Thai-English Schools Worry Lack Of Native Speakers

[aussiebebe]

I agree with the other opinion here, a language teacher hasn't necessary to be a native speaker; and people who repair roads for a living should stick to that and not become a teacher in Thailand.

Yes, please.

My teacher back home in upper secondary school was Swedish but she spoke with a very pure upper class dialect of British English and knew her grammar back to front. She wouldn't be qualified to teach Thai students, but some British plumber that has a degree in whatever from 1969 is?

Absolutely; many who have English as their mother tongue know nothing of grammar, the same as most Thai's can't explain their language grammatically. The best teachers, in my opinion, are those who were once the best students. Thais would do well to drop this 'native-speaker' fixation and learn from qualified Thais who are fluent in English (few and far between admittedly) - this is certainly how other countries such as India ultimately developed national bi-lingualism from their earliest post-colonial days. Indian far pre-dated the development of English: Krishna was 3,000BC for example, and thousands of Indian dialects flourished so what's another language when you already know five? Same for Filipinos.

[sarahsbloke]

@ Sarahsbloke,

I am neither Indian nor do I visit Indian sex blogs. I have never been to India, except if you count the one time the Plane I was in made an emergency landing in Mumbai, and some Israeli passengers refused to re-board the same plane till a local Israeli official came to personally reassure them that the problem was fixed.

I am not a native english speaker (I speak and write 3 different languages) and I do not claim to be one, but I have only been taught in English since I was 2 years old and about my choice of words, I could chose to play with less common words but I would expect a native speaker to easily understand that. If 'debonair' could mean handsome (as you said), it could also be considered gender neutral and also mean beautiful.

If I decide to write down for you a process known to people in my area of discipline as 'cracking', I know you would be lost. Anyone familiar with petroleum will easily discern that.

I met someone from Scotland at a bar in southern China, we could nt have a decent conversation, he was understanding me, but I did not think he talked back to me in English. May be i was too drunk to hear him

The whole point of my post has been lost on many of you .....

What I was pointing out was a non-native speaker may believe their grasp of a foreign language is much better than it actually is.

Mr. Lumumba, you grasp of English is tenuous at best.

Your suggestion that your fellow students, who in your opinion were worse than you, be allowed the chance to teach English is frightening.

As is the command of the English language that my daughter's Thai English teacher has.

When she came around on a home visit, I thought, wow, a Thai person I can talk with.

The actuality was, 'hello, how are you', 'I'm fine thank you' was all she could manage.

My Thai language skills, were far superior to her English language skills.

From most posters opinions on this thread, if we reverse their thinking.

I would appear to be qualified to teach Thai language in English schools.

Maybe they should only teach English in schools where they have teachers who can actually speak some English.

And finally

"If 'debonair' could mean handsome (as you said), it could also be considered gender neutral and also mean beautiful."

Debonair refers only to a gentleman who is handsome, well-groomed and well dressed

James Bond in a dinner jacket may have been considered debonair

A royal horseguards officer at a regimental dinner might be described as debonair.

Take off the dinner jacket, and they no longer are.

It could only be considered 'gender neutral' by someone who can't speak English

I would agree you might not be able to have a conversation with a Scots person, you don't speak English well enough.

Hopefully, you will have at least learnt the meaning of one English word from this exchange. But sadly, I think you won't.

Edited November 2, 2010 by sarahsbloke

[uncletom]

@ Sarahsbloke,

I am neither Indian nor do I visit Indian sex blogs. I have never been to India, except if you count the one time the Plane I was in made an emergency landing in Mumbai, and some Israeli passengers refused to re-board the same plane till a local Israeli official came to personally reassure them that the problem was fixed.

I am not a native english speaker (I speak and write 3 different languages) and I do not claim to be one, but I have only been taught in English since I was 2 years old and about my choice of words, I could chose to play with less common words but I would expect a native speaker to easily understand that. If 'debonair' could mean handsome (as you said), it could also be considered gender neutral and also mean beautiful.

If I decide to write down for you a process known to people in my area of discipline as 'cracking', I know you would be lost. Anyone familiar with petroleum will easily discern that.

I met someone from Scotland at a bar in southern China, we could nt have a decent conversation, he was understanding me, but I did not think he talked back to me in English. May be i was too drunk to hear him

The whole point of my post has been lost on many of you .....

