Teaching Teachers Is The Crucial First Step: English Speaking Year Policy

[bumpkin]

Where is the motivation ? Children remember what they learn, not what they are taught. The subject must be interesting and have perceived value. The ability to motivate children is an ability sadly lacking in many teachers, and not only teachers in Thailand.

[windosill]

Why don't they just follow the Filipino model, where everyone learns English as soon as they start school? Even my wife's 80 year old grandmother in the village can speak English there.

[unanimosity]

Where is the motivation ? Children remember what they learn, not what they are taught. The subject must be interesting and have perceived value. The ability to motivate children is an ability sadly lacking in many teachers, and not only teachers in Thailand.

How do you expect teachers to motivate against cultural resistances such as pass the kids even if they don't show up for class, Thais are the gifted ethnicity, and the xenophobia that goes with it? Motivation is either towards something or away from something and without consequences and accountability for their actions, and without the concept of planning, there is little chance of motivation.

[finnomick1]

I thought it was teach Chinese year? or am i confused..

My thoughts exactly. Last year Mr. Abhisit wanted English to become the ' second ' language of Thailand. This year, in fact last month I believe, Ms. Yingluck struck a deal with China for them to supply 10,000 ( or was it 100,000 ) teachers of the Chinese language to come to Thailand and to send a few teachers of the Thai language to China. Not a lot of difference really.....

[Scott]

A post critical of grammar has been deleted. Not all of our posters are native English speakers, and not all teachers teach English. Unless a poster has asked for advice about grammar, please refrain from commenting on such. It is off-topic.

[MaxLee]

Where is the motivation ? Children remember what they learn, not what they are taught. The subject must be interesting and have perceived value. The ability to motivate children is an ability sadly lacking in many teachers, and not only teachers in Thailand.

You have a really crisp and clear point in that one. Old fashioned folks, need to get of their proud seats and identify what their children and students are really interested in and not, of what they are interested in "teaching their young ones.."

I said it once before, but.... I say it again "Thai children are not stupid" No child on earth is stupid, but old fashioned views stupify the ways individuals are learning...

[Jerrytheyoung]

I am involved in teaching professional stuff, I have an international experience: i am French but I have been teaching Irish, British, Arabs from Gulf states, Thais, malaysian, Chinese and miscellaneous others.....in spite my "broken" english.

First people must be motivated for learning, making the students "thirsty"to learn, then you have to organise them with supports, even children 4 or 5 year old, going to a library, choosing booking, finding thema and group working after.....

The knowledge of the teacher is important but less important than his attitude and his dedication. To demonstrate his knowledge is not the aim: the aim is to make the student learning. In my team I have one super instructor: I am sure I tell him; "next week you will have to teach Russian", he will do and his students will be passionated (to date he does not know a word of Russian).

The first point is to create the atmosphere; I am french, but I recognised English is the international vector for communicating in affairs, in a lot of professional areas. It is a requirement like calculus, physics, science, geographia in our "Modern" world.

So, first creating the environment, then giving the tools (A lot of free stuff available from BBC records to the english version of Newspaper (Bangkok Post, The Nation....), so that students, by themselves, will search and get interest in learning.

Then I am sure plenty of expatriates are volunteers for animating from time to time a discussion, even good speaking english Thais (but non teachers) can help,

The key I repeat is to create the environment, but maybe the first step for Thai people is to stop this xenophobic attitude which block them accepting anything from "farangs". And before the first step, it is the step zero.

Perhaps the government could hire Thai's that have lived in English speaking countries and speak /read / write well. That would take care of the xenophobia issue.

Another poster makes a valid point regarding poor native language competency.

It would seem their entire education system needs an overhaul if they wish to compete with the world.

I have noticed that even some high rank University Profesors, speaking an excellent english, have difficulties for writing a lettre. From few Thai lessons I have taken, I remember my teacher telling that some letters where obsolete, nearly never utilised and I see the time spent by children for learning all this Thai alphabet. So, Thais should question themselves like Koreans have done 500 years ago (Hangul Alphabet- King Sejong 1452):

1. How much time Children spend for learning our writing system? Comparison with other writing systems?

2. Are we isolated from the rest of the world by our writing system? If we simplified our writing system, what are the gains?

3. It is not question to abandon our originality but at least can we simplified our system in order to help future generation, loosing less time learning this writing system and spending time on other topics?

[Nigel1500]

Most Thai can speak more English than English-speaking tourists can speak Thai.

[BigJohnnyBKK]

Perhaps the government could hire Thai's that have lived in English speaking countries and speak /read / write well. That would take care of the xenophobia issue.

It would seem their entire education system needs an overhaul if they wish to compete with the world.

