University teaching shows why Thais' command of English is so abysmal!

[KenKadz]

So the farang kid who received so much criticism last week for bringing attention to the fact that Thai's can not speak proper English was not wrong?

To learn a language properly requires learning from a native speaker.

Thais who can not speak English properly can not teach English properly.

What they teach is their mistakes, over and over again!

[Johnniey]

5 minutes ago, naiharn said:

So one of the 'most prestigious' schools in Thailand employs/employed incompetent teacher(s)! Apparently there is no proper vetting process, and no quality control.

 

Sounds just like the University that this whole thread is about! Incompetent teachers who don't know the subject they are supposed to be teaching, and no procedures to weed them out.

 

 

I'm sure they are better now. They hired this teacher through an agency that paid peanuts. These agencies still exist and, of course, get monkeys!

[Johnniey]

Just now, KenKadz said:

So the farang kid who received so much criticism last week for bringing attention to the fact that Thai's can not speak proper English was not wrong?

To learn a language properly requires learning from a native speaker.

Thais who can not speak English properly can not teach English properly.

What they teach is their mistakes, over and over again!

This is why if a mixed Thai/Foreigner couple have kids, the foreign parent should NEVER speak Thai to them if they want bilingual kids.  Also, the Thai parent should always speak Thai.  

[Shawn0000]

6 minutes ago, naiharn said:

So one of the 'most prestigious' schools in Thailand employs/employed incompetent teacher(s)! Apparently there is no proper vetting process, and no quality control.

 

Sounds just like the University that this whole thread is about! Incompetent teachers who don't know the subject they are supposed to be teaching, and no procedures to weed them out.

 

 

 

All the prestigious schools I have seen advertise for teachers only employ native teachers who have QTS, never heard of anything like this before, but then anyone can say anything on here, it doesn't make it true.  The best schools use the UK or US programs, there is no way they are employing unqualified teachers, it just wouldn't work, and paying in the region of 100K the have no difficulty in finding qualified experienced teachers.

[bark]

2 hours ago, Pimay1 said:

Now that is one funny post. Thanks for the laugh.

Yes agreed, Too funny ..... 555

[daveAustin]

6 hours ago, jpinx said:

There are so many versions of English (Spanish also) that it is hard to know where to set the standard...

 

Okayyy... how about English English as in the version known as the English language? 

[pookiki]

1 hour ago, rabas said:

 

They transliterate written Thai, not what people pronounce, and R is a common consonant. Most Thai can pronounce a trilled R when challenged and in good health, otherwise they just say 'L', and the letter L is tossed out completely.

 

You might be interested to know that Thai is a perfect phonetic language, words are pronounced (well, can be) exactly as written with tones and long/short syllables. English is a bastard language and impossible to pronounce from spelling. This confuses everyone, including Thai.

Thai is far from being 'perfectly' phonetic. 'l' and 'r' at the end of a word is pronounced 'n'.  'ch'/'j' at the end of a word is pronounced as a 't'. 'r' and 'l' and the beginning of the word is interchanged all the time and becomes very confusing.  Plus there all the variations of how to write 's' -- just to name a few. Spanish works much better for being phonetic.

[paulbj2]

7 minutes ago, melvinmelvin said:

 

I have a list of things I don't really understand in Thailand.

 

On the list is Why do foreigners, like on this thread, complain so much about Thai's ability or lack of ability to speak English?

This is Thailand, most Thais speak Thai. Some of them also speak English, various quality though, but never mind.

 

If Thais want to learn speak English, fine.

If they don't want to learn speak English fine.

Their choice, nothing to complain about. I just can't understand all this complaining. This ain't Kansas.

 

 

It was remarked in a post above that American stuff like gallons inches and a few more things are hardly used anymore outside the US.

WRONG!

Inches are used WORLD WIDE for several applications, threads on pipes and sensors ate the first that come to mind.

 

 

I did say "hardly used", not never used. I wouldn't say that just BSP is wholesale adoption of the Imperial system of weights and measures worldwide, would you?

