2 hours ago, hakancnx said:

One big step to improve the english level is to stop dubbing TV-programs. 

 

Especially cartoons in english. Kids learns a lot from them...

Believe it or not Sesame Street in the very early 70's was a great way for kids, preschool kids to learn.

2 hours ago, Chang_paarp said:

Who will vet the "native English speakers"? How many people in the Thai education system has the skills to identify a proficient English speaker, let alone a competent teacher?

Or kiddy fiddler's.

3 hours ago, darksidedog said:

What I read from this is that very little, if anything is going to be done or achieved, as they have the wrong priorities in mind, face and cost.

If you want the kids to learn English, it is far more likely when said teacher is a native speaker of it.

There are nowhere near enough positions taken by those that are, and highly unlikely that their meager numbers are likely to grow significantly.

There is a reluctance from those calling the shots to admit the obvious,  and open the doors to the right level of teacher, and they wouldn't want to pay them even if they acknowledged the need.

Bridge that hurdle and they might start to get somewhere.

Sure and from my reading it doesn't say 'conversation skills'.

 

If there is no focus on conversation skills then what's the point? Where's the extra value?

2 hours ago, Hanaguma said:

I have seen job ads for universities in Thailand where the starting salary is something in the area of US$1,000 per month. 

You do understand University lecturers are generally paid a lot less that high school teachers worldwide.

I believe it's to do with being licenced to work with minors.

 

Class room management skills (difficult when dealing with children) are generally far more important than subject knowledge (usually trivial for any reasonably educated adult).

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Most of the problem is the teachers they hire not speaking English well.

It should be restricted to foreigners from countries that speak English as their first language.

Not Filipinos, African, Russians, Dutch, etc. who either speak English badly or with incomprehensible accents.

Well that cuts out 80% of the Brits!

For the wage and conditions they offer, Thailand will always have a problem attracting foreign teachers.

 

And even if the Thai students became super at English, they would still be way behind in all other subjects.

 

But of course they could all work in the tourism sector, now that billions of rich Indians are on the way.

1 hour ago, Hanaguma said:

If you want to hire professionals, they need to be qualified, respected, and paid.  I have seen job ads for universities in Thailand where the starting salary is something in the area of US$1,000 per month.  Who is going to give up a lucrative job elsewhere to earn that salary?

Especially when the candidates are advised that they will be required to report to their "parole officer" every 90 days or whenever they travel.

29 minutes ago, pixelaoffy said:

Where is the "USSA"?  Careful with picking fault with others' punctuation, grammar or vocabulary.

I'm very careful, such as noticing your missing comma after the word grammar. Oxford comma rule.

 

If you don't understand the sarcasm behind USSA, then explaining wouldn't do any good, I'd guess. Cheers. ????

2 hours ago, realenglish1 said:

Native speakers are from Australia the UK and the USA and Canada People from the Philippines are not native speaking To then English is their second language If you want improved  English then hire people from a native speaking country as listed above otherwise you are only going to learn "Pass the sugar"

I sincerely hope you're not an English teacher.

3 hours ago, webfact said:

More foreign English teachers could be hired next year as Thai educationalists attempt to improve English language abilities in schools nationwide

Are the two things mentioned assumed to be merely coincidental or are they in some other way connected? 

 

4 hours ago, webfact said:

as Thais aim for better than basic English

Among the teachers being hired, one can only hope.

 

If they paid more and hired more experienced and qualified teachers they might get results. In some Thai schools there are teachers who have no right to be there at all. Also you will get paid twice what you earn if you teach in Vietnam where the cost of living is less!

1 hour ago, Hanaguma said:

You also need to consider that the majority of Thais actually don't NEED English in their daily lives. Making it a mandatory subject, especially beyond elementary school, is a waste of precious resources.  Set up English as an elective class, allow students who actually want to learn to go, and that will solve half the problem.