What I was pointing out was a non-native speaker may believe their grasp of a foreign language is much better than it actually is.

Mr. Lumumba, you grasp of English is tenuous at best.

Your suggestion that your fellow students, who in your opinion were worse than you, be allowed the chance to teach English is frightening.

As is the command of the English language that my daughter's Thai English teacher has.

When she came around on a home visit, I thought, wow, a Thai person I can talk with.

The actuality was, 'hello, how are you', 'I'm fine thank you' was all she could manage.

My Thai language skills, were far superior to her English language skills.

From most posters opinions on this thread, if we reverse their thinking.

I would appear to be qualified to teach Thai language in English schools.

Maybe they should only teach English in schools where they have teachers who can actually speak some English.

And finally

"If 'debonair' could mean handsome (as you said), it could also be considered gender neutral and also mean beautiful."

Debonair refers only to a gentleman who is handsome, well-groomed and well dressed

James Bond in a dinner jacket may have been considered debonair

A royal horseguards officer at a regimental dinner might be described as debonair.

Take off the dinner jacket, and they no longer are.

It could only be considered 'gender neutral' by someone who can't speak English

I would agree you might not be able to have a conversation with a Scots person, you don't speak English well enough.

Hopefully, you will have at least learnt the meaning of one English word from this exchange. But sadly, I think you won't.

Sophisticated charm like someones unique style of personality, a quality reserved for a man.

Actually, I have Scottish friends and half the time I cannot understand them when they are drinking, and when they are not, I still find myself saying excuse me, please say that again.... There are English people from some areas of England that I have to perk my ears up to once or twice to understand, and if not on the third, excuse me, can you say that again.

I have been sort of following your back and forth bickering, but truth of the matter, perhaps from the way Lumumba seems to feel, maybe former class mates of his are more than ok to teach English in his own country ,and judging from some of the actual foreign teachers here and from what I have heard of, unfortunatley, just possibly might cut it in Thailand as well. I know of one school that actually hired an Engish night club bouncer. Don't figure.

To add onto that. In Thailand we have foreign teachers who don't know squat about grammar, and we have Thai teachers who don't know how to speak English. Most Thai teachers, and I mean most, usually just open up the English book and regurgitate the material verbatem. My daughters Thai teacher does this year, tragedy, and my son's teacher last year did. All the same nice people, but makes my job of being a Dad all the much harder.

Don't mean to put my 2 cents in on something between the both of you, so I duly apologise doing so and butting in.

uncletom.

[SoftWater]

As is the command of the English language that my daughter's Thai English teacher has.

When she came around on a home visit, I thought, wow, a Thai person I can talk with.

The actuality was, 'hello, how are you', 'I'm fine thank you' was all she could manage.

My Thai language skills, were far superior to her English language skills.

Did it occur to you that she might have been painfully shy in your presence about making mistakes? Perhaps too such an extent that she simply refused to say anything at all for fear of "losing face"? Did it occur to you that once you started practicing your Thai in front of her, you had already made it impossible for her to switch back to English without seeming (in Thai eyes) to be rude?

I've interviewed hundreds of upcountry Thai school teachers for scholarships in my work, and I can tell you that despite scoring well on the paper-based tests we give them first, their confidence in front of native speakers is very low. They barely get the chance for real interaction with foreigners, and they suffer from real crises of confidence in front of them. That doesn't mean they are not competent to teach certain material in the curriculum, or that they cannot do so effectively.

One example: I have a Thai friend who is very fluent in English. I once met her former primary school teacher, who was hardly fluent at all. However, this teacher was the one who instilled a love of English in my friend, and spurred her on to eventually surpass her. It is qualities like that which make good teachers in any subject, and which far outweigh having a nice middle-aged man from Norfolk going through the motions in front of the whiteboard just so's he can earn enough to go down the beer bars on Soi 4...

Edited November 2, 2010 by SoftWater

[Fookhaht]

I agree with the other opinion here, a language teacher hasn't necessary to be a native speaker; and people who repair roads for a living should stick to that and not become a teacher in Thailand.

Yes, please.

My teacher back home in upper secondary school was Swedish but she spoke with a very pure upper class dialect of British English and knew her grammar back to front. She wouldn't be qualified to teach Thai students, but some British plumber that has a degree in whatever from 1969 is?

