Teaching at Taiwan Universities

Ouch! Truly bad writing, indeed. I hadn’t read it before but just popped over and read the whole thing (shuddering as I did so). Shall we start a guanxi fund to get someone to proof the site for him??

The lack of precision and grammaticality in the writing definitely undermines his points, which are, at any rate, seemingly his own personal opinions, “backed up” by the occasional anecdotal bit of evidence (“as a teacher once said to me,” etc.) The whole thing sounds to me like a hyped-up way of saying “I’m at a university and it really sucks that I can’t get a corporate job which would pay a lot more per hour, because the school won’t let me moonlight for more than four hours a week, so I guess I’ll tell the world that the guys who have corporate teaching jobs suck.” Either that, or he is moonlighting for more than four hours per week, and wants to throw the university off his trail…?? :smiley:

Grammaticality. Wow, I really learn a lot of big words when reading Ironlady’s posts. :slight_smile:

A few proofreading foibles aside . . .

Where do folks get this “moonlighting” stuff from? I did not read Scott’s essay as whining about not being able to teach the hours in corporate classes. The four-hour thing is usually most rigorously enforced with regard to other academic institutions and if his school happens to be more stringent about the rules, there was no indication of that in Scott’s article.

Scott, I would suggest that you present this as an opinion essay and not a paper as “paper” implies more academic rigor (certainly citations and data for assertions).

Do keep in mind that just because one guy from Singapore says Taiwan is a backwater that doesn’t make it so. Asking your students what sort of English they use in the workplace is not the same as a quantifiable survey. Many of your statements in the essay are personal opinion rather than objective observations based upon unbiased data collection and interpretation so you need to label opinion a bit more.

I don’t buy your statement that the higher up folks go in terms of status for English teaching, the lower their skill. Of course, since I teach at the undergraduate and graduate level, I be a bit thin-skinned about such comments . . . :slight_smile: . . . but, I don’t think so. Just because I have a PhD doesn’t mean you should assume I’m incompetent. :slight_smile:

Yes, I have met folks in the upper levels who are less than perfect teachers but overall most have fundamental competence. Yes, I have met illegal unqualified folks teaching teaching on tourist visas who are quite gifted. However, in general, most folks who are unqualified have to get a lot of experience to make up for it.

How do you quantify this assertion? Is it based upon the few folks you know or upon your participation in conferences or the bushiban teachers you know? How do we judge competence here? Be wary of inductive reasoning here . . . just because you know a few incompetent teachers at a private university and a few really good illegal bushiban teachers doesn’t mean these few folks represent the trend . . . they could, but you need more data to back up the claim.

For the most part, the academic, corporate, and bushiban markets are different. Folks who go into academic programs as teachers for the most part are not the same as the ones who go into corporate or bushiban work . . . in my opinion . . . there may be some crossover but for the most part they are different. So, the criteria of qualifications required to get into academics are more rigoursly applied than in the bushibans - particularly in the fly-by-night illegal bushibans where most of the teachers are folks who make Hong Kong visa-runs. We really can’t compare the two.

Legitimate bushibans (with legal status as such) that employ folks with an ARC typically look for qualifications that the fly-by-nights don’t (so, there are schools that will hire anyone with blue eyes and a pulse while others actually look at the degree or experience a person has). The market has been evolving over the past few years so it is difficult to make generalizations.

While I agree with a number of your points, I found many of the statements to be assertions of value or opinion disguised as assertions of fact. You might get some data and see how that affects your conclusions.

These are just a few thoughts . . . rambling really . . . which I may change at any minute.

http://www.eastcathay.com/articles/article01.php

I am curious what scale of measurement Scott qualifies an ‘outstanding classroom teacher’ and what the ’ outstanding results’ he refers to are.

In corporate EFL, these results would be …?
TOEIC, BULATS scores? Ability to communicate more fluently in corporate settings? In buxibans and primary education, GEPT scores, entrance examinations?? In secondary education, being able to pass university English exams?
Are the mentioned results mainly test scores?

I readily admit that my English isn’t the best in the world, especially after being here for 3 years, and I would never feel myself qualified to teach English at the university-level … however, once I’m finished with grad school I’m hoping to get a position teaching Chinese literature at a university here. I have a caucasian foreigner friend with a Ph.D. from Harvard who is teaching Chinese history at a university in Tainan, so I guess it’s possible! :laughing:

To veering this thread even farther from university teaching… I wanted to add my two cents to Summer’s opinion on the state of business English teaching in Taiwan.

I agree that many businesses don’t have clear goals for the language instruction they provide to/require of their employees. Many students I taught rarely used English, and as Sommers stated, much of it was in writing, especially e-mail.

I agree that when businesses don’t have clear goals, they end up evaluating success either by attendance or student satisfaction instead of concrete language goals. However, language acquisition is a tricky thing. It’s not a straight forward transaction… X dollars for Y time and Z outcome.

For many mid-level businesspeople who don’t interact in English regularly, basic writing practice would be very useful. Clearly expressing even simple ideas in writing in another language can be quite a feat. Many Taiwanese have extensive vocabulary comprehension, even reading comprehension, but have trouble putting together clear sentences in English. However, to the students, that feels like a waste of time. They can get the jist of an article in the Wall Street Journal but are practicing writing “I’d like to schedule a conference call sometime next week.”

