Oh, I wasn’t talking about tests that actually test real English…TOEFL wasn’t back in the day, and the Everyman’s English Exam in Taiwan or whatever they call it is locally-produced, too. Seems like only the Taiwanese teachers can tell the students what the answers are with a straight face… 
I just read a couple of interesting articles under the title of ‘backwash’: that is when testing begins to heavily influence the way you teach to the point where you are designing your school (and teaching staff) to the test…anyway, still looking for evidence cuz WE WON THE DEBATE and now we are going to the All-Kyushu Debate Finals (all South Japan) and will hopefully go to the All- Japans. Looking for some evidence that somehow native speakers are better teachers…anyone?
Again: anecdotal evidence.
Take a tape recorder and sit in on a few classes taught by local Japanese. Record and make transcriptions of places where they are teaching kids poor English. If the teacher is making kids repeat him/her and is misprouncing words themselves you can have a field day with this in the debate.
There are some things that you can find evidence to show:
[ul]Student-centered learning is being touted by most education theorists
More exposure to the target language is better than less
Using the language in context is more effective than hearing about the language out of a natural context[/ul]
For all these three you can make the case that foreign teachers generally do this more.
Guess what? WE WON THE ALL-KYUSHUS!!! There is no such thing as the All Japans, so we are the number one English Debate Team in Japan. Tee hee. We were never able to get evidence on the question, but we were able to find an academic study from Texas Tech Univ. that says that Japanese English teachers have a low opinion of communicative language study and are resistant to change.
Congrats!
:yay:
I have worked at a private junior high and high school for the past 2.5 years and have noticed this…
New junior high school students can almost be divided into two categories… a. students that attended English buxibans b. those students that haven’t… The students that have generally are in the “advanced classes” than those who have not.
Many students that have attended English buxibans can speak better English than their Taiwanese teachers. However, this doesn
Recent evidence in linguisitcs tells us that standardized, end-of-term written examinations tell us close to nothing of a students’ ability in any given language. It’s very old school, very ineffective.
What a terrible waste of money (incl. taxpayers’ money) when a student has taken a language for 8-10 years but cannot have even the simplest, most basic conversation in that language.
Then one notices that that student’s teachers also cannot speak the language, but have good marks on the ‘test’ that everyone is supposed to be able to pass.
This tells us more about the test than anything else. It is misleading in the results that it produces…the most mislead people of all are the Taiwanese taxpayers who have paid for the test to be developed, implemented, etc.
No. This would be a rather radical change of view on how language acquisition is perceived in modern linguistics!
Skills, experience and knowledge are more important than a passport… No need to prove that scientifically!
Most people in this thread claim that a native speaker is a better teacher but base this claim on teachers in Taiwan and Japan. How about the rest of the world? There is no such thing as education in Taiwan and Japan, especially for foreign languages. Elementary school teachers are not trained to teach, they are trained to show students how to pass a test. Bushiban teachers (both local and foreign) have no formation/degree at all for the most part. A good teacher in Taiwan is someone that shows up on time and knows how to keep kids busy playing games, right? How hilarious! A good teacher in Europe would be someone who has studied modern linguistics and literature, someone who has a degree in teaching a foreign language. Someone who is comfortable with different methods/books to prepare his class.
I do believe that many English teachers here have no training as prof. teachers and therefore suck (sorry guys, no offense but get real!). Good news though, education here is a business in the first place and native speakers are a product that’s obviuosly good enough to be part of it.
No. This would be a rather radical change of view on how language acquisition is perceived in modern linguistics!
Skills, experience and knowledge are more important than a passport… No need to prove that scientifically![/quote]
Er… actually, that’s right in line with modern linguistics’ understanding of language acquisition. Native input is one of the most important elements in a person acquiring a language.
The reason is that was the issue that was being dealt with. The debate was held in Japan and this is a forum about Taiwan.
You can generalize the point to be relevant to the rest of the world:
A native speaker of a language will generally be a better teacher than so-called bilingual teachers whose ability in the target language still suffers from systematic errors.
That’s a pretty strong statement. Students do get an education here, and they do learn quite a bit. The system here does have some strengths, though we tend to focus on the weaknesses when we’re complaining on the forum.