 

In Britain, miles are still used on road signage and where vehicle speeds are expressed MPH is used. Fuel consumption is still expressed in MPG (miles per gallon) although, helpfully of course, the British use a completely different gallon to the Americans. Pints are still used in pubs to measure beer but millilitres are used to measure spirits.

 

In France, people still ask for "une livre de ..." a pound of... when buying vegetables but what they mean and expect to receive is 500 grams; the pre-metric French "livre" never was historically the same as the English and American one, in fact it was equivalent to American 17.27 oz. In the area where I lived in France, reclaimed oak timber from old barns was, rather quaintly, sold by the "pied cube" the cubic foot however it was not the same foot as used in the UK and America which is alleged to have been derived from the length of the foot of Henry VIII. The unit in France is also known as the "pied du roi", the king's foot, and was derived from the length of the foot of one of their kings who took a different shoe size to Henry VIII and is thus a completely different size being 1.066 ft. Even if you hear people using what sound like US units, there is no guarantee that they are the same units you use in the US; to be sure, you would have to use the metric system to define them!

 

The BSP pipe threading standards (that's British Standard Pipe, not American standard) are still used in every part of the world that I have every visited and I was surprised to find that steel tapes here are dual marked in centimetres and inches. With few exceptions, just about every country in the world uses the metric system except the US and in fact if I remember correctly, the US lost a Mars probe at a cost of $ billions because the manufacturers of the rocket engine muddled up Imperial and Metric units. If you want to interact with scientists and engineers throughout the world today, you need to use metric units as that is the world scientific standard.

 

In the US, medicine uses metric units; you don't dispense medication in grains and minims, doses of solids are in milligrams and liquids in millilitres (or in "cc", cubic centimetres, which under the metric system, conveniently happen to be equal to millilitres)    

[gemguy]

I give up...

I think I will go home now...lol

[aslimversgwm]

25 minutes ago, Johnniey said:

Also penis pizza sizes, car tyres and nails  to name a few.

Certainly in the building and ancillary trades here in Thailand and elsewhere - including the UK - they use Imperial measures such as inches and feet as well as Metric measurements, but please admit this is an anachronism as all of Europe, China, Russia, South America, Canada, Australia, NZ, Africa, the ME, the rest of SE Asia use the Metric system for both length, weight and volume.

Using Imperial measure when you threw off the Imperial yoke over 260 years ago is faintly laughable!

And whilst we're at it - why Fahrenheit when the rest of the world use Celsius? And why Month/Day/Year when the logical presentation is as per the rest of the world: Day/Month/Year!?

[Shawn0000]

1 hour ago, Bule gila said:

You are quite incredible and yet again wrong.

noun

1.

Linguistics. a variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially.

2.

a provincial, rural, or socially distinct variety of a language that differs from the standard language, especially when considered as substandard.

3.

a special variety of a language:

The literary dialect is usually taken as the standard language.

4.

a language considered as one of a group that have a common ancestor:

 

Incrdible yes, wrong no.

Here is a wiki quote from their article on standard English.

"Standard English (SE) is any form of the English language that is accepted as a national norm in a particular English-speaking country."

Note how they state, particular English-speaking country, as in the standard is different in different countries, as in there is more than one standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_English

 

I won't take it further, I am not into shaming.

 

[pookiki]

4 minutes ago, paulbj2 said:

I did say "hardly used", not never used. I wouldn't say that just BSP is wholesale adoption of the Imperial system of weights and measures worldwide, would you?

 

In Britain, miles are still used on road signage and where vehicle speeds are expressed MPH is used. Fuel consumption is still expressed in MPG (miles per gallon) although, helpfully of course, the British use a completely different gallon to the Americans. Pints are still used in pubs to measure beer but millilitres are used to measure spirits.