Many Taiwanese business people are more interested in informal language. It’s more interesting to most to begin with. And since most have had a good deal of English instruction in school, it’s the informal language that really throws them for a loop in communicating. However, I think one of the most useful things a non-native English speaker can do is remind a native speaker to minimize informal language. Focusing on the informal language that an overseas colleague might use is a rather inefficient use of limited time.

I also agree that businesses need to recognize the importance of fluent Chinese speakers teaching and to put less value on “native” speakers and more value on “bilingual.” However, those who TRULY are bilingual (that is really functionally fluent in both languages including important cultural differences) have a valuable skill that makes them even pricier than foreign native speakers. After all, with that skill, why settle for teaching? Especially when, as a teacher, you’re generally just a contract laborer with minimal, if any, benefits.

No easy answers.

“you’re generally just a contract laborer with minimal, if any, benefits.”

And there’s the rub. True so often in Taiwan, and applies not just to FT! I suspect the CT also get this!

Kenneth

CKVW’s comments hit my main points. Most companies spend unbelievable amounts of money on training low-level (mid-level and high-level, too) staff who are then never held accountable for their learning. While most of the companies that I taught had some form of post-training evaluation, it was often an examination that had no demonstrated validity. William’s English Service, for example, uses an in-house test. A complaint often heard from his customers is that everyone’s grade goes up every time they are tested. Subsequently, their evaluation is more strongly correlated with how long they have been in his program than with any other objective criteria of achievement. With respect to the issue of evaluation, it’s not a question of whether a standardized test is used to determine progress, but rather, which test that will be used. This is a scientific question that few HR managers have the ability to answer properly, and as a result, economic factors become the most salient. By the way, I second your comments about local teachers.

I’d like to hear Maoman’s opinion on all this. Maoman–do you think companies that have language training programs generally run well-organized programs? Do HR managers in Taiwan companies have sufficient knowledge to develop and evaluation their language training programs? Are there many corporate teaching companies that use proper measures of language achievement to evaluate student progress?

Brian–I didn

While it may have been his job to proofread content before posting it and it may not be your responsibility because of this, it still reflects on you. If readers notice mistakes then the mistakes reflrect on you, not him. Most readers won’t even know he’s the guy who promised to proofread . . . they will just look at your by-line and assume it’s your fault. Since it is your name, it’s your reputation that gets hammered if there are any mistakes in presentation.

You really might want to contact him and make corrections to the text - rather than ask him to make those changes, I would suggest that you send the entire essay to him again with the whole thing corrected and ask him to plug it into the page in place of the text that is there. That way you know it’s done right.

Ironically, that Website has almost ceased to exist. In fact, I was quite surprised that anyone would be mentioning anymore I’ve posted on it. Evidentally, there are some new posts this December, but sometime in October, the moderator announced that it would be temporarily shut down.

I originally wrote that piece almost 5 years ago. It was posted on Eastcathy sometime in April or May of last year, and there was no concern expressed then. I have no idea how anybody found it, and the truth is that I don’t really care about typos I made a year ago on a Website that functions essentially as a bulletin board for the mailing of the moderator. Would you?

This is the Internet. As you found after giving away the secrets of hypnotism, people go crazy for all kinds of reasons, and some of them have everything to do with what you have said–even if that’s not what they claim the problem is.

I haven’t said anything that anyone else on this forum or on Dave’s ESL Cafe hasn’t said. There is a real problem with corporate teaching in Taiwan. HR managers are not trained well enough to handle this kind of training, and there’s a problem recruiting teachers with enough background and experience to handle the kind of training that a lot of these companies need. While this problem is increasingly being handled in Taiwan, it is nowhere near being handled as well as it is in Japan or Korea.

Does anyone disagree with this? Does it come across like I’m saying anything else?

Before anyone hammers me on this one, there are some typos in my posting that may interfere with comprehension

should read

Ironically, that Website has almost ceased to exist. In fact, I was quite surprised that anyone would be mentioning anything I’ve posted on it.

Another problem could be

It should read

…a Website that functions essentially as a bulletin board for the mailing list of the moderator

Holy shit! Ha, aha, haa!!
Talk about getting ‘thrown under the bus’

Grammaticality. Wow, I really learn a lot of big words when reading Ironlady’s posts. :slight_smile:[/quote]

Well, why utilise the lexical item “grammar” when it is possible to employify a comparatively elongated derivative ? :wink:

I just heavily revised and augmented my university pages.

users2.ev1.net/~turton/college_intro.html

Vorkosigan

Grammaticality. Wow, I really learn a lot of big words when reading Ironlady’s posts. :slight_smile:[/quote]

Well, why utilise the lexical item “grammar” when it is possible to employify a comparatively elongated derivative ? :wink:[/quote]

But it ain’t a lack of grammar…he has plenty of grammar, but it just doesn’t happen to be correct – hence “lack of grammaticality” (grammatical = having correct grammar). It’s like Taiwanese restaurants – there’s plenty of Western food – it just doesn’t happen to taste good. :unamused: :smiley: