bougeious teacher. He is an example of what you said in one of your earlier many postings. You are the epitomy of what we strive to be. May you have long life and live forever as this facilitation method since 1978 is finally beginning to take shape here in the great China.
Your follower
Dragon

[noyb]

[Minhang Oz]

Underlying much of this debate is the concept of English as the preserve of Western culture; or should we make that North American culture? Of course this is wrong. The fascination of Chinese adolescents with things "pop" and Western aside ,any foreign language learned by anyone needs to be for a real purpose, otherwise it is an academic exercise. Can we please clarify our terminology? Students learning English in China are doing EFL. If they were in the UK or Canada it would be ESL. The real need of Chinese EFL learners is to acquire a broad set of grammatical functions and vocabulary which can be readily understood by native speakers and,increasingly importantly,by other EFL users. This comes back to my original point. Using English to communicate with a Japanese or Korean tourist or business person is a far more likely real use of the language than the myriad of naive and patronising text books with their inane "Leave it to Beaver" set-piece conversations would have them believe. So,if we are going to teach the cultural language model,we need to include Indian,Nigerian,West Indies English....and of course we can't.Chinese EFL teachers do as well as can be expected,and at least as well as their equivalents in English speaking countries: Australians teaching Japanese, Canadians teaching Spanish and so on. Native speakers-at least the more ignorant,less secure ones-would mock their efforts, and call the results Ausjap and Spancan, safe in the knowledge that they'll never have to teach a language from the basics. [A question:How many native speaker EFL teachers feel competent to teach English grammar?] I get an increasing feeling with this forum that this insecurity,this unwillingness to talk about how you do what you're being paid to do, leads to a tendency to "dumb down" .So,avoid the points I've made,or ignore them, or best of all post some facetious but ultimately sad reply.

[pratyeka]

Interesting debate. Almost everyone has actually said something constructive!

Loved the examples, too.

Basically the fact is, if people will pay for it, you are never going to stop Chinese teachers with no experience in western countries from teaching English. That's not really such a bad thing. For learners at certain levels, learners trying to grasp certain grammatical structures that said CET has already become familiar with, then perhaps such a teacher is useful and inexpensive.

Sure, Chinese English teachers' English is rarely 100% correct, but it's at least amusing, cheap to employ and correct enough to get the message across most of the time!

In a nation of so many people, many of whom are economically not-quite-up-there, or 'trying to get a leg up' (heh), you can't expect that 'correct' and 'proper' is going to be 'best' or 'most appropriate' in all situations.

PS: Minhang Oz: your points are well-considered but you don't put a space after your commas! Incorrect use of typed punctuation seems to be relatively frequent in 'EFL' Chinese learners.

[Owen]

A very interesting thread. One point that I especially agree with is that making a greater effort to correctly train teachers in proper pronunciation and common word usage would be much more effective than the current pattern.

Perhaps it is not politically correct to say that poor pronunciation and awkward word usage by the Chinese EFL teachers are common but, at least from my experience, they are the rule rather than the exception. I have some good friends who are teaching English and yet can only conduct a very simple conversation and then with great difficulty in English. Most of the rather large English language staff here fall into that category. It is probably true that it is just as bad in high school EFL classes in America, (it was when I took Spanish!), but that does not mean it is an acceptable situation.

No, I am not an English major. I was hired to supposedly teach engineering technology classes but on arriving the Department Head announced that he did not want any foreigners in his department, so I was reassigned to oral English. At least our college is straight forward about it. We are told right up front that our primary job is to demonstrate spoken English, to correct major pronunciation errors and to aid students in developing listening skills. The latter is the hardest since almost all of my students have never had a foreign teacher with native English skills or even spoken to or heard a foreigner speak English. They are so steeped in Chinglish and mispronunciation that it takes most of one semester just to correct the glaring errors. Then we can start to work on proper word selection and usage.

The most effective thing for any foreign language major to do is to study the language in a country where it is spoken as a native language. Few Chinese can afford to do that however.

I willingly aid the Chinese staff whenever they ask for help but there is a sense of there being a loss of face if they have to ask for help from the foreigner. Both students and teachers will often argue with me when I correct a glaring error insisting that I must be wrong because that is what their teacher told them or that is what the book says. The books are generally terrible, so that never surprises me.

Interestingly enough, English really does not belong to any one country, race or group. Unlike German or Chinese where there are official government bodies to declare what is proper, English is continually revised and reworked by those who speak it. The point to the Chinese educational system is to teach a version of English which will enable their citizens to derive the maximum benefit. Right now that is perceived by the average person in Chinese to be English as spoken in the international business community. With America currently being the largest market for China most Chinese college and adult students prefer to learn an "American" English.

That leads to another point. English as commonly spoken in India, for example may sound odd to an American, Canadian or Britain, but it works fine for communication with any of these. Why then is Chinglish so difficult to follow by native English speakers? I would say that it is primarily because of poor word usage. Often the words selected are technically grammatically correct but they fail to communicate the thought. Also the concept that expression can completely change the meaning of a sentence seems to elude my students.

Of course the fact that schools here often hire people who do not speak English at a native language level just contributes to the problem. I personally know of people teaching oral English with heavy "foreign" accents. The people hiring them don't know the difference. The Dean of the English department here barely speaks any English himself.

What is the answer? Well, doing a better job of teahing the teachers is the best answer, but I don't see any real changes happening.

That started out as a simple statement and it kept growing.