 

In France, people still ask for "une livre de ..." a pound of... when buying vegetables but what they mean and expect to receive is 500 grams; the pre-metric French "livre" never was historically the same as the English and American one, in fact it was equivalent to American 17.27 oz. In the area where I lived in France, reclaimed oak timber from old barns was, rather quaintly, sold by the "pied cube" the cubic foot however it was not the same foot as used in the UK and America which is alleged to have been derived from the length of the foot of Henry VIII. The unit in France is also known as the "pied du roi", the king's foot, and was derived from the length of the foot of one of their kings who took a different shoe size to Henry VIII and is thus a completely different size being 1.066 ft. Even if you hear people using what sound like US units, there is no guarantee that they are the same units you use in the US; to be sure, you would have to use the metric system to define them!

 

The BSP pipe threading standards (that's British Standard Pipe, not American standard) are still used in every part of the world that I have every visited and I was surprised to find that steel tapes here are dual marked in centimetres and inches. With few exceptions, just about every country in the world uses the metric system except the US and in fact if I remember correctly, the US lost a Mars probe at a cost of $ billions because the manufacturers of the rocket engine muddled up Imperial and Metric units. If you want to interact with scientists and engineers throughout the world today, you need to use metric units as that is the world scientific standard.

 

In the US, medicine uses metric units; you don't dispense medication in grains and minims, doses of solids are in milligrams and liquids in millilitres (or in "cc", cubic centimetres, which under the metric system, conveniently happen to be equal to millilitres)    

Just give me a bushel of corn and a cord of wood and I'll be happy!

[Dumbastheycome]

6 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

Wouldn't be better to say, "I do not speak English WELL rather than I do not speak English GOOD".

Or is that just my American born English ear?

Is there a problem with "I do not speak good English" ?

[Acharn]

Pfui! To the extent that Thais are not able to speak good English, the reason is they have little chance to speak to English speakers. Over the course of an interesting life I've had the chance to learn several languages, German, Mandarin, Maghrebi Arabic, and Thai, and I have learned that to learn a language you must speak it, and to learn it well you must have a reason to speak it. When I was learning Mandarin the reason was that failing to learn it well meant reassignment as an on-the-job-training flight line guard in Thule AFB, Greenland. When I see people criticizing Thais' English skills, I find myself wondering how well they speak Thai. I've known people who lived in Bangkok fifteen years and could not speak Thai aside from, "Sawadee, khrap." Incidentally, I speak Thai every day and do not consider that I speak it well, yet.

[pookiki]

 

4 minutes ago, Dumbastheycome said:

Is there a problem with "I do not speak good English" ?

http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-grammar-using-good-and-well.html

 

All depends on syntax.

[impulse]

7 hours ago, jpinx said:

There are so many versions of English (Spanish also) that it is hard to know where to set the standard, but there is no doubt that most Thai "English Teachers" are hard pressed to have a conversation in English with a native UK English speaker.

 

I've got to lip read when I try to converse with the Scots in my office.  It's almost impossible to have a phone conversation with them. 

[pookiki]

5 minutes ago, Acharn said:

Pfui! To the extent that Thais are not able to speak good English, the reason is they have little chance to speak to English speakers. Over the course of an interesting life I've had the chance to learn several languages, German, Mandarin, Maghrebi Arabic, and Thai, and I have learned that to learn a language you must speak it, and to learn it well you must have a reason to speak it. When I was learning Mandarin the reason was that failing to learn it well meant reassignment as an on-the-job-training flight line guard in Thule AFB, Greenland. When I see people criticizing Thais' English skills, I find myself wondering how well they speak Thai. I've known people who lived in Bangkok fifteen years and could not speak Thai aside from, "Sawadee, khrap." Incidentally, I speak Thai every day and do not consider that I speak it well, yet.

Amen, brother!

[jchfriis]

6 minutes ago, Dumbastheycome said:

Is there a problem with "I do not speak good English" ?

I would think so, because if "I speak good English" as opposed to "I speak bad English" is about what kind of English I speak. Who/what defines what is good or bad English can be another discussion. If you say "I speak English well (or not)", that describes how you speak English.

