Job Discussion Forums

[william wallace]

Nothing to say.

[naturegirl321]

You should be able to get a job. Some schools won't hire you, but others will. Don't worry, there are tons of schools here.

[Roger]

A great 'German' accent in their French - moi j'aime ca! I don't see what the problem might be - accents don't have half as much impact as other factors.
Almost everyone learns a foreign language under a teacher from one's own background, so one picks up a well-defined foreign "accent", no matter how hard one tries. Live with it, I say!
I think bilingual teachers are more aware of a student's academic progress because the teacher notices whether a student picks up something the teacher has taught him or her. Also, a bilingual teacher will try harder to use standard English.
Some think, a teacher needs to be "sympathetic" to his charges; not really, I think: he merely needs to be able to monitor the student's performance and make adjustments to the programme.

[cimarch]

To answer the original question, damn right we should! I'm sick of meeting so-called 'native speakers' who can't string together a coherent sentence and correcting the mistakes they've taught their students. I once took over a class and was given the last 'teacher's' book. I noticed he'd filled in one or the grammar quizzes so I graded it. He got a 64. The students told me that those were the answers he'd given them as correct. I think if someone's teaching someone to pass an exam (as opposed to how to speak the language) they should be expected to be able to score at least in the nineties themselves. Not that I'm saying you shouldn't need a decent score to teach oral classes. Can you imagine if your college professor could barely pass your exams himself? Do you think you would have graduated? I don't think I'm too far from the mark when I say there are a fair number of FTs here who barely passed High School English themselves...

[william wallace]

nothing to say

[MarcusK]

In college one language I decided to study was Japanese. The first day of class when the Asian-looking teacher started talking to us (in English) I was a bit startled to find that he spoke English with a rather heavy Scottish accent. He explained that in his native Shanghai his English teacher had been from Scotland. As the course went on, we'd joke from time to time with him about his pronunciation, as he was hoping to reduce his Scottish accent and develop more of an "American" accent.

After the course ended I had the opportunity to practice my Japanese with someone I had met from Tokyo. We exchanged pleasantries and I babbled a bit using beginner-level Japanese. He looked at me strangely. "Well, I think your Japanese is quite good," he said politely, "but why do you speak it with such a strange accent? You almost sound like you're from Shanghai!"

[struelle]

[Teacher Lindsay]

Speaking sincerely, I don't have a pedantic attitude towards communicating in English.

If I did I would criticise MarcusK for "In college one language I decided to study was Japanese.' rather than "In college one language I studied was Japanese." or, better still, "I studied Japanese in college" (am I a hypocrite?).

But to the point, I think that the poor enunciation of the non-native English speaking ESL teachers that I have met in China alone disqualifies them from being suitable teachers of English.

Incorrect inflections, prepositions and syntax can be overlooked if one adopts a communication first and foremost attitude towards teaching Chinese to speak English.

However, when I can't understand the mumbling of the non-native English speaking ESL teachers I think to myself "What hope do the Chinese students have?".

Cheers

[MarcusK]

[cimarch]

In the IELTS rating system the definition of native speaker is 9, anyone who can't score this shouldn't be allowed to teach as a native speaker.

As the great Sir Winston said,
"This is the type of English up with which I will not put."

[kimo]

That IELTS 9 you're speaking of does include reading comprehension, doesn't it?

[batman]

yes, absolutely. our salaries are at a lower level than they really should be, and in part i blame the large number of people coming from non-english speaking countries to teach here. i spent some time last year hiring for a school, and the vast majority of applications i got were from african countries. it seems people there are learing english, and are then encouraged to seek employment in places like china. this is very bad for the rest of us. it lowers our salaries, and spreads the stereo-type that english teachers are here only for the women and the booze. if an ielts or other test was a required part of the process, most, if not all of the fakes would be weeded out, leaving a higher quality product as the result. i have also been reading alot of posts lately that seem written by non-native speakers, a few typos aside, i think this is very obvious, and if it is obvious to me, then what are these poor students learning? everyone makes typos, but glaring grammar mistakes are a whole other thing. you know what i mean.

[batman]

i don't understand your poor grammar. whats a gayman? did u mean homosexual? if u think thats an actual picture of me, you must be dumber than u look. on second thought, seeing as how your english is so poor, maybe you are. are you looking for a gayman for some reason? perhaps cowboy pete could assist you with your rectal needs.

[kev7161]

We have a couple of teachers from Africa, one from India, two from Australia, three from the US (including me), and one from . . . Russia! Of course, everyone has their own accent, but there are a couple of teachers here whose accents are so pronounced that even I have to say . . . HUH? I can't imagine their students getting a good solid pronunciation base from them.

Here's a story: I had a Senior One student who transferred over to a special English class. His teacher was American. He always told me how much he liked her (and me) as we were from America and his goal is to learn "American" English (no offense intended for all you non-Americans, this is just what he told me). Anyway, the American teacher found another (higher paying) job and tore out of here lickety-split so the school had to scramble for another teacher. The new Russian teacher started last week. She's young and beautiful. I saw my former student a couple of days ago and said to him, "How do you like your new teacher? She's so lovely!"

"Yes," he replied, "but I miss (the other teacher). This (new) teacher's English is not so good!" That is so sad. I wish this kid were back in my class (not that I'm mister perfect, but maybe he would be a little happier - - he looked so sad when we spoke). I think a "teacher" should know what he or she is doing in the classroom and I also think that they should be easy to understand. If not, schools should not hire them.

[MarcusK]

Attaining fluency in another language includes learning to use naturally-sounding language--and I'm not referring to accents. Even if a particular utterance is grammatically correct, it may seem strange to a native listener due to unusual word choice or use of an obscure grammatical form.

A person can have a huge vocabulary, know all the finer grammatical points of a language, have a "perfect" accent, and yet still sometimes sound like a non-native speaker.

The only problem with this whole thing is that even two native-speakers can sound like non-natives to each other! Just try listening to a conversation between someone from rural Mississippi and someone from Edinburgh. (Although some might argue that those two actually _are_ speaking two different languages).