You mean degree in education? A degree in education is nice, but it doesn’t make you a good teacher.
That only refers to the native speaking teachers. Local teachers have more expected of them.
Most of the problem lies with the system and the lack of on the job training and teacher development. A good system with decent teacher training can take a fresh off the boat rookie teacher and give them the skills to do a good job. Sadly, the schools don’t really care that much about quality. If someone isn’t good enough they’ll probably quit and they’ll bring in someone new.
So are the local teachers who make constant mistakes and speak 10% English in the classroom. The point of this thread is to compare which is better. Assuming equal training, I’ll give the nod to the native speaking teacher.
The ideal would be a bilingual teacher whose native language is the target language.
no. and native input as you call it is very relative… how fluent is a non native professional teacher? how “native” does he sound? how about you? why is it so frequent to see people posting questions about the use of xxx or the rule about xxx? arent they native speaker? arent they teachers? or are they just native speakers with a cheap 2 months training trying to figure out things they were never actually taught?
i frequently meet non native teachers or translators whose fluency in my mother tongue is probably as good or sometimes better than mine. i’m a native speaker, they arent so i must be a better teacher and translator, right?! dont constantly refer to Taiwan, please!
[quote]The reason is that was the issue that was being dealt with. The debate was held in Japan and this is a forum about Taiwan.
You can generalize the point to be relevant to the rest of the world:
A native speaker of a language will generally be a better teacher than so-called bilingual teachers whose ability in the target language still suffers from systematic errors.[/quote]
original poster did not specify Taiwan/Asia in his question? did he? Limiting one’s evidence to Taiwan is like shooting an easy target, looking for an easy answer and comfort. yes, language teachers in Taiwan are crap but so is the rest of the education.
As far as i know, teachers in Europe and elsewhere don’t suffer from systematic errors. it would have been nice to have input from others who actually have experience in teaching in other countries than TW/JP. i have worked in two other countries, i guess i have a different approach on the issue.
imho a system that gives students no room for thinking, debating and creating is not a good educational system. period.
most native speakers in taiwan find comfort in that fact alone. funny :s
i would agree with that point but it’s not neccesarly the only ideal solution. again, it depends how fluent/bilingual one is. it also depends on how you define fluent/bilingual.
I’m guessing my English sounds pretty darn native and my Chinese pretty much understandable most of the time.
Yes many are native speakers. They ask questions because languages are complicated, difficult things.
They could be jusy about anything. People trying to save up enough for college, or people with degrees in linguistics, or people who have been avid language buffs all their lives.
We are in Taiwan. This forum is called forumosa. Perhaps you know what two words went together to make that word. In Taiwan it would be extremely unusual to meet anyone with better fluency in English than us.
Your opinions are crap. On that I agree. I hope you don’t teach in Taiwan or anywhere else. You don’t seem to know much about second language acquisition.
If you had asked for it without sounding like such an asshole you might have got it.
How do you know so much about the education system in Taiwan? Anyway that system sure doesn’t describe my classes.
[/quote] I would agree with that point but it’s not neccesarly the only ideal solution. again, it depends how fluent/bilingual one is. it also depends on how you define fluent/bilingual. [/quote]
No, it’s pretty much “the” ideal solution and I imagine puiwaihin is defining fluency much the way it normally is, as the ability to speak easily and correctly, although he would probably add “much of the time” to that definition. Even the best of native speakers sometimes stutter, get lost for words, mumble, repeat themselves, contradict themselves, use substandard grammar, slur their words together etc. It would be asking a little much of someone working in their second language not to do the same thing on occassion.
You came here with the intention of slagging us apparently. Go ahead. If you are a sucker for punishment you should have a great time.
An usual defense for people who know pretty less is to insult others… too bad there is no chance for more debate.
Find comfort in your pseudo theories and myths, it seems that you need that. Flame me, insult me, it’s so easy to do that behind your keyboard, right? 
It is kind of a hassle actually. I have a sore back and other things to do.
By the way what is a pseudo-theory? And where did I make reference to a myth? Those are just words you picked up a the pub while listening to English teachers criticize each other aren’t they? Actually you have no idea what you are talking about do you?
