Three quarters of Thai English teachers are only at elementary level - or worse

[nahkit]

2 hours ago, from the home of CC said:

If the students don't pass, it's a loss of face for the teachers which in turn becomes a loss of face to the people who hired the teachers. A circle of shame for everyone with the student that loses the most, 

I don't know why you think it's a loss of face for the teacher.

 

My son teaches English and in his first year at the village school he failed every child in his class and made no secret of what he thought of their abilities. He had parents queuing up at the house demanding that he give a pass to their children and my wife was getting stopped in the street by complaining parents.

 

This year he had five students who turned in blank papers and he was told that he should re-test them and give them a pass provided they copied out the questions on the paper. No answers needed, just re-copy the original exam questions.

 

Three of the five refused to do even that much. 

[Pedrogaz]

When I new in Thailand I was invited to a hi-so New Year party. Everybody I spoke with had very good English, but most had studied in the UK or US. In the decade or so that I have been here, I can honestly say that I haven't met a Thailand-educated Thai person have any sort of decent command of English....and yes many have been English teachers. 

Another beef here is the employment of uneducated, and often ignorant, Brits to teach Thais English in the classrooms. I know quite a few without so much as a A level between them working for 40K a month in Thai schools, usually without a work permit. 

Teaching English isn't rocket science. Other countries do it quite well.....why not ask Sweden, Norway, Holland, Denmark for advice or some other place where the whole population can speak excellent English.

There is no point going to ask the British Council...they are native English speakers....if you want Thais to learn English as a second language, ask people who do that. 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Pedrogaz

[Justgrazing]

3 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Children will be taught how to actually speak English - rather then just learn vocabulary and grammar. 

Does this mean in years to come I can expect to hear " good evening Sir and how may I accommodate you're desires " rather than " hallo sexy man where you go " when ambling Soi/6 .. 

[Assurancetourix]

3 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

Other countries do it quite well.....why not as Sweden, Norway, Holland , Denmark or some other place where the whole population can speak excellent English.

 

Why they have an excellent english ? or excellent french ...

 

Not only because their teachers are native english or french but also because all foreign movies on TV are always in original versions ;

So if the want to understand the movie, they must learn and understand english or french ..

 

I went many times in Netherland ,Denmark, Sweden when I was a trucker in the last century ; often I met people there who had an excellent french or english ;

to come back to Thailand, I go twice a year in Mae Hong Son province where there are many refugees villages; they are Karen and christians ;

their schools are poor, very poor but it's easy to have a conversation with the school boys and girls; they aren't shy and have  , sometimes, a very good english .

 

The school of Ban Nai Soi , about 22 km north of Mae Hong Son; the road to go there is particularly difficult , even with a pickup

 

[anterian]

A Thai graduate writes better English than a bar girl, on the other hand the bar girl speaks better English than the graduate. So the solution is simple, all graduates should be required to work 6 months in a Pattaya bar. 

[HAKAPALITA]

Same level like the ferangs here teaching.


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[bluesofa]

1 minute ago, anterian said:

A Thai graduate writes better English than a bar girl, on the other hand the bar girl speaks better English than the graduate. So the solution is simple, all graduates should be required to work 6 months in a Pattaya bar. 

Ha ha ha! But I take your point. When forced through necessity to learn and speak English, it's something that is very successful.

Trying  and get the Ministry Of Education to go for it though - probably not.

 

[Torrens54]

When alleged English Teachers at allegedly Top Schools, avoid speaking to English Speaking Parents, who’s child has on more than one occasion, politely corrected the alleged English teacher’s English, one must wonder ! 

[from the home of CC]

1 hour ago, nahkit said:

I don't know why you think it's a loss of face for the teacher.

 

My son teaches English and in his first year at the village school he failed every child in his class and made no secret of what he thought of their abilities. He had parents queuing up at the house demanding that he give a pass to their children and my wife was getting stopped in the street by complaining parents.

 

This year he had five students who turned in blank papers and he was told that he should re-test them and give them a pass provided they copied out the questions on the paper. No answers needed, just re-copy the original exam questions.

 

Three of the five refused to do even that much. 

 

It's not I who thinks it's a loss of face for the teachers, It's how Thai teachers and their bosses perceive it. You said 'he was told" to ensure that they passed, and I assuming this was by his administrator.

