It basically says that you won’t need a degree to teach English at local elementary schools grade three and up. I take their information to be quite accurate but I have not seen any advertisements for elementary schools that need teachers.
I have a degree but I know some people that do not have degrees but they have TESOL cedrtificates and would love to teach. Has anyone heard any more info about this?
They’re talking about local teachers, this has nothing to do with foreign teachers.
Foreigners only get a mention right at the end.
[quote]Another option is to employ native speakers from English-speaking countries who are interested and experienced in teaching children.
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And how do you suppose they’ll decide who is experienced? A degree, I’ll bet.
But it does say that it is an option to employ foreigners. I’m not saying call all your friends to fly over here but I think there may be some jobs available here for foreigners.
This is an editorial, forming an opinion on the MOE’s difficulty in finding qualified Taiwanese English teachers. I can’t quite see how you could read this and think that they are going to hire foreigners. Maybe the MOE will think about these options, but it’s obviously not the MOE who is saying this, just Editor Joe Schmo at the China Post. I would think reading comprehension and ability to distinguish fact from opinion would be one prerequisite for landing a job teaching English in the public schools.
I also doubt the government would waive their requirements that foreign teachers have a degree if they were to decide to hire foreigners, especially to teach in accredited public schools. If anything, the ministry would have even higher requirements since these positions would be sought after by many foreigners if the jobs were opened up to them. Again, this is not someone who has anything to do with the MOE or their hiring practices so I wouldn’t go calling your friends just yet.
On another note, this shows just how discriminatory the MOE is being as far as hiring English teachers. They are willing to hire locals who have not finished a degree and who have only passed the TOEFL (which as discussed elsewhere is not a true determiner of how well you speak and use English, but rather how well you learn how to take multiple choice tests and memorize rules) and probably have no teaching experience without a thought AFAIK to the number of native English speakers holding degrees and TESOL certification of some kind with prior teaching experience. I totally understand the desire to employ their own people to strengthen their own economy and the fact that foreign teachers would require a higher salary than what a Taiwanese person would accept as being fair, but if they are serious about their children learning English at a proficient level, they should consider being more serious about hiring proficient teachers.
Well I guess that clears things up for me then. I thought there might be some viable places to get a job. Elementary schools seem like a fun place to work so I thought I would get some more opinions.
I: I’m going to respectfully disagree with you. The MOE’s move is practical and fair. Taiwan has a shortage of ‘qualified’ Taiwanese English teachers because Taiwanese with degrees in English or teaching often can’t speak English while Taiwanese who can speak English don’t have the requisite degrees.
This accounts for the many talented, hardworking Taiwanese teachers with near-native fluency who teach for slave wages in the Buxiban industry because they are denied access to public school jobs.
It sounds like the MOE may be finally coming to its senses and deciding that lack of a degree should not get in the way of real ability.
The MOE can and should offer these jobs to Taiwanese nationals first. Of course it should also offer them job training as well.
It would seem a fair trade-off…teachers who are proficient in the language get jobs teaching and having their tuition waived or covered by the MOE so they can get their education degrees or finish their undergraduate degrees. I was under the impression that they lacked teachers all together and were resorting to barrel scraping for personnel. Thanks for the further clarification.
The fact still remains is that they could also be offering these jobs to foreigners. In the end we get the job 100% maybe with the exception of grammar, unless you some kind of grammar God.
[quote=“stare”]The fact still remains is that they could also be offering these jobs to foreigners. In the end we get the job 100% maybe with the exception of grammar, unless you some kind of grammar God.
Stare[/quote]
Why should they offer these jobs to foreigners? Does you country offer teahing jobs to foreigners? not likely
Why would it be discriminatory to offer employment to citizens of a lower caliber of education than highly qualified foreigners? I don’t know any nation that does that. Where did anyone get the idea that this was a possible alternative?
In case you missed it, the MOE has been recruitiing foreign teachers for elementary schools for some time. Some of them are being recruited through the King Car Education Foundation and its affiliation with a missionary training group called ATII. Other foreign teachers have been recruited through the Fullbright Foundation and the Executive Yuan.
The vast majority of local English teachers that are now being trained in the graduate schools established for this purpose have excellent fluency. While there may be a shortage of teachers in July 2004, that is only because the ‘need’ for vast numbers of such teachers in public schools has only now been ‘identified’. If graduate schools keep pumping out the huge numbers that are now being trained year in and year out, the shortage won’t last long. And if the MOE is willing to pay teachers properly if they go to isolated areas, this problem will also end.