The Thais that study/work overseas would usually want an even higher salary than what native English teachers are willing to work for here, and IMO would be much less willing to put up with the wacko bureaucratic BS.

Most Thai can speak more English than English-speaking tourists can speak Thai.

Of course, no one would think otherwise, obvious. And relevant to what?

[a99az]

The Thai teachers at my school all use Thai language when teaching English. Most can't speak English, and the rest are too lazy to use English.

[BigJohnnyBKK]

Where is the motivation ? Children remember what they learn, not what they are taught. The subject must be interesting and have perceived value. The ability to motivate children is an ability sadly lacking in many teachers, and not only teachers in Thailand.

You have a really crisp and clear point in that one. Old fashioned folks, need to get of their proud seats and identify what their children and students are really interested in and not, of what they are interested in "teaching their young ones.."

I said it once before, but.... I say it again "Thai children are not stupid" No child on earth is stupid, but old fashioned views stupify the ways individuals are learning...

Thai children are traditionally motivated by the threat of a beating with a big stick. Most effectively by a parent, but also by teachers.

This has become less true in recent years, but unfortunately not much positive has arisen to take its place, in most cases it's just the pressure is off so the little brains relax.

The kind of schooling they get from 3-4 on almost completely kills of natural curiosity and creativity, they get trained to simply memorize and parrot back what the teacher thinks is knowledge.

Just sad. . .

[ivan96822]

There are tons of challenges when motivating students to learn a new language...Too many of them are apathetic and want to ensconce themselves in their own native tongue.

Lastly, and most importantly, from many Thai people's point of view, which isn't wrong on the other hand: We foreigners are also in THAI territory, so why should the average Thai adjust to the foreigner's 'pesky language'??? Why should they bother learning another language if they have other socio-economic problems to deal with already... That's from the other side point of view...

But government of this country and the greedy farang among us fail to realize that...

IMO if us foreigners can level up at least to the basic to lightly advanced conversations in Thai language that would IMO be a better step, than "FORCING PEOPLE TO LEARN A LANGUAGE",....

BUT discipline IMO comes first, before we can think about teaching anything in terms of language or academic skills....

I hope I made a point,... thank u all, have a nice day...

You are good at "The art of missing the point", ordinarily a common Thai trait.

ASEAN means English is language of business, international trade, international workforce.

No Thai is being asked to learn English to make a non Thai happy. The information highway aka internet is education/information/knowledge abundant but not in Thai, and not limited to English either.

How would Thailand benefit as part of ASEAN if every farang became conversational in Thai? I am fairly proficient speaking and also read/write, but it does not help Thailand compete/participate in ASEAN.

Interesting points by both writers here. While the first response to my original post is practical, the rebuttal post is reality.

[JohnAllan]

It's a start. Though things will need to progress far beyond simple sentence structure before a Thai teacher can be anywhere close to competent to teach the language. And that certainly isn't going to happen in the course of one year.

One thing I would question is whether the two English native - or native English - instructors are, in fact, native to an English speaking country or, as is often the case here, are described as native when in fact they are nothing of the sort, being, typically, Filipino.

And while I admire her confidence, I trust Khun Suwannee, in seeing it as ". . . not that difficult . . ." appreciates she is a few steps up the hill, but nowhere close to the top. The only way to develop reasonable competence - never mind fluency - in any language is to use it in regular conversation with native - and I do mean native - speakers.

[JohnAllan]

This is largely a social problem. I work in Cambodia but am married to a Thai so I see the huge difference between the countries in this regard. Here in Cambodia, almost everyone wants to learn some English, the level here is amazingly good even in the remotest places. From what I have seen in Thailand there is little interest in learning English (or anything much for that matter) complete apathy. Another thing also highlighted by this article is the fear of trying to speak English, the fear of losing face I guess. I have heard this from teachers here before. One I know took over an English class from a Thai and was appalled how scared the kids were to even try to speak. This was because the Thai teacher had insisted on perfect grammar rather than encouraging them to experiment and try to link words and phrases together. This was so extreme that he actually had a child wet himself in class because he was afraid to ask to go to the toilet as the previous teacher became very angry if they made even the smallest mistake. English is a very flexible language and it is easy to say the same things in a number of different ways. I believe this fear is a large part of the problem and it is simply a matter of encouraging people to experiment, not to be afraid of making a mistake, good grammar can come later once they become more confident. But they need to want to learn and that is not something I see very often in Thailand.

Exactly! Many students are too scared to even attempt to speak English due to worrying about making a mistake but as they become more fluent they become more accurate so they should be encouraged to speak as often as possible.