IMHO that was a face saving gesture. He obviously has received some heat from last year and probably blamed it on the teacher for as you know shit runs downhill. He is going to make sure it's not repeated and your son will probably have to toe the line or look for somewhere else to teach. I had similar experiences in the past in the M.E. as a technical instructor. The trainees passed no matter what, unless they missed too much time. When I initially started training and started giving failing grades I was basically told by my boss play the game or see ya. I've trained in other countries where everybody mostly played by the rules. I volunteered here in a small village and the learning material was brutal. Hats off to your son, it's a very difficult job in many ways.  When I did it I felt I was being disingenuous to myself even though there was always a small percentage of the students in classes in which I knew I imparted something of value to them. It wasn't enough though, falsely promoting someone who did not earn it bothered me too much. Maybe because when I went through school, I earned every grade. Here, and in other countries it's a big ****ing game and you see evidence of it daily.

Edited September 29, 2018 by from the home of CC

[Borzandy]

4 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Three quarters of Thai English teachers are only at elementary level - or worse

Why don't use Nigerians as English teachers...

[lust]

“Thai English teachers”.

 

lol, well there’s your problem.

[bluesofa]

7 minutes ago, Borzandy said:

5 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Three quarters of Thai English teachers are only at elementary level - or worse

Why don't use Nigerians as English teachers...

I think they want to learn spoken English, not email English.

 

[My Thai Life]

2 hours ago, baansgr said:

There are thousands of well educated mature NES retired in this country that would be beneficial to teaching English, yet are cast aside. Simple solution with outstanding results within a few years. No WP required. easy peasy lemon squeasy

Most of the NES expats that I've met in passing do not have higher level education.

Being able to speak a language is not the same as being able to teach it. If it were, all the married farangs could have been taught Thai by their wives by now.

I have met very very few expats who would work as volunteers for a couple of years.

The logic that you use to conclude "outstanding results" is unclear.

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, rooster59 said:

The Thai Ministry of Education are entering into a joint collaboration with the British Council after standards among Thais teaching English in the country's school were found to be appalling. 

 

5 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Some 30 "master trainers" - Thais who have good ability in English - are being employed to train 17,000 of the nation's 40,000 English teachers at Primary and Secondary level. 

 

The course is being overseen by the British Council, the UK's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

• A boot camp was started in April-March 2016 for about 350 teachers aimed to develop the communicative teaching skills and methodological practices of 347 Thai state school English teachers, at the same time as improving the teachers’ own English proficiency.  A team of 16 British Council teacher trainers facilitated the development of 157 primary teachers and 190 secondary teachers from all over Thailand.
• A smaller group of 28 Thai master trainers were also selected from the main cohort in the second week of the project to participate in a separate trainer development course.  They were selected based on their higher levels of English, greater understanding of ELT methodology and their ability to reflect on classroom teaching and learning. https://www.britishcouncil.my/teachingenglish-asia/news/ThailandBootCamp

Two years later - "appalling" results.

So hire the same firm and repeat?

As I remember, Prayut's purpose to the original program was in part to eventually eliminate costly native English speaking teachers. Thais should teach Thais for the sake of their culture.

 

[oldrunner]

Couple of points here: (1) Could have been a lot worse, they could teach JORDIE (2) They obviously arrested a FISH.

[marcusarelus]

3 hours ago, Gecko123 said:

I knew it was pretty bad, but didn't know it was that bad.

 

I've taught in a number of government schools, and one thing that always struck me was that rarely, if ever, would Thai English teachers ever show interest in practicing their English with me, sitting in on my classes, or picking my brain about grammar or vocabulary questions. The school administrators lacked the language skills to even evaluate English competency.

Opposite from my experience.  Teachers living next door and across from me are always after me to practice or ask a question.  College teacher asks me about history and a teacher in the military asks me about military terms and doctors ask me how to order food in a Western restaurant (ya I know that one is a bit strange).  Engineers call me up to proof read proposals and tech papers daily (that's work). 

[oldrunner]

My Thai wife never asked for or received language training from me. She does; however, occasionally ask for an explanation of English words that have double meaning depending on the sentence use.

[Gecko123]

31 minutes ago, lust said:

“Thai English teachers”.

 

lol, well there’s your problem.

"Thai" is an adjective modifying the compound noun "English teacher." Please edify me as to why this is incorrect.

[marcusarelus]

2 minutes ago, Gecko123 said:

"Thai" is an adjective modifying the compound noun "English teacher." Please edify me as to why this is incorrect.

It does explain why no one wants to talk to you though. 

[Assurancetourix]

If they teach "thai-english" language  it's a correct phrase;

but if they teach only english, u must write : thai people who are teaching english ..

