Do any foreigners teach chinese?

I know a non-native speaker of Chinese in Kaohsiung who is teaching elementary school students their school subjects using Chinese. He is not only teaching English in an qing ban but also everything else.

I don’t understand why one would travel 13,000 miles to come to Taiwan to learn Chinese from a westerner?[/quote]

Well, if you sat in a class repeating, repeating and reading aloud and listening to explanations for an hour and a half, you might.

Actually, Taiwan is the perfect place to have a non-native-speaker teaching Chinese. You get a competent, trained, Western-psychology oriented teacher with good Chinese teaching your class, which lasts – what? – maximum 2 hours a day? Then, the other 22 hours you are free to enjoy native speakers on the hoof – and you can get a clear explanation of the weird things you encounter the next day in a way you can understand, from your friendly Western teacher.

Only problem is that there is no way to do it legally, as no school will both roster you and schedule classes (read: they do not even offer you as an option to students). I’ve been “rostered” as a teacher but no classes were ever opened. “The students wouldn’t want that” was the explanation – obviously without so much as asking any of them. I’m not saying they would ALL want it, but I am willing to bet there were a sizable group that WOULD have gone for it – or a modified schedule of MWF non-native teacher and T-TH native teacher, or something like that. That is what we had for Russian in college and it seemed to work pretty well.

(but I would say that a teacher wanting to attract students might want to spell-check an ad…) :smiley:[/quote]

And perhaps the problem with the Mandarin teaching is the same as the English teaching…

Regarding the possibility of typos, I have tried to be a god, but I guess I have to settle for being human. It doesn’t matter, however. That is what editarts are for. There are already enough registered for the course. Just the more, the merrier.

I don’t understand why one would travel 13,000 miles to come to Taiwan to learn Chinese from a westerner?[/quote]

I don’t understand why one would travel down 2 flights of stairs to learn Chinese from this plonker?

I don’t understand why one would travel 13,000 miles to come to Taiwan to learn Chinese from a westerner?

I don’t understand why one would travel down 2 flights of stairs to learn Chinese from this plonker?

Gee, all this for a few typos! I hope you don’t plan to have children.

I would feel hurt that you judge me so harshly. However, considering how little you know about me, then all I can’t take it too seriously. All I can say is all this for a few typos? I hope you don’t plan to have a family, and try hard not to enjury your rife.

I don’t understand why one would travel 13,000 miles to come to Taiwan to learn Chinese from a westerner?[/quote]

I don’t understand why one would travel down 2 flights of stairs to learn Chinese from this plonker?[/quote]

After a look at his website, I, for one, would learn from him. That is if my level wasn’t already above that of a beginner.

Sounds like a good guy that knows what he is doing.

I didn’t mean to be hurtful. I didn’t look at the website, and I thought you were probably trolling. Your website is well-written, so why does your ad appear to be written by a semi-literate (it’s not just the typos!)? Also, why do you mention your skin colour? :noway:

I would be happy to study Chinese from a non-native speaker if that speaker could actually help me learn to read the damn thing! I am one of the minority that does want to learn to read Chinese, but it’s just not happening.

Are you reading appropriate materials (not that they are common)? You should have no more than 10% unknowns for reading practice – it shouldn’t be a decoding exercise or a dictionary romp. Are you reading materials that repeat patterns and words that you already know well? That will be your best hope to really learn to read. Unfortunately “reading” in Chinese is usually equated to “recognizing characters with some greater or lesser degree of effort” and sometimes extended to “reading them out loud in class having counted ahead to determine which sentence will be yours based on how many people are in front of you in the row”… :smiley:

Like what? Kid’s books? I found when I studied Western European languages that children’s books actually weren’t the way to go, but since the problem with reading Chinese is the characters, maybe that’s not true here.
Do you have any recommendations for appropriate materials?

No, definitely NOT kids’ books. They are written for little native speakers who need only learn to match the written forms to the words that are already firmly in their heads. If we already had that much language, learning to read would be much easier.

Learners need materials written for learners, at the appropriate level, if they are going to be able to improve their reading in particular and language in general by free reading. Unfortunately I’ve never seen anything like this on the market in Chinese. The closest thing was the little paperback books put out by Yale (I think) with a limited number of characters in them, but you would still need a certain background before being able to read them, and they were not particularly easy.