Qualified English teachers insufficient

[quote]Qualified English teachers insufficient
2004-07-07 / Central News Agency /
When the program to teach English to third-graders comes into effect next year, 21 cities and counties will be understaffed with Taiwanese English teachers, participants at an education meeting learned yesterday.
[/quote]

etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2004/ … 165642.htm
A friend of mine in Taichung was recently refused his ARC application because he only had a teaching certificate from Canada and a degree in Education. Seems the CLA has decided only TESOL certificates are acceptable credentials for qualified English teachers.

Well, he’s going to teach English, not 3rd grade. I can see how TESOL training would be better for teaching English to children. Having training in education doesn’t teach you how to teach EFL. What’s so hard to see? :idunno:

If you read the whole story, you’d see that this has nothing to do with foreigners. The regulations concern local Taiwan teachers also teaching English.

Usually a shortage of labour pushes prices up or results in imported labour. Wonder what will happen here ?

TESOL certificates have no accreditation standard. Anybody with a printer can have one. Here in Taiwan any Busi ban can issue one to anybody.
I am not sure what the requirements are in Canada but in Maryland all education majors must complete an English second language acquisition course to get a degree in education. Part of the cultural sensitivity program being implemented in nearly every state.
My point is that there are more than enough qualified English teachers in Taiwan. If the MOE wasn’t so busy unilaterally outlawing English in private schools they might actually be able to get the job done. The government needs to take off it’s anti foreigner blinders before the world passes Taiwan by.

This isn’t about foreigners. The new classes next year are to be taught by Taiwanese.

Well, since they lowered the bar to a TOEFL score of 213 for Taiwanese to teach English, they ought to qualify more.

Again I don’t know how it is in other countries but in the US foreign languages were usually taught by foreign teachers. If I remember correctly I understood my French teacher’s English about as well as she understood my French. Public and private schools were the same.
Taiwan has more than enough qualified native English speaking teachers to make Taiwan’s TOEFL scores comparable with say the PRC.
Over regulation coupled with extensive corruption looks to undermine the next generation as well.

[quote=“EOD”]
Taiwan has more than enough qualified native English speaking teachers to make Taiwan’s TOEFL scores comparable with say the PRC.[/quote]
Irrelevant. Who cares what the average TOEFL score is for the PRC? A much smaller percentage of uni-grads take the TOEFL on the mainland than in Taiwan.

Spot on.

[quote=“Jive Turkey”][quote=“EOD”]
Taiwan has more than enough qualified native English speaking teachers to make Taiwan’s TOEFL scores comparable with say the PRC.[/quote]
Irrelevant. Who cares what the average TOEFL score is for the PRC? A much smaller percentage of uni-grads take the TOEFL on the mainland than in Taiwan.[/quote]

Doesn’t matter at all. With very few exceptions the Taiwanese I have worked with all just went off to America and pretended to do a degree, came back with worse English than when they went, worked in a city job for a few years to prove they can actually do it, and then moved into Daddy’s business.

All for bits of paper. The TOEFL bit of paper is required to get on the degree course, the degree bit of paper is required for Face. At no point is there a genuine desire to learn English or whatever the subject of the degree is. So I would look at Taiwanese TOEFL scores with that in mind.

[quote=“EOD”]Again I don’t know how it is in other countries but in the US foreign languages were usually taught by foreign teachers. If I remember correctly I understood my French teacher’s English about as well as she understood my French. Public and private schools were the same.
Taiwan has more than enough qualified native English speaking teachers to make Taiwan’s TOEFL scores comparable with say the PRC.
Over regulation coupled with extensive corruption looks to undermine the next generation as well.[/quote]

None of the foreign language teachers in my junior high and senior high school were native speakers of the language they taught. As a matter of fact, the first time I had a native French speaker was right before I studied abroad my sophomore year of university with the advisor for the program and then with the teachers from various polytechnic schools in Tours. Even after that, I never had a native French speaker for my 400-level courses in French. I don’t suppose the situation here in Taiwan is a whole lot more different for many of the English-learning students on the island as far as public schools (government-run, for non-North Americans) are concerned.

I think the main difference ImaniOU, was that in the U.S., although the teachers were non-native speakers, they could actually speak the language they were attempting to teach. I once met a retired high school english teacher here and it was almost impossible to understand anything he said. My roommate’s sister teaches english at the junior high level and quite frankly she could stand some improvement even after having earned a master’s in the U.S.
If Taiwan is serious about improving the english ability of its residents then there is a lot of work to be done.
How long have foreigners been coming to Taiwan to teach? And what were the results of the most recent tests? Pretty sad. Something obviously isn’t working here.

Not just who teaches English, but what the Taiwanese expect from learning. From my experience of teaching privately, the goals consisted of wanting to pass the TOEFL and wanting to pass the entrance exam of an English program. They want to be able to fill in blanks and jump through hoops, but not really learn the language where many people in the US who bother learning a foreign language do so for more intrinsic and less goal-oriented reasons…or at least that’s my experience. They don’t learn it to pass some standardized test. That’s why I think many of them have a hard time taking the TOEIC and why the number of Taiwanese people who pass the TOEFL is going to go down now that they’re introducing a speaking section. You cannot learn speaking by rote the way you can vocabulary, grammar, and syntax and it’s more spontaneous than reading and writing.

Change attitudes about learning English, and I think everything else will fall into place.

I doubt third grade English teachers would speak very much in class. Even then, the students would be much to busy taking notes to notice what they were saying. Taiwan education is going down the drains…man…I feel sorry for these kids.