[Dumbastheycome]

6 minutes ago, aslimversgwm said:

Certainly in the building and ancillary trades here in Thailand and elsewhere - including the UK - they use Imperial measures such as inches and feet as well as Metric measurements, but please admit this is an anachronism as all of Europe, China, Russia, South America, Canada, Australia, NZ, Africa, the ME, the rest of SE Asia use the Metric system for both length, weight and volume.

Using Imperial measure when you threw off the Imperial yoke over 260 years ago is faintly laughable!

And whilst we're at it - why Fahrenheit when the rest of the world use Celsius? And why Month/Day/Year when the logical presentation is as per the rest of the world: Day/Month/Year!?

I am often amused  when buying  smll nuts and bolts to discover that the bolt or nut which has  an imperial thread often has a metric hexagonal head with an imperial hexagonal  nut  or  visa versa.

The  concept of standardization to metric is complicated by the fact that  there exist variations in threads even in that.

And why do  bicycle  manufacturers still  insist on a thread of their  own ? 

 

[Dumbastheycome]

3 minutes ago, jchfriis said:

I would think so, because if "I speak good English" as opposed to "I speak bad English" is about what kind of English I speak. Who/what defines what is good or bad English can be another discussion. If you say "I speak English well (or not)", that describes how you speak English.

Ok. Conceded. :)

[pookiki]

11 minutes ago, jchfriis said:

I would think so, because if "I speak good English" as opposed to "I speak bad English" is about what kind of English I speak. Who/what defines what is good or bad English can be another discussion. If you say "I speak English well (or not)", that describes how you speak English.

Same meaning.  'Good' is an adjective. 'Well' is an adverb.  See the earlier thread with link.

 

I would have difficulty discerning much of a semantic difference between the two phrases: 'He speaks good English.' and 'He speaks English well'.

[Grubster]

My Thai neighbor is a school teacher in Ag. and Science. He speaks perfect English rarely stumped on a word. I told him he needs to be teaching english, He said oh no I don't know how to teach english. I could not convince him. He makes 18,000 baht a month by the way. How can this be? Maybe he can't read and write it very well I don't know but I would think Phonics would be top priority in the early ages. My wife is self taught pretty good English, I met her retired English teacher and she can barely say hello. Whats going on here. Sad

[melvinmelvin]

18 minutes ago, pookiki said:

Just give me a bushel of corn and a cord of wood and I'll be happy!

 

yep, and a few gills of dram!

 

and to the guy you commented on;

 

The US NPT standard is much more widely used than BSP, MUCH more widely.

If you want to talk about such stuff, to scientists or non scientists, you must talk in inches or fractions of 'em,

there ain't no alternatives. This also applies to pipes in space vehicles.

 

For many many many years all US manufactured cars have been 100% metric, (a few exceptions though).

 

 

[connda]

That's what happens when 'puu yai' Thai educators write their own curriculum without having it proofed by a competent NES.  Obviously admitting to one's linguist and cultural English language shortcomings would be a serious loss of face, so just send the garbage to the printer then act ignorant and aloof. 

[gdgbb]

6 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

Wouldn't be better to say, "I do not speak English WELL rather than I do not speak English GOOD".

Or is that just my American born English ear?

 It's probably your American born English eyes, the example that you saw in the OP photo was giving the incorrect version as "I cannot speak English good" and the correct version as "I cannot speak good English", pointing out the correct word order.

[madusa]

All day long the poor Thais are listening to the English language spoken by different Europeans with their strong accents, the poor Thais have to make an effort to understand what is spoken to them it could be daunting task to say the least. And when an Australian(with his accent) speaks to the Thais they draw a blank, "what is he saying?"

The worst part is when the students in schools and university think they could learn English from books. They need to interact and mix with English speaking foreigners but they are reluctant to do so because they feel shy (partly their national character) or worried about their spoken English is not good enough.

      They are like a drunk man who drinks because he fails and because he drinks he fails all the more.

      Need we go on?