Ah well, at least you are winking and smiling now.
What did you expect? Not only did you insult us, you did it with weak logic and lousy writing.
Lets start again…
Why don’t you tell us what your first language is, what language(s) you teach and what language(s) you translate from.
Perhaps then you can go on to tell us in more detail what countries you worked in and how things were done differently there.
Am I allowed to do my ‘language police’ thing here? You know the one, the bit where I jump up and down and say that if you’re going to tell everyone how good you are at English you have to be sure you don’t make any errors. Everyone makes the odd typo, but the above sentence is just crap. Fluent? Accurate? Proof that you can’t generalize because every group contains more than a sprinkling of idiots?
Loretta! :bouncy:
no. and native input as you call it is very relative… how fluent is a non native professional teacher? how “native” does he sound? how about you?[/quote]
What are you saying “no” to? Are you saying that correct input is not one of the most important elements in learning a language?
How fluent is a “non-native professional teacher”? Well, are we talking about the whole world? Or, as we are discussing here, Taiwan and Japan specifically? There’s a huge difference between L2 fluency rates in closely related languages and those in what are termed “truly foreign languages” which have extremely different linguistic characteristics. Japanese and Chinese are both considered “truly foreigh languages” in respect to English.
Trying to compare them with languages like Spanish, French, German, or Italian fails to take language distance into account, among other things.
So, restricting replies to non-natives teaching a truly foreign language, fluency is not very high. A lot of teachers who are hired would have an FSI rating of 3 or 3+. But I’ve seen some that would rate no higher than 2+ in English proficiency.
Now, I have taught with a number of teachers who clearly rank 4, most of whom have lived abroad for some time, but that is not by and large the case.
It’s because they rely on native competency to know whether something is correct or incorrect rather than a generalized rule. Native speakers know what is correct or incorrect, at least within the registers and speech communities they are accustomed to, but find it hard to articulate it since the knowledge is not a product of conscious thought.
People who speak as a second language tend to rely on rules they’ve been taught. They lack the native speaker’s native competency-- although they do develop competency, just never as fully developed. So, they refer to rules. Often this leads them to make errors as the rules have a number of exceptions, are not applicable to all registers, or are not applicable to the structure being discussed because of a subtle semantic difference that native speakers know on a subconscious level.
You must not read very much. I’ve never met a non-native speaker of English whose English is better than mine. It’s unusual for them to even know a word that I don’t know.
Again, this is a forum for discussing Taiwan. The original debate was held in Japan and referred to the situation in Japan. Please limit your discussion to truly foreign languages (Tier 3 according to the FSI language difficulty designations).
The OP mentioned his debate was in Japan and related his questions to Japan. We have to discuss things as they really are.
Where were you that you didn’t see local teachers with this sort of problem? Again, are you talking about a language with much less language distance?
So, the ability to memorize far more than their Western educated counterparts is meaningless? Critical thinking is an important skill. But it isn’t the only skill.
I’m not arguing that Taiwan has a good system, but your statement was going too far.
most native speakers in taiwan find comfort in that fact alone. funny :s [/quote]
???
Are you going to dispute that? Or are you just taking a pot shot at everyone?
I would agree with that point but it’s not neccesarly the only ideal solution. again, it depends how fluent/bilingual one is. it also depends on how you define fluent/bilingual.[/quote]
Sure, if you get a non-native speaker who develops native level fluency, that would be just as good. But do you know just how rare that is?? Especially when discussing truly foriegn languages? Very few people ever reach native competency in a foreign language.
Which is why I think native speakers overall are better teachers. Pit the average local teacher against the average foreign teacher and I think the foreign teacher comes out ahead. Pit the best kind of local teacher (FSI 4 English, education background, experience) against the best kind of foreign teacher (FSI 3 or higher source language, education background, experience) and I think the native competency of the foreigner wins the game.
Sure, if you pick the above mentioned best kind of local teacher against a fresh college grad with no experience and an unrelated degree, the local teacher will be better. But don’t you think you’re stacking the deck just a bit to get the answer you want?