MisterE

The message is getting through.

A lot of schools in BKK, including my own, have opened Intensive English Programmes in the past year. This means the students get an English lesson or two everyday instead of the old one a week

All a bit late for ASEAN though. The results of this will take 10+ years to be seen.

IEPs, EPs and MEPs are cash cows for schools, literally gold mines. You think they are opening everywhere for the benefit of the students? If so you're sadly mistaken.

Education is a business everywhere in the world but only in Thailand, that I know of, would profit, e.g. making payments on the school director's new Benz, be put so far ahead of the welfare of students. Most schools won't even spring for books and resources for the students and even when teachers who care pony up and buy their own they are confronted with draconian copy policies at the school to save a few Baht.

I am a trained teacher with a B.S. and M.Ed, teaching at a Thai university (OK, please don't look up all my past posts and jump on typos or grammar errors!)

Unfortunately, I have lost count of the backpackers among whom I've had to teach alongside--most of whom had no inkling of how to teach a class, but were hired simply because they were white and a native speaker. Often a recent graduate (college OR high school grad) is hired simply on the basis of attractiveness (young and handsome/beautiful) so to act as a trophy-magnet for an English department's student-recruiting purposes. Several "teachers" sported fake credentials and were only found out because of gross incompetence or negligence a year or so later after the damage had been done.

I hope you read my post here http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/622394-thais-score-lowest-in-t-o-e-f-l/page-4#entry6157749 for some contrast to the experiences you describe.

The educational institutions here have a long way to go in learning how to screen teaching staff, and holding to a reasonable academic standard.

Well, I certainly agree with you on this.

First things first, remove the "no fail" policy that pervades academia here.

Hear hear!!!!

as to the problem of lower wages, i agree that in europe you can earn more than in thailand. but compared to the wages of thai teachers of english these wages seem to be quite higher.

So what if foreigners are paid considerably more than Thai teachers, it's still not enough. Any idea how much Thais with graduate levels of education spend for their education? You can earn a PhD in this country for under a million Baht. I spent that much on the first 2-years of my tertiary education. Foreigners come from a better education system and should be compensated as such.

Sorry but I just don't believe the numbers quoted:

- Thai students - 450 - believable.

- Singapore students - 550 - not believable because teachers actually teach 99%

of all classes in English in singapore, students totally immersed in English from

day 1 at Kindergarten. The averageTOEFL score for Singapore students must be

a lot higher than 550 / the gap cannot be just 100, impossible.

Well I think it is the other way round. Singaporeans might have averaged 550 - but Thais averaging 450 ? Well unbelievable. There cannot be just a 100 points gap. I think the Average Thai score might be around 250-300.

^ This is the more likely scenario, I agree completely. Typical face saving tactics by Thais to just plain LIE about the scores to mitigate the damage this causes to their precious "national face."

The problem is 2-fold and it is not the fault of foreign, native speaking, English teachers. Even if some or many of them are not terribly competent teachers (by Western standards) for a variety of reasons. It's very true that Thai English teachers are nearly 100% incompetent dinosaurs who have been at it for 20+ years and have a sense of entitlement. They get by hiding their low proficiency behind grammar books and lecturing to the students, in Thai, about English grammar. Yet, they can't have a 3 sentence conversation in the hallway with their foreign colleagues about how their weekend was. Thai students hate English class because of this and by the time they ever make it in front of a foreign teacher they are so turned off to learning English that the first job of the foreign teacher is to try to undo all the mistakes they have been taught by their Thai English grammar lecturers. I won't even dignify them with the title of "teacher."

The first problem is right in the text of the press release.

Sriwika advised lecturers |to make English the first language in campuses and start using technical terms more often while lecturing.

Hello dumbass Sriwika, lecturing is the absolute worst teaching methodology for language acquisition. Immersion is the only way to make real progress and that means student centered learning with activities that force the students to communicate with each other in English. The teacher should be talking for only long enough to describe what the activity is the students will be doing. Teacher talk time should be 15% of class time, the rest of the time students should be speaking, in English. Of course, this type of teaching is impossible in ill equipped classrooms with class sizes that regularly approach 60 students. These communicative, student centered, classes need to be followed up with homework assignments where students are forced to use the language outside of the classroom. They should have to go do research and be given individual assignments so they can't all just copy the paper of the student with the best proficiency in class.

The second problem is simply Thai laziness and I do not mean that in a derogatory way. Most Thai students see very little use for English in their lives and are only interested in learning the bare minimum possible to get by. Even Thais who work in industries where a higher English proficiency would benefit their jobs / careers have zero interest in improving their English beyond the bare minimum necessary to do their job.

Combine these 2 factors and you have an impossible situation / system to fix. There is no band-aid fix for this. All the incompetent Thai teachers should be fired and others retrained to use communicative, student centered methodologies. English class sizes should be reduced drastically (20 per class maximum) and they need more contact hours with competent foreign teachers who understand how to teach Thai students. Also, teachers' workloads should be decreased to teaching a maximum of 16 hours per week, instead of the current 20-24 per week, so they have time to prepare good lessons and give students quality feedback on assignments.