Exactly again and amusing with so many English accents, how a native Thai can figure out what's being said sometimes when even English to English from different countries can have difficulty understanding the other. Ah but for some is so much more fun isolating and showing one's own stupidity, then wonder why there might be resentment towards the penis version of English.

The penis version?

[JohnAllan]

Some years back I mailed about my despair for the education of my two children in Thailand and started to look for employment in Malaysia primarily to make a sensible financial move with the benefit of improved education . When we moved my daughters english was deteriorating , and my 4 year old son spoke only Thai after the move the change was amazing , in Malaysia /Penang, English was not an elitist thing it was just part of life and schooling it was normal , as were many other languages , the teachers and normal society spoke, slipping in and out of several languages , but English seemed to reign supreme . With in 3 months my son spoke only English deciding it was "better than Thai" ..upsetting Thai grandma who he met at the airport and announced she would have to "talk English now if she still loved him " similar for my daughter declared as educationally subnormal with learning difficulties in Thailand at a young age is now at University in Malaysia in a full English teaching medium . Interestingly in the Malaysian environment Grand parents and every Thai ( there were many )all happily tried to speak English with little or no embarrassment and they all had fun correcting each other with much laughter and no loss of face, if it is just normal and Tv ,Radio and press is in English there is no loss of traditional languages . I now have to live in Hong Kong where English is once again an Elitist Language big money to be made from extra lessons and tuition and the general standards are very, very very poor ,in fact in mainland China in my factories I find the standards of English amazing and I operate week on week with little translation with most people self taught with a good grounding from normal schools .

A university student was declared as educationally subnormal in Thailand. That phrase alone says much about the problems with the Thai education system.

[billd766]

My son is in his second year at primary school (he will be 8 in August) and he understands a lot more English than he speaks yet.

He and his friend next door age nearly 7 are in the same class and are doing the English language program as are a couple more of the kids in the big village and there are only 23 in the class.

I rarely speak to him in Thai (not that I am any good) and his Mum speaks to him in Thai.

an speak it

If I tell him and his friends to do something in English he now translates that into Thai for them.

His friend next door usually only gets spoken to in English by me though her Mum can speak it so she is a bit slower than mine.

He knows his way around the internet better than I do and can access it in both Thai and English.

[Baerboxer]

I was always amused to ask them to say. 'laundry' to which the response was usually, 'raundly'. Then, if you ask the same person to say, 'raundly', they will often return, 'laundry'. 'Love it.

Try asking a Thai to say............as snug as a bug in a rug.

Sorry, I just could not put into English, how my wife said it.

And how many of us can pronounce Thai pefectly? I once attended a meeting in the UK with several Germans who all tried very hard to present in English. Some of the native English took great pleasure at laughing and giggling every time a pronunciation error was made. After the first break I anounced the second part of the meeting would use the German language only. Complete dumb expressions on the Brits.

The point - encouragement works great in language teaching. Ridicule doesn't, especially as most expats struggle with even the basics of Thai.

[Baerboxer]

The Thai teachers at my school all use Thai language when teaching English. Most can't speak English, and the rest are too lazy to use English.

That is sad. Any chance you can change to a different school? My daughter started back today, in a bi-lingual P1 class. One of the rules they have been given is that they can only speak English in the classroom, apart from the Thai subject lessons. Most of the Thai teachers can understand English and quite a few are able to converse. The non-Thai teachers only speak English with the students, even though most are keen to learn some social Thai.

[sirchai]

We'd just held two 3 day seminars for Thai English teachers, One was for 250 primary teachers from all over our province, the other one for 35 lower secondary teachers. It was very successful and I hope they'll continue doing so.

Some even told us that they've got huge problems to speak in public, but we found a way to make it happen and it was fun. Another poster had mentioned that even many "Native English speakers" can't communicate with each other in a way that they understand what each other is saying.

Working with guys from for example Birmingham, parts of Scotland,South London etc gave many of us a big headache regarding communicating together, all being used to different accents and slang.

Some of them left letters, or even whole words out, thinking that others have to understand them.Then the "mumblers."......

I truly believe that " Native English speakers" , being teachers in this country should be able to adjust their speech in a way that others can understand them easily.

How should Thai teachers or kids understand those who are not understood by people who grew up with English? Isn't that already a reason for many Thai teachers to NOT speak anymore, even if they'd like to do so?

I've met so many foreign guys living and working in this country as English teachers for many many years, but couldn't even order a noodle soup,using Thai.

Majority of them couldn't speak a second language, but were complaining about the stupidity of Thais being so bad in learning English.

.

Edited May 15, 2012 by sirchai

[atyclb]

I am involved in teaching professional stuff, I have an international experience: i am French but I have been teaching Irish, British, Arabs from Gulf states, Thais, malaysian, Chinese and miscellaneous others.....in spite my "broken" english.