"Learning foreign languages from books is a myth" - I say this because I have spent a quarter of a century looking into this problem of acquiring a foreign language. I do not have a PhD or a degree behind my name but I do see the problems quite clearly.

     

[George Graham]

6 hours ago, Johnniey said:

What is it a technical/vocational college?

I worked in a Thai university for over 10 years and all the teachers in the English department spoke impeccable English as many of them had PhD's from English universities. They had all studied to a Master's degree level abroad. 

 

The only mistake I often heard was that they used "ever" as in "I ever been to Spain".

 

Who cares if the Thai word "koy" is misspelled? I know many so called Thai speakers who think this word means "have" or "used to", as in "I have been there", "I have eaten it before". 

There was even a poster here years ago called, "ajarn", who had been learning Thai for many years didn't know this Thai word meaning "not very".

 

But go ahead all you people living in Thailand, who can't communicate in Thai, and criticize the Thais ability at speaking English as after all they should, shouldn't they?

So my fellow Scotlander, they all spoke impeccable English and had PhDs from English universities. Not true. Studying to masters level is NOT a PhD. And "I ever been to Spain." Is not impeccable English. And finally "koy"...that could mean pinky. Love to converse with you on the thai language forum.

[rabas]

2 hours ago, rebo said:

Not true. You won't be able to  pronounce more than 80% of Thai words correctly if you don't know how they have to be pronounced. Many of these words have their roots in Sanskrit/Pali language. 

Point taken. However, the point stands that the official written Thai is intended as a phonetically correct representation of the language. Most Sanskrit/Pali exceptions (Suvarnabhumi, consonant clusters etc) also follow rules. which are taught in school and some language references. But yeah, mention of Sanskrit/Pali can cause Thai headaches.

 

Not pronouncing L and R and some other problems are not excepetions, they're just wrong and have  drawn Royal intervention.   Lol, people are so busy criticizing Thai's English, maybe it's their Thai....

 

Disclosure: I flunked phonetics in American grade school.

[George Graham]

5 hours ago, Loeilad said:

The premise is a false syllogism.

however one can give a couple of examples one humorous and the other a bit more serious.

1! - The school text book that declares quite clearly in black and white an exercise based around the phrase "go to shopping"

 

2 - the TOEFL-style EL course "devised" by one of Thailand's top uni that basically plagiarises TOEFL itself and has some of the worst dialogue recordings I've ever heard. Further investigation revealed the course to be "devised" by a native English speaker who clearly wasn't recognise that he/she has a speak impediment......how the hell Uni students were expected to learn from that is beyond me.

 

 

it seems that the foreign "experts" that Thailand employs to teach them English are far from what they claim to be.

 

 

Your grasp of logic is far from what you would wish us to believe. "The premise is a false syllogism" - embarrassing.

[suthnuh]

7 hours ago, Charlie1 said:

I noticed that many Thais try to speak a not understandable "American English". They should be taught only by UK native speakers - the teachers, I mean.

 

You are assuming "UK native speakers" also speak "proper" English. I think you are referring to Queen's English, and not the regional UK dialects? I'm from the USA, and I've had friends from all over the UK, and various areas within England. When they go into their local tongues no one from outside their county can follow. Let's agree that there are aspects of English that are universal for all countries where English is the native tongue. (crisp, chip, fries, biscuit, cookie, lift, fag, elevator, bonnet, hood, boot, trunk, etc. notwithstanding). The point is to have a native English speaker with a grasp of proper, grammatical English teaching the teachers.

 

When I lived in Thailand I joined a scuba diving group. I was the only regular from the USA. The regular group had a Brit, a Scot, an Irishman, a Welshman,  and a Kiwi (NZ). We'd all go drinking after a day of diving. At then end of the night we'd head back to the hotel, and they'd all tell me how glad they were I'd joined the group. I'd ask, "Why?" They'd all laugh and say, "because 1, you buy a lot of rounds; and 2, after 4 or 5 of them you're the only bloke we can all understand!"   (the accents get pretty heavy as the drinks build up)

 

Cheers mate.