 

The other half involves dedicated teacher training for Thais who want to be language teachers. Set up rigorous courses at select universities for those who want to become teachers. Hire specialists with higher degrees to teach them. Give them long practicums to get used to being in the classroom.  This would be a great long term investment, which is why it will never happen.

 

 

All good points but you are forgetting that English is the official language of ASEAN. It is the language of the future for anyone in Thailand wanting to do business etc.

3 hours ago, strawpanda said:

I'm a British native speaker of English with an MA in TEFL. I do a lot of academic proofreading for non-native speakers/teachers of English doing MAs, PhDs etc. Some of them are very good, some less so, but there's definitely an important role for native speakers, though they're not going to work for peanuts.

I'm a native English speaker from Canada/America and sometimes have a terrible time understanding British/Australian English speakers. I was watching a YouTube video of a British teacher teaching Thai children and felt so bad for the lass trying to learn English.

I had a very difficult time understanding what the teacher was saying. 

4 minutes ago, leggo said:

Also you will get paid twice what you earn if you teach in Vietnam ...

Is this a word puzzle?

1 hour ago, ChipButty said:

I had a Thai friend who did a one year coarse in English when she used to speak with the me she said she felt like she had wasted her money, Im English

Was that a coarse in ruff English?

 

Rooster

Nothing will be achieved by this. I am helping my nephew with university English. I am blown away by the past exam papers used to revise.

The questions are multiple choice but often the answers are wrong about 30% of the time.....they are badly punctuated, badly spelled and often impossible to understand. Why they don't get an English person to proof read the things are beyond me. 

I did a bit of voluntary teaching when I came here in poor schools. What they wanted was grammar, more grammar....no school wanted the student to actually be able to speak and use English. Frankly, Thailand is a hopeless case as far as learning English is concerned.

1 hour ago, ChipButty said:

I had a Thai friend who did a one year coarse in English when she used to speak with the me she said she felt like she had wasted her money, Im English

Yes...….I can see why she felt like that.

4 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

What they wanted was grammar, more grammar....no school wanted the student to actually be able to speak and use English. Frankly, Thailand is a hopeless case as far as learning English is concerned.

I think that a lot of this is spillover from the basic educational teaching techniques in Thai schools; rote memorization, no critical thinking. Speaking requires a degree of improvisation, which requires some critical thinking. Grammar is pretty fixed. It's much easier to memorize rules.

2 minutes ago, Sailboat said:

I'm a native English speaker from Canada/America and sometimes have a terrible time understanding British/Australian English speakers. I was watching a YouTube video of a British teacher teaching Thai children and felt so bad for the lass trying to learn English.

I had a very difficult time understanding what the teacher was saying. 

Yes a variety of accents may or may not flummox another NES, but they make it especially difficult for someone just learning English. 

There are many TEFL/TESOL qualified Native English/American speakers of the English language living in Thailand right now. The obvious problem; some are of an age that Thailand deems to be too old and similarly are of the age where a degree was not the be all and end all of a career.

It is not  that many years ago that a Native English speaker could teach English without holding a degree.

Those living in Thailand would complete a semester at the same school, know the children they were teaching and generally do a good job. Unfortunately everything has changed, young people with a degree arrive at a school for maybe a few months and then disappear to Cambodia or Vietnam and the never ending hamster wheel keeps on turning. The children have an American speaker one day, followed by a Philippine speaker, followed by a UK speaker and obviously they get confused.

I would like to hear the words of Rooster on this topic because he is the benchmark that ( of the ones I have spoken with)  most aspire to be like.

2 hours ago, legend49 said:

could be hired next year ; could is not a guarantee its a maybe or passive action. WILL is a positive action.

 

Will they be REAL teachers, who have a degree in education with specialty subjects of English Communication, or tourists who can speak more English than a Thai government official?

      NO THEY WILL NOT , because there aren't enough to spread around the world teaching away from home , and the ones that MIGHT  want to travel , WOULD want very high salaries . So the schools COULD be forced to look for alternatives . (Just getting a few modal auxiliaries in ).

