HUH? 
[/quote] It’s a quote from the Adam Sandler movie, Anger Management. It was taught as the word to say in the anger groups sessions. I read your original post and thought the answer lies in a good night’s sleep.[/quote]
Nope. It goes much deeper than that.
Stupidity cannot be cured in others by me getting a good nights sleep.
Is there a cure for stupidity yet?
How about a clear explanation. That woman doesn’t likely spend her days researching educational theory and looking for ways to evercome her ethnocentrism, and neither, quite likely, do the people around her. You might as well let gravity or a change of seasons ruin your day. Chances are that if you had explained to her that there is a broad consesus amoung ESL professionals the world over that children learn faster if allowed to develop listening and speaking abilities first and since you are dedicated to bringing her child the best in early childhood education you plan to use a professional approach, she would have gone away in a huff, asked around a bit, heck maybe even done a bit of reading, and then come back in a few weeks thinking all of these wonderful plans you have for her daughter were all her idea.
Easy advice to give from a distance I realize but you know I’m right…
[quote=“Bassman”]This parent was saying how their kid couldn’t write and translate complete sentences from a grammar book and how kids should learn to write before they can speak.
After the parent left everyone commented on the stupidity of the statement.
[/quote]
I’d give them the name card of their nearest cram school, and direct them out of the door. You’re clearly wasting their time, because they have quite different expectations. Wish them well. SEnd them on their way.
Our school has done it. We will continue to do this. It’s unfortunate for the kids involved but if parents are too stubborn to listen, then that’s just sad.
Let them make their choice. Clearly, when they joined your school, they did not UNDERSTAND what you were trying to achieve with your teaching. It’s not that unusual, sinc most parents’ learning experience clearly shapes their own attitudes to their students. “It worked for me, so it must be good enough for my child” thinking. I think the difference is merely the degree of misunderstanding.
Like I said, why give yourself a headache. Give out your nearest cramschool phonenumber. Even offer to personally enrol that child.
If things work out, the parent might remember you suggested it. If things don’t, (as we both suspect), he’ll be too embarrassed to come back and bother you. IF he does come back, you need to explain to him that this is the way YOU teach.
Kenneth
The headache is inside the school. The headache is a teacher. So, she should be up with the game as far as teaching English goes. But isn’t.
The biggest problem is, although I have a share in the school and manage the place, this “lady” has been given a similar position by the majority owner of the school. In this case, I can’t get rid of her. More is the pity.
Actually, she didn’t agree with the parent at all. What gets the foreign staff collective goat is that she isn’t interested in our opinions, but later discovers that we are right and gets to claim the glory for herself. I don’t care about that, in my position, I don’t need the glory. The other foreign teachers who built our school with me before she came along are really (insert swear word here) angry when they see good work go bad.
What gets my goat is thinking that culture justifies stupidity and that English is somehow part of their culture. That accounts for the state of English in this country.
In the end, however, I will get my way. Local staff come and go just like foreign staff. One, “if this happens I walk”, statement would be enough. Although, my show will hit the road anyway.
Parents are not a problem. Parents, in general, are not stupid. With a little understanding and careful parent education, they get it.
The dangerous ones are teachers that can’t see the wood for the trees.
Sorry bassman I should have read more carefully before responding.
HUH? [/quote] It’s a quote from the Adam Sandler movie, Anger Management. It was taught as the word to say in the anger groups sessions. I read your original post and thought the answer lies in a good night’s sleep.[/quote]
Nope. It goes much deeper than that.
Stupidity cannot be cured in others by me getting a good nights sleep.
Is there a cure for stupidity yet?[/quote]No, but unrealistic unexpectations on the part of parents seem to part and parcel of the “education business” system here. It must be a headache to explain to parents that their goals are unrealistic. That’s hardly your fault.
Ah, she’s probably just hot for me and miffed because I’m married. 
[quote=“Bassman”]Sorry, but I don’t have time for stupidity.
To believe that a child should be able to translate Chinese into English with correct gramatical structure before they start speaking is at best stupidity.
Writing huge amounts of text that one does not understand by memory is not proof positive of a childs English level.
Stupidity is stupidity.
[/quote]
Do you mind explaining why this is so stupid?
Are you referring to speaking with or without correct grammatical structure?
Do you deny that Taiwan culture affects teaching? If not, why isn’t the specific case of teaching English affected?
[quote=“ploor”][quote=“Bassman”]Sorry, but I don’t have time for stupidity.
