Taipei wants one laowai teacher per school

I can only speak for myself, but I’m a certified teacher, and I’m pretty happy about this announcement. I was talking to someone else in another post about the employment situation for licensed teachers in Taiwan, and they told me that most public school jobs are in the countryside. This person told me that finding a public school job in Taipei is very difficult. Hopefully, this new plan will change that.

In terms of money, people choose a destination to live and work for different reasons. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live in places like Hong Kong or Dubai. They might offer higher salaries, but I don’t think I’d enjoy living there. Taipei has a pretty laidback lifestyle. It’s a nice place to live, in my opinion. I’m sure there are lots of teachers out there who would be willing to earn less money in order to live somewhere that better fits their interests/lifestyle, etc… In Asia, I think Taipei would be an appealing destination for a lot of people. Or not. Who knows? I guess time will tell.

Just to recap the article in brief:

focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201402140015.aspx

And by way of comparison, a few words about the Japanese government’s recruitment of native speakers to teach English:

[quote]The original Japanese Government English Teaching Recruitment Programme was implemented in 1978. . . .[/quote] edinburgh.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/ejet.htm

“Villages?”

They’ll just drop the certified part of it most-likely. That can help them keep the wage lower and if they require TEFL at least they can get people with a little training.

Of course. It takes an English village to raise an English-speaking child.
3.bp.blogspot.com/-yRuqLJYPRpc/U … illage.jpg

Twenty-six Anglophones in eight buildings scattered across Sinophoneville does not an English village make.

It will, if the twenty-six are dedicated, courageous, and true.

Exactly!

[quote]Taipei has said it wants one “white” face per elementary school[/quote].
Did they really say this or did you? Just curious because a black teacher I work with saw this along with myself and said, “F— them” .
Direct quote. Anyway the longer I work in Taiwan the more I feel that I am an extra in a zombie film. I am trying hard to motivate people, but
I see the are mostly motivated by their smartphones. Oh, English in Japan is SMASHING, yes?

[quote=“Halo”][quote]Taipei has said it wants one “white” face per elementary school[/quote].
Did they really say this or did you? Just curious because a black teacher I work with saw this along with myself and said, “F— them” .
Direct quote. Anyway the longer I work in Taiwan the more I feel that I am an extra in a zombie film. I am trying hard to motivate people, but
I see the are mostly motivated by their smartphones. Oh, English in Japan is SMASHING, yes?[/quote]

I’ve heard an indirect quote from an MOE official that black teachers are okay because they “look foreign.” What they really want to avoid are Asian-looking teachers because they “don’t look foreign.”

They need “qualified” teachers, not “certified” ones, but getting enough “qualified” teachers (by which I mean people who can get results in that environment with that number of students with such different levels in each class) will be difficult, even if someone decides what the results should actually be.

Kiddy School? I am already counted out but I would have pissed off the interview anyway.
How can you folks teach kids?

[quote=“gavmasterflash”]

What they really want to avoid are Asian-looking teachers because they “don’t look foreign.”[/quote]

unless they kick off at a bus driver. then they instantly become a lao wai

I think taxpayers money is better spent by making the government as an orgnaization entirely bilingual. I mean all publications and documents(both online and prints). The next step is mandatory English labelling, captions on certain tv programs, synchronized translation, etc. Design for Bilingualism would be booming. Blanket the whole island with English. Hanzi side-by-side with English.

The idea is to create an environment that motivates individual to learn English, using his/her own effort and resources.

“A white face for every school” is spinning the wheel in the grand scheme of things.

Or good quality teacher training in modern languages. Get overseas teacher trainers in to influence more teachers on the island and have a wider reach. Ethnicity of teachers irrelevant.

Wouldn’t it be better that your expertise in English is fully utilized by filling the positions of bureaucrats and contractors? Now this is a career worth pursuing. This is infrastructure-building.

You’ve got to create a lobby group just like any other industry in any country. You lobby for bilingualism and demonstrate that it is feasible and scalable.

Yup, that is what I wrote. Taiwan couldn’t possibly, though. They simply would never pay enough to hire people that are capable of doing it and politics wouldn’t allow for ‘foreign experts’ to change the infrastructure.

What they don’t realise is that by hiring licensed elementary-school / high-school teachers to teach EFL in government schools in Taiwan, they are hiring people to do something they mostly haven’t really been trained to do: teach EFL. Why would that be effective? They should hire EFL teachers with higher qualifications (not just CELTA-monkeys), not ‘licensed’ teachers who may or may not have ever set foot in a language classroom or an EFL environment before. They aren’t going to pay highly enough though. There are reasons for that, but the results are the same.

I agree, but some degree of quality control is needed. Several government websites (I’m looking at you, Ministry of National Defense) have astonishingly bad English. It’s clear that they put up the “international” version just to 差不多 their way through a government requirement and not actually to offer any useful information.

When I said bilingual, I mean all the way.

I mean laws and regulations written in both Mandarin and English. Same layout, 1:1 correspondence, side-by-side if possible. It is on this basis the government and agencies will provide services in both languages. Never mind the percentage of people who needs service in English at this moment (2014). Just get started now and the ROI will be huge in 1 generation. Think of the opportunities that can be provided and the new ideas and expertise that will be injected into public services. Taiwan has already sent so many students overseas, so many foreign-born Taiwanese now in their prime, so many professionals already proficient in English. Just make it official already.

This is doable. This is feasible. This makes sense and should be done. Come on now, we have Tsai English and Ma-ying dog and snobs already showing off their English in public. Such hypocrites both of them!!!

The basic idea already exists. Literally every government agency has an English website, and a very large number of the laws posted up at law.moj.gov.tw/ have full English translations. What we need at this stage is to control quality, not quantity.