3 hours ago, StayinThailand2much said:

Why do they need foreign teachers? Thai students are not allowed to fail subjects or exams, and Thai teachers are known to manipulate their students' low grades by giving every student, automatically, a 50 or 60% score, whether he or she, after studying English for 12+ years, can string a sentence together, or not. - On paper, all Thais can speak English well.

 

Wonder, why, reportedly, Thai pilots (and other specialists) find it hard to get hired abroad...

If that is in fact the case, why do Thai students rate so low in the annual exam results that are published? Only 1 subject averaging above 50%.

7 minutes ago, Suradit69 said:

Is this a word puzzle?

No, its true. I went to Vietnam next week and I got double the price for 3 times the value. It all worked out well. 

3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Most of the problem is the teachers they hire not speaking English well.

It should be restricted to foreigners from countries that speak English as their first language.

Not Filipinos, African, Russians, Dutch, etc. who either speak English badly or with incomprehensible accents.

There are some folks from the UK that also have incomprehensible accents. I do, however, agree with your assessment -- teachers ought to be able to speak in a clear, understandable, voice.

2 hours ago, donnacha said:

The problem is that, in the absence of actual native English speakers clubbing together to insist upon a sensible definition of what constitutes a native English speaker, huge numbers of people from all over the world are under the illusion that they are native English speakers and will not hesitate to apply for those jobs.
 

 

That's not a problem because the adverts clearly states that a native speaker is someone from USA, Canada, UK and sometimes Australia.

 

The problem is the ability to teach to second language learners. Just because you can speak Shakespeare phrases in front of your kids doesn't mean they understand a word you are saying especially if the medium of instruction is in English and not Thai.

 

Many teachers don't understand the ability to know any language isn't the same as ability to teach that language especially to second language learners.

 

It's much easier to teach first language learners. That's why you see many foreigners who have been in Thailand for umpteen years but still can't speak Thai fluently even after attending numerous Thai classes.

I have an MA TESOL. I taught for a year back in the States, and coming up on two years now here in the LOS. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm woefully overqualified for what I've been able to find in government schools, next to Filipinos and 20-something Westerners looking to party.

 

People have told me, well you gotta wheel and deal and schmooze with the right people to work your way up. If I could do that, I could've stayed home and been a millionaire by now. DUH.

 

I'm hoping this improves my prospects. Then they can go ahead and give those guys this job.

Foreign teachers do not necessarily mean better English, in the school of our village they have already had experience with Filipino, Korean and Chinese foreign teachers), but since they have to teach as is usual in Thailand, result after a year ... it is not possible to find a child who can say good morning at the right time, say good morning even if it is 7 pm!

When I (English, born and bred 35 miles southwest of London) arrived in Thailand on an O-A, the village headman suggested to the wife I taught basic English to the kids here. I had to remind the wife to say that I wasn't allowed to do anything that the immigration authorities thought looked like work. Regretably, this was also the answer I had to give to the wife's cousin who is head English teacher in the local high school. In addition to that, I don't have the qualifications to 'teach', no degree, just 44 years in the Aviation industry, 25 of those as an instructor and a TEFL qualification and 60 years of RP.

3 hours ago, champers said:

BP reporting that the Phillipines Embassy has been consulted with a view to bringing in more Filipino English speakers as teachers.

No good.

They only want to employ them and pay peanuts.

Plus there english is not good enough.

I am not knocking the PH people. 

I like them.

I'm a non-native speaker who works here for over 5 years. I think when a non-native speaker knows his English well enough and proved it in some way, that'd be a good second option. 

But I used to work with foreigners who didn't even know how to spell for example 'Italy' they wrote 'Itali'.... 

 

Thai teachers teach English grammar. I get the point when they say that the students need to get an explanation in Thai about the grammar rules in English.... But some of these teachers make mistakes themselves. Maybe grammar could be done by both teachers or only the foreign teacher and the Thai teacher just being there to explain the things we can't say in Thai.