Nonsense English exam answers

[smotherb]

From the language in the exam, it appears to be a standardized English Comprehension Exam, which comes with correct answers. Hopefully, NES teachers were not used to correct the exams, so are you sending your children to schools where the English teachers are all Thai?

[thesetat2013]

so sad yet this happens in most every school.. even the top schools in Bangkok.  i have seen it and even refused to follow books issued I found to have poor English inside.  This is one of the reasons I stopped teaching in Thailand and refuse to pay extra for any English programs for my 2 daughters. 

A warning though. Surely the teacher is incompetent in English to be teaching it properly.  However, she most likely can not be fired due to policies within the Ed. ministry.  At most, you will lose face to the school and make further problems for your child in that class. Best you plan to move her to a different school. 

[sometimewoodworker]

There is one good thing with that test and that is that at least it is written in correct English, so you can clearly understand the correct answers, even if the teacher can't.

 

I was once asked to help a child from the village with the English test they had from the school, the " English " questions and answers were so bad I couldn't understand either the meaning of the questions or the answers.

[jenny2017]

2 hours ago, ozmeldo said:

Id read two questions and stopped. That is tragic.

 

I've been lucky enough to have taught in schools and with teachers that are operating way above this level, but I have seen similar. What really difficult is when students challenge the Thai teacher via you. It puts you between a rock and a hard place. It's a huge load of face I'd imagine, when it shouldn't be unless the inconsistencies are endemic.

 

Most tragic for us is that here we sit on borrowed time with waivers, most of us will never be allowed to obtain a license. This is presumably a licensed, tenured, government employee.

 

 

Your statement isn’t really true. The TCT gave all foreigners enough time to do an additional course to upgrade an existing BA. A Diploma in Teacher Education does the trick and the TCT will issue a license for you.

 

Even for those who haven’t got a BA, it’s possible to obtain a BA in education, mostly online with a couple of “face to face” lessons.

A few years back the TCT somehow lost track of the issued waivers and people started over being on their first provisional license.

[aidenai]

3 hours ago, ozmeldo said:

Most tragic for us is that here we sit on borrowed time with waivers, most of us will never be allowed to obtain a license.

From 2007 until 2011, foreign teachers could sit the TCT Professional Knowledge Tests. 4,000 THB for 4 exams. Now, one could enrol a one year graduate diploma in education course or equivalent which are accredited by the TCT and will lead to the TCT teacher license. The costs are around 60,000 THB for a Filipino course and 150,000 THB for a British course. 

 

Currently you can get a maximum of 3 temporary teaching permit aka waivers. Each permit has a maximum validity of 2 years.

Edited August 19, 2018 by aidenai

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, Krataiboy said:

If you have the means, better to send your child to a reputable international school or, assuming you have the time and skills, homeschool them.

I would have completely agreed with your post except for the last sentence.

I don't believe the 'international schools' (Pinoy staff) are any better than the government schools (Thai staff).

They are all staffed by teachers that are essentially the 'lowest bidders' who usually wouldn't be employed in any western government schools.

Edited August 19, 2018 by BritManToo

[ThailandLOS]

So what's the conclusion here? There are no good schools at all to be found in Thailand?

[duanebigsby]

18 minutes ago, jenny2017 said:

Your statement isn’t really true. The TCT gave all foreigners enough time to do an additional course to upgrade an existing BA. A Diploma in Teacher Education does the trick and the TCT will issue a license for you.

 

Even for those who haven’t got a BA, it’s possible to obtain a BA in education, mostly online with a couple of “face to face” lessons.

A few years back the TCT somehow lost track of the issued waivers and people started over being on their first provisional license.

His statement is true.

The Thai Culture course and tests TCT  gave haven't been offered for several years. A Diploma in Teacher Education takes a year of full time uni study. You can't get a Bachelor of Education online with "a couple of “face to face” lessons".