First people must be motivated for learning, making the students "thirsty"to learn, then you have to organise them with supports, even children 4 or 5 year old, going to a library, choosing booking, finding thema and group working after.....

The knowledge of the teacher is important but less important than his attitude and his dedication. To demonstrate his knowledge is not the aim: the aim is to make the student learning. In my team I have one super instructor: I am sure I tell him; "next week you will have to teach Russian", he will do and his students will be passionated (to date he does not know a word of Russian).

The first point is to create the atmosphere; I am french, but I recognised English is the international vector for communicating in affairs, in a lot of professional areas. It is a requirement like calculus, physics, science, geographia in our "Modern" world.

So, first creating the environment, then giving the tools (A lot of free stuff available from BBC records to the english version of Newspaper (Bangkok Post, The Nation....), so that students, by themselves, will search and get interest in learning.

Then I am sure plenty of expatriates are volunteers for animating from time to time a discussion, even good speaking english Thais (but non teachers) can help,

The key I repeat is to create the environment, but maybe the first step for Thai people is to stop this xenophobic attitude which block them accepting anything from "farangs". And before the first step, it is the step zero.

Perhaps the government could hire Thai's that have lived in English speaking countries and speak /read / write well. That would take care of the xenophobia issue.

Another poster makes a valid point regarding poor native language competency.

It would seem their entire education system needs an overhaul if they wish to compete with the world.

I have noticed that even some high rank University Profesors, speaking an excellent english, have difficulties for writing a lettre. From few Thai lessons I have taken, I remember my teacher telling that some letters where obsolete, nearly never utilised and I see the time spent by children for learning all this Thai alphabet. So, Thais should question themselves like Koreans have done 500 years ago (Hangul Alphabet- King Sejong 1452):

1. How much time Children spend for learning our writing system? Comparison with other writing systems?

2. Are we isolated from the rest of the world by our writing system? If we simplified our writing system, what are the gains?

3. It is not question to abandon our originality but at least can we simplified our system in order to help future generation, loosing less time learning this writing system and spending time on other topics?

I too remember at least one thai character that is obsolete. I too asked them why teach it if it is not used/relevant anymore. None of the thai nationals could answer my question.

Although I have Thai friends that are very smart, think outside the box, make clever WITTY jokes in English (second language) I much admit they are a rare breed. It seems the family (parents) are also "outside the box" and they have been exchange students abroad.

One second year female uni student I know is "sharp as a whip" witty, reliable, on time, analytical and just a lovely person. She complains about many classmates. We play guitar together sometimes.

No Thai is inherently stupid, but the educational system does not train the mind to think. That is why so many people walk into you, walk into each other, congregate at the base of escalators (blocking others), stopping for no apparent reason. How does one organize their thoughts if the mind was not trained to think?

[cooked]

[silent]

This is largely a social problem. I work in Cambodia but am married to a Thai so I see the huge difference between the countries in this regard. Here in Cambodia, almost everyone wants to learn some English, the level here is amazingly good even in the remotest places. From what I have seen in Thailand there is little interest in learning English (or anything much for that matter) complete apathy. Another thing also highlighted by this article is the fear of trying to speak English, the fear of losing face I guess. I have heard this from teachers here before. One I know took over an English class from a Thai and was appalled how scared the kids were to even try to speak. This was because the Thai teacher had insisted on perfect grammar rather than encouraging them to experiment and try to link words and phrases together. This was so extreme that he actually had a child wet himself in class because he was afraid to ask to go to the toilet as the previous teacher became very angry if they made even the smallest mistake. English is a very flexible language and it is easy to say the same things in a number of different ways. I believe this fear is a large part of the problem and it is simply a matter of encouraging people to experiment, not to be afraid of making a mistake, good grammar can come later once they become more confident. But they need to want to learn and that is not something I see very often in Thailand.

Exactly! Many students are too scared to even attempt to speak English due to worrying about making a mistake but as they become more fluent they become more accurate so they should be encouraged to speak as often as possible.

Exactly again and amusing with so many English accents, how a native Thai can figure out what's being said sometimes when even English to English from different countries can have difficulty understanding the other. Ah but for some is so much more fun isolating and showing one's own stupidity, then wonder why there might be resentment towards the penis version of English.

The penis version?

Forgive them Lord, for easily calling the kettle black too and being as guilty as the next in not knowing what they read or write about either

Posted 2012-05-14 12:52:01

Just for fun, get them to ask for some peanuts.

Comes out like arse for some penis 99% of the time.

[Scott]

Please stick to the topic of the OP and refrain from personal comments directed at other posters.

A rather weird post has been deleted as well as replies to it.

Edited May 19, 2012 by Scott