A question of identity

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
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The Raven has been reading the thread about making money with an avaricious gleam in his beady little eyes.

He does OK now teaching all the usual stuff to people who want to pass exams, or are studying because “my English is not very well” but wants to stretch his wings. The problem is that nobody knows who he is. He doesn’t have that magic system or personality cult to market.

So, website ahoy and find some way to make people look at it. Can do, but what’s the message? What can be The Raven’s selling point?

Well, he’s got that figured out, but is having trouble refining it into a something intelligible by the paying customers. People don’t read long explanations. They want short, concise, pithy even.

Can anyone help to summarize the following?

Here’s the student, studying English because he has to. He doesn’t actually do anything with the language, just studies it as some academic challenge divorced from real life. Or he studies a test, not understanding that the test is there to measure his ability to perform certain tasks. (Live and function overseas, listen to lectures, take notes, read and do independent research, prepare written and spoken presentations about his findings.) He struggles, doesn’t really make a lot of progress, but eventually manages to be declared more or less competent. At last, he’s being interviewed for a job.

“So you can speak English?” says the potential employer. “What else can you do? What skills or abilities do you have? What makes you more employable than the next guy, the one who speaks better English than you?”

And answer comes there none.

The Raven wishes to specialize in Active English, task-focused language learning/practice that not only puts English into a meaningful context. The task itself should have some intrinsic value to the student, provide them with some benefit such as a competitive advantage in the employment market. He’s seen the concept discussed here and other places, but never seen it expressed succinctly.

How does one express the rationale behind the product, as well as the product, before the student loses interest?

Thank you.

2

[quote=“The Raven”]The Raven has been reading the thread about making money with an avaricious gleam in his beady little eyes.

He does OK now teaching all the usual stuff to people who want to pass exams, or are studying because “my English is not very well” but wants to stretch his wings. The problem is that nobody knows who he is. He doesn’t have that magic system or personality cult to market.

So, website ahoy and find some way to make people look at it. Can do, but what’s the message? What can be The Raven’s selling point?

Well, he’s got that figured out, but is having trouble refining it into a something intelligible by the paying customers. People don’t read long explanations. They want short, concise, pithy even.

Can anyone help to summarize the following?

Here’s the student, studying English because he has to. He doesn’t actually do anything with the language, just studies it as some academic challenge divorced from real life. Or he studies a test, not understanding that the test is there to measure his ability to perform certain tasks. (Live and function overseas, listen to lectures, take notes, read and do independent research, prepare written and spoken presentations about his findings.) He struggles, doesn’t really make a lot of progress, but eventually manages to be declared more or less competent. At last, he’s being interviewed for a job.

“So you can speak English?” says the potential employer. “What else can you do? What skills or abilities do you have? What makes you more employable than the next guy, the one who speaks better English than you?”

And answer comes there none.

The Raven wishes to specialize in Active English, task-focused language learning/practice that not only puts English into a meaningful context. The task itself should have some intrinsic value to the student, provide them with some benefit such as a competitive advantage in the employment market. He’s seen the concept discussed here and other places, but never seen it expressed succinctly.

How does one express the rationale behind the product, as well as the product, before the student loses interest?

Thank you.[/quote]Sorry, I don’t have any direct answers. The topic-specific task-based learning thing sounds great, and I can see that what you need is a way to market it.

I think there’s a burgeoning awareness here that what people need is real communicative ability in English. So perhaps the market could be said to be developing of its own accord, though very slowly.

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Directing the appropriate traffic to your website may prove a challenge. How do you plan to advertise your site? Do you plan to distribute flyers, post at universities, etc?

Your idea sounds great and it sounds like you have the right motivation to get this going, but it is difficult to get something “new” started here and make it stick. People here are used to he routine of things. Buxibans, Adult schools, Language Exchange via web boards, etc. Good luck to you though!

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How about “Learn Job Skills Through English”

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Have a picture of someone obviously in a very important interview for a very rich company.

Tagline: “Know the answer”.

…

I’m not sure whether I’m joking or not.

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The idea is not new or original, and it has been tried before.

The Raven isn’t launching a school, just trying to clearly define what he can do so that potential clients are aware that there are meaningful alternatives to just learning English.

It would be good to also point out that in the majority of cases the routine stuff doesn’t work.

Brendon, that might work.

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I’ve often wondered about drinking classes, i.e. conversation classes whilst knocking back the grog. It could be attractive to businessmen looking for a way to practice in a stressfree environment. If you need a teacher to handle such a class, call me.

As for promoting yourself, there are many ways:

If you can show a newspaper clipping or TV news clip about yourself or your classes then you can use it in your advertising materials.

Turn your car/scooter into a moving advertisement.

Have drinking classes… oh, I mentioned that… where did i put my bottle?

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A hefty chunk of the market don’t drink. Hotpot classes might be closer to the mark…

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That should be the tagline!

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The Raven’s marketing friend likes “know the answer” a lot, especially if there’s a link on the website marked “the answer” - which takes you to a page explaining why you have to pay money first.

A very interesting discussion at Carnegies yesterday brought up the following points:

In a culture where learning is mostly passive, the teacher (who knows the answer, after all) is the product. The course content is less important than the person delivering the course, at least from the perspective of marketing oneself. Therefore, the teacher needs to be packaged and presented in a way that will make potential customers not only take him seriously, but also take notice of him more than his competitors.

The Raven needs an image, not just a message, philosophy and the all-important system. Her advice was to get a Sun Yat Sen-style jacket, embroidered with URL and logo. Comments?

Another comment, which doesn’t have The Raven 100% convinced, was that the island mentality created by the separatist emphasis of the government encourages people to always think in local terms instead of thinking globally. Students want to succeed in Taiwan, not internationally.

And related to this is the logical outcome of the (parochial) strawberry generation phenomenon: decreased international competitiveness for Taiwanese companies. Employers have a choice of cookie-cutter candidates, all of whom can just about produce English at a level that allows them to scrape through their educational courses and obtain a certificate, but few of whom have any practical skills or unique experiences which set them apart.

None of the applicants has any real competitive advantage over anyone else, so the employer picks as many as he needs and slots them into a company made up mostly of similar people. The result is a company whose human resources are no better than its competitors’ in Taiwan. No company has a real competitive advantage where it really matters, and while that is fine at a local level it doesn’t equip them to compete on the world stage.

Taiwan’s only natural resource is a crop of strawberries. (Plus the small percentage of high-calibre people who usually don’t show up in English classes at age 23.) Terrible!

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I think a Lego Academy is where it’s at.