[duanebigsby]

7 minutes ago, aidenai said:

From 2007 until 2011, foreign teachers could sit the TCT Professional Knowledge Tests. 4,000 THB for 4 exams. Now, one could enrol a one year graduate diploma in education course or equivalent which are accredited by the TCT and will lead to the TCT teacher license. The costs are around 60,000 THB for a Filipino course and 150,000 THB for a British course. 

 

Currently you can get a maximum of 3 temporary teaching permit aka waivers. Each permit has a maximum validity of 2 years.

True, but to spend 150k baht and with no income for a year you would need to spend about 500k baht to get a teaching license. That's a lot for a 30k a month job.

[aidenai]

10 minutes ago, duanebigsby said:

A Diploma in Teacher Education takes a year of full time uni study.

Saterdays only, or online and a couple of times face-to-face. 

 

St. Theresa

https://www.stic.ac.th/wp-content/uploads/brochures/graduate-diploma-in-teaching-profession-brochure-2018.pdf

 

Nottingham

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/study/pgcei/venues/bangkok.aspx

 

St. Roberts

http://www.saintrobertsgroup.com/ADMISSIONS/

Edited August 19, 2018 by aidenai

[duanebigsby]

4 minutes ago, aidenai said:

Saterdays only, or online and a couple of times face-to-face. 

 

St. Theresa

https://www.stic.ac.th/wp-content/uploads/brochures/graduate-diploma-in-teaching-profession-brochure-2018.pdf

 

Nottingham

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/study/pgcei/venues/bangkok.aspx

I stand corrected. This is a great idea for Bangkok teachers, not so much for anyone else.

[ChiangMaiLightning2143]

Trying sitting the written exam for a Thai drivers license.

I'm glad they offer it in "English" but the question bank  is so full of nonsense and gibberish (and contradiction)  all one can do to succeed is memorize the answers after 2 or 3 attempts.

Edited August 19, 2018 by ChiangMaiLightning2143

[HHTel]

On 8/18/2018 at 11:47 AM, Chrisdoc said:

I guess the teacher is from the Phillipines. It must be pretty easy to get a degree there which makes the requirement for a degree to teach in Thailand a joke. My niece's teacher at an expensive international school is from the Phillipines and after half a year she can't even have a "Hello, How are you conversation?". I guess the new teacher is better than the Thai one at the government school. After 4 years of English she knows nothing.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

I think you'll find that the Filipinos would put any Thai to shame with their English.  It is an official language in the Philippines and is widely spoken.  In fact, it's the third largest English speaking country in the world!  All court records, technical manuals, medical books etc, are in English. English TV shows and movies are never dubbed like they are in Thailand.

I know several Filipinos in Thailand and every one without exception speaks very good English. 

Choice between a Thai teaching English and a Filipino, the obvious answer is the Filipino every time! 

 

You must be thinking of some other country.

[Cheops]

And where is "Netherland" [sic] located?

Is that near the Netherlands? 

 

We are laughing, but actually the fact that teachers without knowledge are able to teach is very sad and even worse is the fact that students are not allowed to speak up against teachers, so this just goes on and on. The good students will manage, but the majority will take over the incorrect teachings and continue the circle.

[chrisinth]

Not sure what all the fuss is about. According to the OP one student got 100 out of 100, 100% correct answers and will now represent the school in English.

 

Hope the reputation of the school isn't hanging on the student's performance and the teacher who marked the qualifying paper can explain to the director what happened...............

[pi2005ni]

It’s very sad . Many of these Thai kids are actually very very smart , however in many cases they will never have the opportunity to go anywhere in life . The Thai government instead of employing a legal qualified native English speaking teacher go for the cheap option of employing non qualified teachers , Indian , Pakistan, Russian, French who themselves have little command of the English language. I applaud Rotary who have schemes that sponsor some kids who have the ability to do well given the chance . I know many native English speaking ex pats who would gladly teach these kids for free but again the risk of getting arrested is too great . When will the Thai government wake up .

[blackcab]

1 hour ago, thesetat2013 said:

so sad yet this happens in most every school.. even the top schools in Bangkok.  i have seen it and even refused to follow books issued I found to have poor English inside.  This is one of the reasons I stopped teaching in Thailand and refuse to pay extra for any English programs for my 2 daughters.

 

I have to disagree. One of the top schools in Bangkok is Bangkok Patana. To suggest that they teach substandard English (or substandard anything) is very incorrect.

 

You only have to look at their exam results to see this. Here are their students 2018 IGCSE results:

 

Overall pass 95.8% A*-C, with 80.7% awarded A*-B.

 

Their latest International Baccalaureate (IB) results:

 

98% pass rate, with an average score of 35 out of 45. This year two students scored a perfect 45 out of 45. Only 300 students worldwide achieved that, out of 200,000.

 

Of course the school, like all top schools in Bangkok, is expensive, but that is a different discussion.

[Irishrogue]

I realise that it should not be funny when your child/children's education is at stake but reading through the examples it is hard not to laugh at the total incompetence of the supposed teacher.

My daughter was doing her English homework last week 9 year old and some of it was understanding the time using analogue clocks. In one example the picture indicated a man in bed at 9.0 o'clock and watching TV at 10.0 o'clock obviously the images were incorrect but the exercise was about time and the teacher had indicated that 10.0 pm came before 9.0 pm the standard text books are wrong and they the teacher's just follow along without even understanding. 

[HHTel]

What about contractions for 'those are' and 'these are'.... i.e. Those're and these're.  (some homework my  daughter came home with!)

[scorecard]

3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

You are misunderstanding the Thai education system,

Quite a lot of English teachers are Thai floosies of important government officials, parked there to draw a wage while banging the 'influential person'. Which is essentially why they can't teach English. Pointing out their failings to the director will probably result in bad results for your pupil.

 

I have a close association with two native English speaking Thai children, one aged 20 is classed as 2nd best English speaking pupil in Chiang Mai, failed her year in High school because she spoke better English than the 'pretty' who was her teacher. Another aged 7, fully bilingual, classed as 'slow' by his class teacher who can't speak one word of English, and 'poor' by his elderly untrained American English teacher who bores him so much that he doesn't participate in the class.

 

"...failed her year in High school because she spoke better English than the 'pretty' who was her teacher. "

 

My Thai son speaks very close to native speaker English, went to high school in Singapore, I am native English speaker, his Thai mother went to high school and uni in Australia, close to native English speaker and we made a family role when son was born 'English only at home and we stuck to it'.

 

Son enrolled in a 5 yr program at Thai uni. students were promised a sizeable number of hours of English conversation per semester.  Nothing until mid 4th year. Suddenly 18 yr old Thai girl entered the story and announced in thai that she was the English teacher.

 

She produced an old exercise book and ripped out one page which had 4 hand written sentences all in block letters no punctuation, many spelling mistakes.

 

Example 'YESTERDAY I WAS WILL GO SHOPPING MOTHER SHOPPING GO NOW TODAY YESTERDAY WAS'

 

Student despatched to get copies, copies arrive, teacher tells class she will read first sentence then whole class must read same sentence in unison 3 times.

 

Repeat same process for next 3 sentences then teacher picks up her bag and walks out.

 

Students discover after a few 'lessons' she has no qualification whatever and she is the niece of the very corrupt uni school director.

[Sprigger]

As my Thai lady friend says to me quite regularly, Falang should not try to speak Thai because in her words “cannot do”and embarrass themselves although many think they are good at it she assures me they are all jokers. As far as I’m concerned same applies to Thais and English just jokers everyone to their own.

[HHTel]

My daughter was failed on English some years ago 'because she had a bad accent'.  My daughter's first language was English, born in the UK!!  She was later entered into a national competition.  She came 5th in Prachuab and neighbouring provinces and, if I remember correctly, 40 something in the whole of Thailand!

[jenny2017]

On 8/17/2018 at 10:29 PM, mii maker said:

Here's a complete paper of the exam.

English exam.pdf

Here's the exam with the right answers. Some typos do exist, but it's shocking how bad the teacher is. 

 

    You'll need a good PDF reader, I was using Nitro 11 Pro. Please let me know if you can see the answers, it will be easy to change the format. 

1088207746_Englishexam.pdf checked.pdf

[4MyEgo]

My daughter is 9 ( grade 3) and has been going to school here since year 1.

 

She was born in Sydney, Australia and went to Kindergarden, anyways her English speaking had always been good, she new little Thai but has done extremely well, much to my surprise she has been pulling in perfect 4's on everything, (a little later on that), but is now sort of talking broken English to me and I have told her to speak to me in proper English or not to talk to me at all, when I say the above, it's as if she is a trying to talk to me as if a Thai was trying to talk English to me.

 

Long of the short, her English teacher gave her a written document and has told her to practice it as she has been selected to go into a competition and will be speaking in front of kids, teachers and parents of other schools in the competition.

 

Now her English teacher speaks as if she is a Filipino and I gather from her marking my daughter's English papers from time to time she has no idea, (remember my daughter getting perfect 4's in everything), anyway I took one look at the document and said this is all incorrect, you cannot read this in front of people let alone read it at all, so I corrected the document and gave it to my daughter and said; just read it this way and you will be fine, well helleluyah the document came back recorrected by her teacher, enough is enough, so I went to the school and took a copy of my university degree (with honours) and graduate diploma and went and saw her English teaching teacher, and literally said, with the recorrected document (again), that if she wanted to take my daughter into an English speaking competition, then she could only do so by using proper grammar and words that are spelt correctly so that she could pronounce them correctly.

 

She accepted my way, but not before providing my daughter with another document which was as bad as the first one that she gave her, so I corrected it and sent her a letter with it recorrected again stating the I would pull my daughter out of the competition and advise the principal of what had transpired if she wanted to pursue this her way. Well it's been three weeks and it appears that the tall poppy syndrome has gone.

Edited August 19, 2018 by 4MyEgo

[jenny2017]

3 minutes ago, HHTel said:

My daughter was failed on English some years ago 'because she had a bad accent'.  My daughter's first language was English, born in the UK!!  She was later entered into a national competition.  She came 5th in Prachuab and neighbouring provinces and, if I remember correctly, 40 something in the whole of Thailand!

The bad accent is always real English where many teachers believe the kids are wrong. Then add an SEA teacher to it and you've got the chaos.

 

   My son was part of five students who'd won a national skit competition in Bangkok.  But they were only fourth at the Semi-Final in Mukdahan, where the competition took place. The same students from Mukdahan were only the tenth in the Final round in Bangkok.

 

   Even the teachers received a gold medal and 400,000 baht cash which they then spent on a luxury holiday in Chonburi. The students didn't receive anything. They could read how they've spent the money on the teachers' Facebook pages and it was the last time for him. A very hard lesson for teenagers. 

[jenny2017]

10 minutes ago, 4MyEgo said:

My daughter is 9 ( grade 3) and has been going to school here since year 1.

 

She was born in Sydney, Australia and went to Kindergarden, anyways her English speaking had always been good, she new little Thai but has done extremely well, much to my surprise she has been pulling in perfect 4's on everything, (a little later on that), but is now sort of talking broken English to me and I have told her to speak to me in proper English or not to talk to me at all, when I say the above, it's as if she is a trying to talk to me as if a Thai was trying to talk English to me.