To believe that a child should be able to translate Chinese into English with correct gramatical structure before they start speaking is at best stupidity.
Writing huge amounts of text that one does not understand by memory is not proof positive of a childs English level.
Stupidity is stupidity.
[/quote]
Do you mind explaining why this is so stupid?
Are you referring to speaking with or without correct grammatical structure?
Do you deny that Taiwan culture affects teaching? If not, why isn’t the specific case of teaching English affected?[/quote]
Culture affects teaching, but culture is not an excuse for poor teaching practices. It may even be that some cultural issues are a problem that must be overcome to maximize teaching. Just because something is culture doesn’t make it right. But teaching English is not Taiwanese culture, it’s a trend.
Why is thinking kids should master translation and grammar on paper before learning to speak stupid? Because it is contrary to every single shred of research done on language learning since the grammar translation method. It’s uninformed and contradicts most common sense thinking about this. Granted, you could think you need to learn the structure of a language before before speaking it (cognitive approach), but that doesn’t validate that you should learn to write before you speak.
A parent coming up to a teacher and saying they want their kid taught such and such a way is like someone going up to a doctor and saying how they want to be treated.
[quote=“ploor”][quote=“Bassman”]Sorry, but I don’t have time for stupidity.
To believe that a child should be able to translate Chinese into English with correct gramatical structure before they start speaking is at best stupidity.
Writing huge amounts of text that one does not understand by memory is not proof positive of a childs English level.
Stupidity is stupidity.
[/quote]
Do you mind explaining why this is so stupid?
Are you referring to speaking with or without correct grammatical structure?
Do you deny that Taiwan culture affects teaching? If not, why isn’t the specific case of teaching English affected?[/quote]
Read the above post.
If you have to ask the question, dude, I hope you are not an English teacher.
[quote=“Bassman”]
Read the above post.
If you have to ask the question, dude, I hope you are not an English teacher.[/quote]
I’m not yet. Please refer to post 6 in this thread.
My reading on language teaching and learning is very limited, but, depending how precisely you intend your statement to be interpreted, I do know that the research disagrees with you. For each teaching method of historical importance, some students thrive while some students fail. Often this thrive to fail ratio is lop-sided. The reasons for this can be some combination of the effectiveness of the teaching technique and the learners’ preferences.
For example, if a high-level proficiency in the shortest amount of time possible is the goal, a grammar/translation type method is often considered best. However, this requires the learner to spend many hours studying every day, so it is most efficient in terms of calendar time, but not active study time. It also depends highly on the commitment and motivation of the student.
(On a side-note, as someone who has studied dead languages, this is the only method I have experience with as a learner of such languages. We have more options with modern English.)
If fluency is the goal and having a high amount of learning per time spent studying is preferred, then often a communicative approach is considered best.
What I am curious to find out is if certain approaches to English teaching are better in Taiwan than in other places. From my experience with people from many different cultures, I suspect there is, but I am lacking hard evidence either in favor of or to the contrary of this suspicion.
[quote=“puiwaihin”]
A parent coming up to a teacher and saying they want their kid taught such and such a way is like someone going up to a doctor and saying how they want to be treated.[/quote]
Well, in the United States, this is a significant reason for current trends in over-medication.
One thing that is sometimes worth considering in situations like this is that the parent probably has more experience as someone from Taiwan learning English than a foreign English teacher has in learning English. However, in this particular situation, it’s probably more the case that this person learned via the grammar/translation method and thinks, therefore, that their child should learn the same way.
Point to one source that says that learning writing before speaking is effective. I’ve never heard that.
Often considered best by whom? Again, cite one source or reference that actually promotes grammar-translation. Teaching grammar before speaking is not the same as grammar-translation. I personally lean towards the cognitive-code method.
Please say who considers it best.
If you want a high level of proficiency in a short amount of time grammar-translation is the worst. If you want a high degree of accuracy in grammar, particularly for a test, grammar-translation may work. But to say it is best? Where are you getting this?
So, basically, this is less effective in terms of hours spent. The same time spent learning another way will get the same results, faster.
And this shows how grammar translation is effective how? It just means if nobody speaks it you have no recourse.
I don’t know if that could be any more vague or pointless. Come here, do some teaching, use grammar-translation and compare with other methods, then make a comment other than “I suspect something”.
Well, in the United States, this is a significant reason for current trends in over-medication.[/quote]
You mean it is because doctor’s are prescribing medicine people don’t need, or parents are asking for medicine and doctors just give it to them?
If it’s the latter, you just made my point. If it’s the former it has nothing to do with the argument since the problem is with the system and is not concerned with patients thinking they know better than the docotor.
Your sentence needs a lot more precision to be valid. You need to say “personal experience learning English as a second language” since the native will have been learning English from birth. But the learning process for native language acquistion and 2nd language acquisition are different in some ways, so you do have something of a point.
But then, you’re assuming a teacher who comes to Taiwan without having learned another language as a second language or having studied language acquistion. You’re also assuming the inexperienced teacher won’t be following a curriculum designed with modern pedagogical principles in mind.
Your point might hold if a parent is hiring a foreigner off the street, but not walking into a school with a set curriculum and experienced teachers. You also have to assume the parent learned English from a good teacher, not in spite of one.
Most likely if the teachers have been teaching longer than six months and has studied a foreign language they’ll have a much more informed opinion than the parent.
Back to the doctor analogy: My doctor treated my heartburn with a Dr. Pepper and an aspirin, so my son should get the same thing when he has heartburn. Since you so nicely pointed out that individuals learn in different ways it makes it less informed to insist to an educator that your kid learn the same way you did.
Many teachers learned from grammar-translation and so that’s all they know how to teach. That doesn’t make that a good way to teach.
Some confusion may be arising with the points and questions I’m posing due to us thinking about teaching in slightly different ways. There is a difference between determining what is best for a group of say 20 average students and what is best for particular individuals. Within a group of 20 students, there may be 2 or 3 students that learn best with a particular method that happens to be detrimental to the progress of the rest of the class.
The key is in balancing the overall success of the class and helping each individual succeed.
I want to know what type of teaching is best for achieving both goals.
Point to one source that says that learning writing before speaking is effective. I’ve never heard that.
[/quote]
I’ve never run into a source that says students should be mute until they learn how to write. This sounds crazy to me.
The point I was making was that there are always exceptions to generalizations like the one you made. The fact that individuals can vary widely is sometimes put in print, but frequently goes without saying because it is common sense.
Often considered best by whom? Again, cite one source or reference that actually promotes grammar-translation. Teaching grammar before speaking is not the same as grammar-translation. I personally lean towards the cognitive-code method.
Please say who considers it best.
If you want a high level of proficiency in a short amount of time grammar-translation is the worst. If you want a high degree of accuracy in grammar, particularly for a test, grammar-translation may work. But to say it is best? Where are you getting this?
[/quote]
Google grammar/translation (it’s debatable whether or not these are good sources). The first few links will give you a little bit of information in support of this. Once again, this all depends on the individual.
Also, when I say grammar/translation type methods, I have more in mind agressively focusing on reading, writing, and translation before speaking. Particular teaching/learning methods are fairly new to my vocabulary, so maybe calling this grammar/translation type is inappropriate.
The fact is, some people love grammar and translation. Granted these may be wierd people, but they’re out there.
I’ve read one case studying on rapid acquisation of Chinese by native English speakers (I’m looking for it). I work with several people who have learned English rapidly in this way.
One thing I worry about in my observations of foreigners learning English is that I may be basing it on a particularly skewed sample of people. For instance, every Chinese speaker I know either has a Ph.D. or is working towards one.
Agreed.
If one has infinite resources, including access to a teacher for 12/hours/day, then grammar/translation is probably terrible for even more people. However, grammar/translation can be done with less human interaction than other methods. This is what makes it a good method for those that study like maniacs.
It doesn’t, nor did I intend it to.
Although, some people can learn to work with a method well, so if they have positive past experiences with it, it may be beneficial in learning other languages.
I don’t intend to use grammar/translation (unless someone wants me to).
I just want to learn how to best teach English in Taiwan. Before I get there, I’d like to learn a little.
I have experience with Chinese and Taiwanese as colleagues in academia. They seem to have a different approach to learning. I’m curious as to what extent this is so and how it should affect teaching.
Well, in the United States, this is a significant reason for current trends in over-medication.[/quote]
You mean it is because doctor’s are prescribing medicine people don’t need, or parents are asking for medicine and doctors just give it to them?
[/quote]
I guess I should utilize Emoticons more 
My point was that I wouldn’t dismiss the parents opinions so flippantly without reasons, which haven’t been discussed. However, I agree that she’s likely wrong.
