To My Dear Teacher

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

I am a Taiwanese student and taking a foreign English teacher’s conversation classes at a cram school. I like the teacher’s ways to process classes but dislike his personality.
He seemed not to accept students’ opposite opinions to his when we talked about specific topics, such as religions and politics. For example, he once was angry at a student when the student showed his support toward Islam. I once was scorned in class because I said I liked Obama. The other example was an aged lady was laughed at for her strange pronunciation by the teacher. The way my teacher to laugh at her was to imitate her pronunciation when these words were mentioned. Terribly, he said he was practicing his sense of humor.

I’m not going to tell my teacher the abovementioned. The reason I post the story here is I hope every teacher is always professional.

2

Well, we aren’t. Our family members die, we get dumped by our partners, we’re homesick, broke, bored, trapped, angry, sick, pre-menstrual, and all the things everyone else is. And there are few things worse than teaching ‘conversation’. That’s life. You get what you pay for, or rather, in education, you get what your teacher’s boss pays for.

I’m guessing the teacher is a fairly cheap, inexperienced one. Never allow a room full of mono-cultural 20 year olds start talking about religion or politics, unless you want to spark a bunch of griping / die of boredom. :laughing:

But seriously. Don’t be so passive aggressive. Are you hoping he reads this, because you are too scared to assert yourself?

3

[quote=“Buttercup”]
I’m guessing the teacher is a fairly cheap, inexperienced one. Never allow a room full of mono-cultural 20 year olds start talking about religion or politics, unless you want to spark a bunch of griping / die of boredom. :laughing: [/quote]
I don’t know my teacher’s exact age. However, he is around 50. Most of time he is fine and has been teaching here for more than 20 years. The Islamic supporter, my classmate, is older than him. I think my teacher acted so terribly only when he had bad mood.

4

[quote=“jangmi”][quote=“Buttercup”]
I’m guessing the teacher is a fairly cheap, inexperienced one. Never allow a room full of mono-cultural 20 year olds start talking about religion or politics, unless you want to spark a bunch of griping / die of boredom. :laughing: [/quote]
I don’t know my teacher’s exact age. However, he is around 50. Most of time he is fine and has been teaching here for more than 20 years. The Islamic supporter, my classmate, is older than him. I think my teacher acted so terribly only when he had bad mood.[/quote]

Exactly. He’s getting older, probably has no training or qualifications, and hates his job. Obviously, I’m generalising here, but if he had any qualifications, he would not be teaching low paid conversation classes in a cram school. If he had any ability, he would not be allowing a group of low-level language students discuss Islam and American politics. If he has been teaching conversation in cram schools in Taiwan for 20 years, then he would have no ongoing training, as there are no internationally accredited training programs in Taiwan.

Imagine being stuck in a kid’s job at 50 years old? I’m suprised he hasn’t shot anyone yet!

It’s also rude of the classmate to crap on about Islam in an English class. It’s fairly impolite in most cultures to overtly discuss religion and politics and to advocate your belief to strangers. (Can you empathise, and imagine why the teacher might have strong views here, or is he just a teacher, not a 3-D person?) Of course the teacher should know that the students can not operate politely in a second (+) language and so guide the topics skillfully. But you don’t have a teacher. You’ve got some guy who got married to a local.

You can’t bitch in public about something you are not prepared to deal with. It’s cowardly and not very nice. Have you considered the fact that if a teacher ‘accepts’ your opinions, then the conversation finishes?

My advice; talk to him. Or go and do a proper English class, not ‘conversation’ - that’s a royal waste of time and money. Or better still, spend your money on books, DVDs, and socialising with English speakers.

5

Well, we aren’t. Our family members die, we get dumped by our partners, we’re homesick, broke, bored, trapped, angry, sick, pre-menstrual, and all the things everyone else is. And there are few things worse than teaching ‘conversation’. That’s life.[/quote]

However, that’s no excuse. Any teacher should always remain professional in the classroom. Jangmi should report this teacher to the director/manager as soon as possible because his behavior is simply unacceptable.

6

Maybe not. It happens, though, especially when teachers have no training or supervision and are paid by the hour.

Act like a consumer and you’ll get treated like a customer, is all I’m saying. Recognise the humanity in a group dynamic, and be a contributer, and you will reap what you sow. Act like a pissy whinger when someone doesn’t ‘accept’ (I know that’s a translation error, but there’s no reason why anyone should ‘accept’ someone’s contentious and inappropriately expressed views) your opinions, and all you get is more disharmony.

As someone who has taught and managed / taken complaints about teachers, it’s never black and white, and it’s generally down to a failure of the class dynamic, for several reasons. it’s never about ‘the issue’ complained about. This student senses that the teacher does not respect the students. Chances are, he doesn’t. It’s a job - the students are customers, not friends or people he wants to have conversations with, so the construct behind the situation is flawed. It’s down to the teacher to manipulate the room into ‘behaving’. This is draining, though, and not everyone is up to it every day of their life.

I’d also guess there’s an odd mix of students in this class who don’t quite gel. It’s hard to say what’s gone wrong without observing the dynamic.