 

Long of the short, her English teacher gave her a written document and has told her to practice it as she has been selected to go into a competition and will be speaking in front of kids, teachers and parents of other schools in the competition. Now her English teacher speaks as if she is a Phillipino and I gather from her marking my daughter English papers from time to time she has no idea, (remember my daughter getting perfect 4's in everything), anyways I took one look at the document and said this is all incorrect, you cannot read this, so I corrected it and gave it to my daughter and said just read it this way and you will be fine, well helleluyah the document came back recorrected by her teacher, enough is enough, so I went to the school and took a copy of my university degree (with honours) and graduate diploma and went and saw her, and literally said, with the recorrected (again) by me, that if she wanted to take my daughter into an English speaking competition, then she could only do so by using proper grammar and words that are spelt correctly so that she could pronounce them correctly.

 

She accepted my way, but not before providing her with another document which was as bad as the first, so I corrected it and sent her a letter stating the I would pull my daughter out of the competition and advise the principal of what had transpired if she wanted to pursue this her way. Well its been three weeks and it appears that the tall poppy syndrome has gone.

I really feel sorry for you and your daughter. The reality about such competitions is that you can basically pay the judges who the winner will be. I've seen that at my former school and couldn't believe my own eyes. That's usually at competitions without foreign judges. Money rules, even at competitions. I fully understand why you've corrected the wrong English, but these people will finally blame your daughter. 

[4MyEgo]

2 minutes ago, jenny2017 said:

I really feel sorry for you and your daughter. The reality about such competitions is that you can basically pay the judges who the winner will be. I've seen that at my former school and couldn't believe my own eyes. That's usually at competitions without foreign judges. Money rules, even at competitions. I fully understand why you've corrected the wrong English, but these people will finally blame your daughter. 

Thanks for that, it's just that I want my daughter to do things the correct way, I know how bent they are here, that's the system and if people want to pay judges to let their kids win, well that just goes to show the desperation that they have and will perhaps come back to bite their kids one day.

 

I never push our kids, but will do everything to show them the right way, I see this competition as a good confidence booster for my daughter as she will be speaking in front of a crowd of people, I never had that opportunity when I went to school, and trust me, it could have come in handy at a few uni presentations and work meetings after that.  

[connda]

I taught English to teachers in Korat who had Masters degrees in English.  Trust me, this is about the level of their comprehension.  Essentially the puuyai teacher is always right even when they are completely clueless!  You can teach them correct grammar and they will ignore what was taught and continue to use the same incorrect grammar that they will insist is actually correct English because that is what was taught to them by another clueless Thai teacher with an M.A. in English.  Wash, rinse, repeat...
"Ohhh, Kruu Connda - I right. You not right.  My way better maak maak." 
<headshake> 'Suit yourself.'
Looks as though your student was doing fine.  Oblivious Thai 'English' teachers abound. It's pretty much a loss of face to admit that they aren't teaching 100% correct English.
The blind leading the blind in most cases - sadly.

Edited August 19, 2018 by connda

[duanebigsby]

I'm a native speaker and have been teaching 6 years here.

I think I have been very lucky that my Thai co teachers have had very good English.

They've also had the good sense to have me double check their tests, and if they had any grammar/spoken English questions before their lesson they weren't shy about asking me.

That's the sign of a good teacher and I've met many here.

[jenny2017]

3 hours ago, pi2005ni said:

It’s very sad . Many of these Thai kids are actually very very smart , however in many cases they will never have the opportunity to go anywhere in life . The Thai government instead of employing a legal qualified native English speaking teacher go for the cheap option of employing non qualified teachers , Indian , Pakistan, Russian, French who themselves have little command of the English language. I applaud Rotary who have schemes that sponsor some kids who have the ability to do well given the chance . I know many native English speaking ex pats who would gladly teach these kids for free but again the risk of getting arrested is too great . When will the Thai government wake up .

I'm afraid that you forgot to mention the biggest group of foreign teachers in Thailand. Those who made it happen to receive a teacher's license, unfortunately, many based on forged documents. Most of these teachers have got a teacher's license from Khurusapha, but you'll hardly find Caucasian teachers with such a license. 

Edited August 19, 2018 by jenny2017