Maybe this child has a genetic predisposition to learning best through translating text 
I’ve recently run into an interesting book called Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems edited by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith. It says the following about Chinese culture.
[quote]
Traditional Chinese culture places a very high value on learning. An English language teacher can expect to find his or her pupils admirably industrious and often in need of dissuasion from working too hard.
A related view in many Chinese students’ minds is that learning needs serious and painstaking effort. Activities which are ‘pleasurable’ and ‘fun’ are rather suspect as not being conducive to proper learning. Teachers who have adopted an approach involving ‘learning while having fun’ should be prepared to show its validity.
Teachers are highly respected in Chinese culture, and are typically regarded as being knowledgeable and authorative. Out of respect, Chinese students are usually not as ready to argue or to voice opinions in class as European students.
Regarding methods of learning, a salient feature of Chinese education is rote memorisation. One reason for this is that all the basic written units of Chinese, the characters, have to be learned by heart individually. This method plays a significant part in the way English is learned in China, and may predispose some Chinese students to spend considerable time on memorisation at the expense of practice[/quote]
Do people agree with this assessment? Is this true for Taiwan?
How ought this effect teaching?
The people I teach all want to have a fun, easy, interesting time and see great improvement in their communicative ability in a very short time. Tall order. Especially when most of the people you teach are false beginners in their thirties.
I have to say though a few of things ploor said rang true for me. When you read about different teaching theories it doesn’t often seem to be acknowleged that different methodologies might be needed with people from different language and culture backgrounds. Would you really want to teach ESL to Spanish and Chinese students the same way? That is an honest question by the way. I have never taught Spanish students. But even if the answer is yes does that necessarily mean that someone else would want to do it the way you do. There is an incredible amount of variability here and if someone has been teaching for awhile in one situation he may well come up with systems that would not be well regarded generally but that are in fact effective.
All of this brings me to what I am doing these days with low level adults. I really want to run this past you guys. Hope you don’t mind…
OK first of all everybody buys Azar’s “Basic English Grammar,” Chinese version. I have the English version. In class we read, and tape record the grammar explanations in English and Chinese. When we come across grammatical concepts that they really don’t get we work to clarify them. I find some of Azar’s explanations a bit scattered so I wrote my own material to back hers up. This material is pasted into the text. After we have read the grammar notes we start on the excercises. They take turns reading them aloud and it is a contest to see who can find the answer. If they answer correctly they get points and the one who gets the most points wins a prize, usually a VCD. And for each excercise it is someones responsibility to demonstrate that the undertsand the sentence using either body language, translation or some combination of the two. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If the blank was filled in correctly, pronunciation mistakes corrected and a rough translation was completed that’s good enough. People get bored here and it is better to keep things going. Of course all sorts of silly conversation comes up during all of this and as far as I am concerned that is great. People need spontaneous chit chat as well. Any good vocab, expressions, points of grammar/phonics that come up are recorded in the margins of the Azar text. That’s it. They can go home and look at the text as they listen to the tape. If they come up with questions those can be written in the book as well and brought to the next class.
OK there it is. Your comments will be appreciated but be gentle. Thanks. 
And now, back on topic.
How has the teaching of English got anything to do with Taiwanese culture?
I think that Chinese culture does affect their approach to learning, and in turn their approach to learning English.
I would agree in part to the memorisation approach of Chinese students. I would not necessarily “blame” it on remembering characters, although that might well be in the equation.
I remember a class I took over, where one student consistantly got 100% in his spelling test. however, I noticed one day that when we commenced the test he proceeded to write ALL the words before I said them. yes, shock, horror, he had simply learned them all by wrote.
So I jumbled them around a bit (something apparently unheard of, how unfair) but he continued to write them all in the order he had learned them, and as it turns out he couldn’t recognise the sound of these words, just how to spell them.
So rest assured BM that Teaching English isn’t Taiwanese culture, but (and a big butt) their is certainly an influence by their culture as to how they go about learning English. 100% on a test outways actual knowledge or ability. 
Great post GCZ, I agree.
A lot of Taiwanese have studied, are studying and will continue to study English. These people are Taiwanese. Some of them hope to be Taiwanese teachers of English, or more specificaly, Taiwanese English teachers, or, perhaps even more specifically, Taiwanese teachers of Taiwanese English. What all of this amounts to is a resounding YES! teaching English, learning English, mangling English and on the rare ocassion even using English with grace, wit and style are all, without a doubt, part of Taiwanese culture and are likely to remain that way for some time.