Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mithridates]

I've seen a few articles in the paper recently about students that aren't happy with telephone English companies that hire Filipinos to do the teaching and claim that their teachers are native English speakers. I translated one of the articles here:

http://koreabeat.com/?p=107

I'm not sure what to think about this because even though the companies were in the wrong in claiming that their teachers were other than what they really were, I've seen way too much blaming the accent when somebody can't understand what somebody says, but often the accent will only be a slight Australian one, or even a person from London speaking in perfectly normal English.

The image isn't that flattering either:



Here's a girl that can't understand what the teacher's saying, while the Filipino teacher is saying something incomprehensible (and what's up with his shirt?) while the owner pockets large sums of cash.

I used to work with a lot of people from the Philippines in cheque-processing centres in Vancouver before, but I've never been there so I don't know how good their English is. Are there many that can't be told apart from Americans/Canadians over the phone?

[JAZZYJJJ]

[in_seoul_2003]

What's with the f'ing pic?

I've spoken to many Filipinos and there are huge variations in the way they speak english. But with the exception of very few people (maybe 5%) I've never had problems understanding.

Don't blame the pronunciation, blame the (lack of) comprehension.

[Hater Depot]

I don't really get phone teaching. You only have like 15 minutes every day, so you're just going to repeat the same phrases every time, right? And plus if you have some kid who's nervous and his parents are pressuring him to talk a lot so they get their money's worth... not for me.

[The_Conservative]

Funny you should post that. I just read an article about this Indian (the sub-continent) entrepreneur. He runs this telephone/Internet business. What he wants to do is to expand into South Korea using the Internet broadband and offer English lessons over the Internet using English speaking graduates from Indian universities. This would be an "around the clock" service according to The Economist (where I read it).

I can see hakwon owners licking their chops. They would be able to hire 4-6 speakers for the price of one native speaker. And they would be able to offer Saturday and Sunday classes, as well as classes whenever the student(s) want them. No more listening to whiny N.A's, Brits, Aussies or Kiwis. Moreover since they would be able to offer lower tuition they could afford to expand down market and kids from lower-income families would be able to attend.

[Smee]

That makes sense, The Conservative, and it's a logical idea. But, remember that white North Americans are hired more for appearance and decoration. Also---and we've seen this with black native speakers---there's the assumption that the English they speak is wrong. I'm not sure how things work in larger, more affluent areas, but down here in my small town, being taught English by a Filipino (sp?) is a last resort. Parents complain about their accents (even though parents don't understand English) and are always looking for white people to privately tutor their kids.

I'd suspect, looking at the market for Filipinos, that the market for Indian teachers would be even smaller. Besides cost-effectiveness, one big advantage to hiring Filipinos down here is that---as they're married to Koreans---they can speak Korean pretty well and can thus communicate with young learners. Not saying Indians can't learn, but when you have such an undervalued demographic already here, I can't see any hurry to import more dark-skinned teachers.

[mindmetoo]

[The_Conservative]

[mithridates]

I was also thinking of making the point in the op that a lot of this might be due to jealousy that Filipinos are at the level that they can often pass for native English speakers, given that geographically it's a much closer country. I suspect it would be easy enough to find people with university degrees from South Africa (and Quebec of course) with much thicker accents, but they could still teach here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jNJVMJH5OhI

[wo buxihuan hanguoren]