Teaching Thai students is very different from teaching students from anywhere else in the Asia and possibly the whole world. It's an acquired skill that can only be learned on the job. I have seen plenty of great teachers come from a Western education system to teach in Thailand and within a year they are pulling their hair out due to the backwards way Thai admin want them to do their jobs so, they move on. This is why teacher turnover is so high even in the "better" schools and it is the good ones that move on leaving Thailand to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill the positions.

The system needs to be completely reprogramed and rebooted but we all know that will never happen in this country.

Hi again, If you need a copy of the complete Labour Protection Law in Thai, updated to include all amendments passed since the original law was enacted in 1998, you can download it at the bottom of this page:

http://protection.labour.go.th/

It's a 64MB PDF document it appears someone is pretty clueless about how to make a reduced sized PDF. TIT

If there is any interest I can reduce the PDF file size and make it available for download.

Also, this page from the same site has all of the Labour Protection Laws individually here:

http://protection.labour.go.th/index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=category&id=58&Itemid=5

This could be very helpful for business owners and employees who want information that is not related to teaching occupations.

Combined with the English translations at www.thailaws.com you can find the relevant sections in the Thai documents if you can read Thai numbers.

This site works very well using Google Translate.

Well, Scott's link didn't work for me when I tried to download it direct from this forum page with a right click, Save As...

But when I used the PDF reader browser plugin it did load.

I found a post here that had a working link to the Thai Labour Law Act but I can't for the life of me find it again now. I'm glad I downloaded the PDFs when I first stumbled across them though because every other link to the Thai Labour Law Act here is dead I wanted to add the links here : http://www.thaivisa....75#entry4170065

But for some reason this thread doesn't even come up when searching this forum using the thread title copy and pasted??? Maybe it's closed or whatever, I'm new here and couldn't find how to reply.

<Dropbox links to PDFs removed>

Ahh the working links were in the footer of the PDFs.

Labour Protection Act, B.E. 2554 (1998) : http://www.ilo.org/d...19/E98THA01.htm

Labour Protection Act (No.2), B.E. 2551(2008) [Wow this site deserves a bookmark, it has everything] : www.thailaws.com

This looks interesting too : Act on the Establishment of and Procedure for Labor Court, B.E. 2522 (1979)

Hope they are helpful.

What we really need is a foreign teacher's union but I know.

Have you ever tried the "A Garden" Restaurant mentioned above??? I have not, but it sounds nice....

It was nice, had one of the best BBQs ever a couple years ago there and wanted to go back today but they are no more. Now it's a catering business only, no more restaurant. That's the news I got over the phone fwiw.

I'm going to opt instead for an overnight train that will put me at the border the minute it opens, 6:00 I think. I'll check out catching the first bus that goes from downtown Udon Thani all the way to the Vientiane Morning Market. I think it's under 100 Baht for the ride (?) but you must already have a Laos visa, which I do.

For the return I've learned that Nok Air has a 6:35 flight which gives me 1 more hour to pick up my passport and make it to the Udon airport Friday. I think that's enough of a buffer.

I'll report back how it goes.

Hello all,

Sorry for not searching here first but I have very limited computer time today and need to book air tickets ASAP. Also, I'm looking for your informed advice on whether or not my itinerary is doable. I'm a US citizen btw.

My current admitted until stamp runs out on the 10th (Friday). The 7th is a Buddhist holiday Asarnha Bucha Day, Wednesday is the beginning of khao panza (and I think everything is closed on both of these days) so it's going to be busy I reckon.

I already have a Laos visa, so that saves me some hassle at the boarder and allows me to take the express bus from downtown Udon to the Vientiane central market for 80 Baht. Is that a good plan or should I just take the 200 Baht van from the airport to the boarder since I'm pessed for time?

My plan is to fly in to Udon on the 8th (Thursday) arriving at 8:05 AM with no checked bags and haul ass to the Thai embassy in Vientiane to submit my passport by 12:00pm when the cutoff time is. [i'm going for a multiple entry tourist btw.] Then I hope to be able to pick my passport up at the embassy on Friday at 1:00, cross back into Thailand and get to Udon in time to catch a 5:40 flight back to BKK.

That's not leaving any margin for error which is something I usually don't do on a visa run but I think this should be doable. Does anyone see a problem with this plan? I would prefer to overnight in Udon on Friday and enjoy some nightlife but I have to work Saturday AM.

Also, could anyone recommend a reasonably priced and clean guesthouse in Vientiane please?

Thanks in advance all!

Will likely do my next border run to Ranong. I just need to activate another 90 days entry on my Non-Imm B.

I've never done a Burma/Myanmar border run though, can anyone give me a brief rundown on what to expect? Cost of Myanmar visa, duty-free options, etc...