Absolutely; many who have English as their mother tongue know nothing of grammar, the same as most Thai's can't explain their language grammatically. The best teachers, in my opinion, are those who were once the best students. Thais would do well to drop this 'native-speaker' fixation and learn from qualified Thais who are fluent in English (few and far between admittedly)

Aye, there's the rub.

I work in an English dept. where the faculty dean believes native-speakers are a waste of the budget. (I know, what am I doing HERE?) Yet, we cannot use his textbooks in our classes because they are saturated with spelling, grammatical, and word-usage errors. Some sentences are virtually incomprehensible. These university-printed texts are a complete embarrassment. They have been written by Thai Ph.D.'s in our department, all of whom were educated abroad. However, within a year or two of returning from abroad, laziness seems to take hold and they throw their standards to the wind, or get caught up in moonlighting to earn that extra baht. You walk by the window of their Oral English courses, and only hear 95% Thai. Two Ph. D.'s in our department refuse to talk to we native speaker instructors because their spoken English is so poor, they embarrass themselves.

Hence, there seems to be no Thai model of excellence to which the students can aspire.

So, they're stuck with Peter-the-Plumber from Leeds.

Edited November 12, 2010 by Fookhaht

[Fookhaht]

As is the command of the English language that my daughter's Thai English teacher has.

When she came around on a home visit, I thought, wow, a Thai person I can talk with.

The actuality was, 'hello, how are you', 'I'm fine thank you' was all she could manage.

My Thai language skills, were far superior to her English language skills.

Did it occur to you that she might have been painfully shy in your presence about making mistakes? Perhaps too such an extent that she simply refused to say anything at all for fear of "losing face"? Did it occur to you that once you started practicing your Thai in front of her, you had already made it impossible for her to switch back to English without seeming (in Thai eyes) to be rude?

I've interviewed hundreds of upcountry Thai school teachers for scholarships in my work, and I can tell you that despite scoring well on the paper-based tests we give them first, their confidence in front of native speakers is very low. They barely get the chance for real interaction with foreigners, and they suffer from real crises of confidence in front of them. That doesn't mean they are not competent to teach certain material in the curriculum, or that they cannot do so effectively.

I agree, they are qualified to teach probably everything BUT Oral English Conversational Skills--which is what Thailand so desperately needs now.

You've got to get over the confidence barrier, and so do your students, in order to be a well-rounded English instructor, and certainly to minimally qualify as an Oral English instructor.

I sympathize with your point completely, and concur with your observations (I teach English language-teaching seminars to Prathom and Mattayom English teachers--they are petrified to speak up).

The confidence-factor is paramount.

Until Thai teachers get over this, Thailand will continue to lag behind all its neighbors in skills which are the foundation to effective international business and international cooperation.

[jsflynn603]

It is likely according to the "natural order of things" that quality certified teachers of English as a second language will become less and less available.

I'll be in Chiangmai in a month or so. Originally my intent was to take the SIT Tesol course, but the January course has been canceled, and Bkk is not to my liking. So my visit to Thailand will not include taking a SIT Tesol course.

I would enjoy teaching English as a second language, not for "the money" but because it's something that I've wanted to do. I consider English as a playful language, and words are my playthings. Unfortunately it is unlikely that I'll actually take the SIT Tesol course. Why? Since March of '09 the exchange rate of the US$ versus the Thai Baht has dropped from ~36/$ to 29.5/$. This is ~an 18% decrease in the purchasing power of the US$. Additionally the SIT Tesol Course has risen in price from $1250(US$) to $1500(US$). Put these two together and effectively the cost for me to take the course has risen about 35%. Though the schools might say: "but we only increased the cost of classes ~17%, the net effect is more likej 35%.

I'm unemployed (along with millions of other Americans) and would love to do the SIT Tesol course--but I have been "priced out." This effect has probably caused a dip in applications for the January course by SIT in Chiangmai and so here is a class that would produce ten or twelve good teachers of English that will simply not occur.

This goes to show how a strong currency (the Thai ฿) is often "not a good thing," and I predict that the ฿ will continue to hold it's value, while the US$ drops in value. If this continues the "cost of entry" (Celta/SIT Tesol/etc.) will rise knocking more and more potential quality teachers out. Oh well.