Bilingual Or Ep...?

[ArtVandelay]

From what I understand so far, bilingual schools in Thailand have a Thai teacher and a farang teacher, and they take turns teaching the same lesson. I would like to teach science and have been offered a possible position at a bilingual school.

Which is better, EP or Bilingual?

Advantages/Disadvantages of each?

Thanks in Advance.

[culicine]

Best for whom? Teachers or the students? I've taugfht in both. The bilingual program did have a Thai teacher assisting but only the lower grades and only with the vocabulary translation. And they didn't assist with the higher grades (4-6). However this will vary from school to school so you need to clarify teacher roles with the admin. My current EP is more open and I've never had an assistant, though I teach highschool. There is a Thai teacher with the lower grades though as I understand they don't assist much with the lesson proper. Advantages of the bilingual is that kids get quite a good grounding in concepts with the thai teacher, and you can concentrate on the language aspect. However I don;t think in the long run the bilingual kids will learn as much english, per se, and some might tend to not worry too much about the foreign teacher as they age getting most things in Thai. The EP can be the opposite where you might struggle to teach the concepts in english, but at ther end of highschool, the good students should be quite good indeed (getting TOEFL clost to 550-600). However, performance on the Thai entrance exams might suffer as they haven;t spend as much time studying in Thai.

[Loaded]

From what I understand so far, bilingual schools in Thailand have a Thai teacher and a farang teacher, and they take turns teaching the same lesson. I would like to teach science and have been offered a possible position at a bilingual school.

Which is better, EP or Bilingual?

Advantages/Disadvantages of each?

Thanks in Advance.

Real EPs have to meet stringent Ministry of Education regulations regarding the qualifications of the teachers, hours taught of each subject per week etc. In Chiang Mai the only real EPs are at Varee Chiangmai School, Montfort College, Sacred Heart and Yupparaj Government School. Even so all employ teachers who aren't qualified according to MOE regulations to work on EPs.

Other schools market ESPs, Bilingual Programmes, MEPs etc. but these are basically a school's manipulation of current regulations. Therefore they have the freedom to decide what subjects are taught in English and how many hours per week they're taught.

It really depends on the individual school as to how much support they give a foreign teacher. Teaching assistants may, or may not, be normal.

In reality there's very little difference to a foreign teacher.