 

I'm not native english 

[Gecko123]

5 minutes ago, Assurancetourix said:

If they teach "thai-english" language  it's a correct phrase;

but if they teach only english, u must write : thai people who are teaching english ..

 

I'm not native english 

Not sure if I agree that that's the only way to properly express this.

 

By the way...

Thai is capitalized. English is capitalized. You left double spacing between the words "language" and "it's"; "u" is a letter not a word. There isn't a space before a colon. The phrase "Thai people who are teaching English" should be in quotation marks. An ellipsis (...) has three dots, not two. "I'm not a native English speaker" is grammatically correct. "I'm not native english" isn't.

 

 

[HAKAPALITA]

2 minutes ago, Gecko123 said:

Not sure if I agree that that's the only way to properly express this.

 

By the way...

Thai is capitalized. English is capitalized. You left double spacing between the words "language" and "it's"; "u" is a letter not a word. There isn't a space before a colon. The phrase "Thai people who are teaching English" should be in quotation marks. An ellipsis (...) has three dots, not two. "I'm not a native English speaker" is grammatically correct. "I'm not native english" isn't.

 

 

[duanebigsby]

5 hours ago, darksidedog said:

The problem is that the country does not want to invest the money needed to really educate their children, or admit that they really need foreign staff to be able to do it properly.

Thailand spends more money on education than most countries.

 

[baansgr]

53 minutes ago, My Thai Life said:

Most of the NES expats that I've met in passing do not have higher level education.

Being able to speak a language is not the same as being able to teach it. If it were, all the married farangs could have been taught Thai by their wives by now.

I have met very very few expats who would work as volunteers for a couple of years.

The logic that you use to conclude "outstanding results" is unclear.

A degree 40 years ago was worth something, now almost every school leaver in UK goes to University and gets a crappy meaningless degree with no real grasp of them language or common sense in general. 

tefl course is sufficient to teach and OT would not be volunteering. I know many expats are drunks and near retarded but they are more that are responsible, intelligent and would make great English  teachers taking pride in what they did. 

[Assurancetourix]

3 minutes ago, duanebigsby said:

Thailand spends more money on education than most countries.

 

 Ouch ! 

 

In ( yellow or not ) submarines, maybe ; but on education.....I had a dream ...

[My Thai Life]

5 minutes ago, duanebigsby said:

Thailand spends more money on education than most countries.

 

You are absolutely right Duane.

 

Japan and Thailand both have similar kinds of difficulty in getting beneficial results from their investment in English. There are many reasons for these problems, but I don't think serious discussion has ever been the way of this sub-forum.

[BritManToo]

3 minutes ago, My Thai Life said:

You are absolutely right Duane.

 

Japan and Thailand both have similar kinds of difficulty in getting beneficial results from their investment in English. There are many reasons for these problems, but I don't think serious discussion has ever been the way of this sub-forum.

 

Mainly corrupt administrators and low-quality teachers.

[chama]

5 hours ago, trainman34014 said:

Training enough decent Teachers here will take years; then getting them positioned in the School's around the country will take more years and by then everyone will have forgotten what they were supposed to be doing anyway !

And those that are proficient will not last in the school system but will move to a private business and make three or four times the money to teach corporate employees. But if they are serious about improving English skills in the Kingdom the more people that can speak the language the faster the increase. 

[BritManToo]

57 minutes ago, marcusarelus said:

Opposite from my experience.  Teachers living next door and across from me are always after me to practice or ask a question.  College teacher asks me about history and a teacher in the military asks me about military terms and doctors ask me how to order food in a Western restaurant (ya I know that one is a bit strange).  Engineers call me up to proof read proposals and tech papers daily (that's work). 

How much do they pay you as their private consultant?

[duanebigsby]

1 hour ago, marcusarelus said:

Opposite from my experience.  Teachers living next door and across from me are always after me to practice or ask a question.  College teacher asks me about history and a teacher in the military asks me about military terms and doctors ask me how to order food in a Western restaurant (ya I know that one is a bit strange).  Engineers call me up to proof read proposals and tech papers daily (that's work). 

My experience has been very similar. Thai co-teachers asking me pronunciation and grammar questions all the time. Thai teachers asking me  to double check their tests before giving them to students.

 

I haven't worked with many Thai English teachers in the system who I haven't been able to converse with. At 3 schools over 6 years, nearly all my Thai English co-teachers had a respectable level of English.