Speaking English: Thailand vs Philippines

[linne16]

I'm a Filipino and from home schooling to my university education, the only subject taught in Tagalog among the schools I attended was Filipino. All our textbooks, including Philippine History, were written and discussed in English. I studied in a Catholic School, a regional highschool, a state university, and another private university so I technically had a taste of private and public education in my country. Bottom line is, we are not just taught to use the language, we are trained.

[soomak]

Out of all of the people posting, how many have actually spent any length - longer than six months -of time there?

Accents or not, the current Thai educational system cannot compete with that of the Philippines.

One of the major sectors of employment in the Philippines is call centre work. These aren't call centres for local businesses in the most part, but huge international companies use the Philippines for their call centres due to their proficiency in English.

Hmmmm. Well that explains why the Philippines is such a regional basketcase, with crime, corruption, and poverty much worse than Thailand. And it also explains why Thailand, with a population of around 30 million less, has about 40% higher GDP than the PI. Per capita GDP of Thailand is over double that of the PI. So education and English proficiency doesn't really mean much, does it?

It's such a basket case that it's economy outperformed every other country in Asia,INCLUDING THAILAND,for the first 2 quarters of this year!

Why do clueless,uniformed idiots insist on posting utter garbage on here,it's actually embarrassing how little they know!

If you were right and he was wrong would you expect Thais to go to the Philippines for work? Or people from the Philippines to come to Thailand for work? I just asking. Mexican people come to the US to work and Polish people come to the UK to work. If the Philippines economy was doing so well one would expect Thais and others from SEA to be flooding the Philippines looking for work. Are they?

There are millions of Filipinos working abroad, and Thailand is definitely not the first choice for them. Many work in the Gulf countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, the US, etc etc.

One of the main reasons they can do that is their English proficiency.

It is true that Thailand's GDP per capita is double that of the Phils, however this gap is closing as the Phils is growing faster.

The biggest obstacle for the Phils is the high birth rate, more then 3 births per woman, compared to 1.6 in Thailand, so the GDP per capita will be lower even if the productivity is the same. Once they get free of the Catholic church and start using birth control, they will develop very very fast.

[Berkshire]

Once they get free of the Catholic church and start using birth control, they will develop very very fast.

And you think this will happen in the Philippines when? I'm not positive, but the most likely answer is "never."

[Berkshire]

I'm a Filipino and from home schooling to my university education, the only subject taught in Tagalog among the schools I attended was Filipino. All our textbooks, including Philippine History, were written and discussed in English. I studied in a Catholic School, a regional highschool, a state university, and another private university so I technically had a taste of private and public education in my country. Bottom line is, we are not just taught to use the language, we are trained.

I've met many Filipinos and they say pretty much the same thing. It seems that the national language in the PI is both Tagalog and English.

Learning a 2nd language requires not only education at an early age, but also constant usage. That's why English proficiency in countries like Japan and Korea is much lower than the PI. It's simply not ingrained in the national consciousness and most are frankly just not interested.

Even if the Thais were to start a massive drive to educate kids in the English language at an early age, it will not amount to anything if these same kids don't use the language on a regular basis as an adult. I've met Thais who did their postgraduate education in the west. They find that their English skills slowly deteriorate because they simply don't use it.

[soomak]

Once they get free of the Catholic church and start using birth control, they will develop very very fast.

And you think this will happen in the Philippines when? I'm not positive, but the most likely answer is "never."

It happened all over the world, so I don't see a reason it wouldn't happen there.

What's the birth rate in Italy (used to be a very Catholic country)? 1.4 per woman.

Brazil, Poland, Portugal, all have low birth rates.

It will happen in the Phils as well.