7

That’s true, but her teacher has been teaching for 20 years and should know better.

8

I don’t think the teacher should be the one talking in the conversation class. They should listen, and move things on if they get bogged down. At the end they should put up some commonly heard errors from the convo and let the students discuss what is wrong. It is not a place for the teacher to impart their opinions. If the room is silent, that is the fault of the student who goes to a conversation class to listen. In general religion and politics are not good subjects for a convo class. Sleeping patterns is usually a crackerjack subject, despite its outwardly dull appearance.

9

[quote=“Buttercup”]
Exactly. He’s getting older, probably has no training or qualifications, and hates his job. Obviously, I’m generalising here, but if he had any qualifications, he would not be teaching low paid conversation classes in a cram school. If he had any ability, he would not be allowing a group of low-level language students discuss Islam and American politics. If he has been teaching conversation in cram schools in Taiwan for 20 years, then he would have no ongoing training, as there are no internationally accredited training programs in Taiwan.[/quote]
[color=#0000FF]Being foreign English teachers, do you dislike the Taiwanese student who has a Ph. D. in your class?[/color] In fact, the Islamic supporter is a university professor in Taiwan. He attends to the classes for the preparation of immigration.
I suppose my teacher dislike his student to challenge him. [quote=“Buttercup”]
Have you considered the fact that if a teacher ‘accepts’ your opinions, then the conversation finishes? [/quote]
To question your student further to continue the conversation is great, but the point is the questioner’s attitude, isn’t it?

[quote=“Buttercup”]
My advice; talk to him. Or go and do a proper English class, not ‘conversation’ - that’s a royal waste of time and money. Or better still, spend your money on books, DVDs, and socialising with English speakers.[/quote]
Thanks very much for your advice.

10

That’s true, but her teacher has been teaching for 20 years and should know better.[/quote]

How? Trial and error? Some might, but most won’t. Unless they read a lot, are observed by someone who knows teacher training, and are prepared to experiment, and generally have a reflective attitude towards their teaching practice, then they will just do the same crappy lesson 10000 times.

11

Always challenge the teacher. Any teacher of any ability, qualified or not, will be able to handle it in an adroit fashion. Without ridicule or condescension.

12

Not really. I’m not trolling here, but it really doesn’t sound like a ‘teacher fault’, other than difficulty in managing an older student with particular expectations. He’s well-educated and is probably used to being deferred to, being of the generation he is. Yet he’s in an intermediate conversation class with a foreigner and a bunch of youngsters, so he’s trying to assert himself in a situation where he has little ‘face’. Ask yourself why you even know the guy has a PhD. It’s part of his identity, yet in English class, it’s irrelevant. I’m guessing he’s not quite as good as some of the 20 something girls?

You won’t do it, of course, because you think I’m wrong. You’ll probably go and complain about me on another website. :laughing:

Peace, and good luck with it.

13

I think that bit about the better educated student being disliked by the lesser educated teacher is very Taiwanese thinking. It’s highly unlikely that the foreign teacher gives a rat’s tail-end about the guy’s PhD.

And it may be possible that the teacher is mimicking the woman student’s bad pronounciation to attempt to get her to hear the difference between what he says and what she says.

It does sound like a class with a teacher who is not on top of his game, but also with students who see the teacher more as an entertainer than an educator in the first place. Sometimes you just have to provide you customer with what they expect.

14

[quote=“Buttercup”]It’s utterly irrelevant to anyone, whether he has a PhD. It has no bearing on his learning in class, and if he’s older than 50, he is unlikely to get much from the class, especially if he argues with his teacher about religion.

It’s not challenging, it’s just rude. And if he’s preparing to emigrate to an English-speaking country, he’s going to have to learn to deal with different modes of discourse.[/quote]

For someone who likes to emphasize how much she knows about Taiwan and teaching there, you really dropped the ball on this answer, Buttercup. How is he supposed to magically learn this, if not from his teacher (assuming the problem lies with the student, which I do not entirely accept from this description)?

First of all, I doubt the student was arguing. That’s the word that would be used by a Chinese speaker in English, but it doesn’t mean “arguing” per se most of the time. Anyway, most teachers would be thrilled to have a student show enough functioning neurons in the middle of a conversation class to actually answer a question in a thoughtful way, instead of just parroting back the accepted answer (“I like sleeping”). It is not rude for a student to express an opinion that is not the same as that of the teacher – much less if the student is preparing to emigrate to a place where that is expected, unlike the situation in Taiwanese educational culture.

Further, if the teacher is any sort of language teacher at all, the main point is not what the student believes, but how well equipped he is to express it. If the student’s expression was inappropriate, it is the teacher’s role to help him understand why and to model correct interactions in the target culture. Talking about Islam is just as likely to improve the student’s grammar, vocabulary and ability to express himself as talking about something the teacher considers politically correct.

[quote=“jangmi”]To question your student further to continue the conversation is great, but the point is the questioner’s attitude, isn’t it?
[/quote]

Yes. I totally agree. It is hardly a mystery that teaching English conversation in Taiwan can, at times, be less than the intellectually-stimulating job it is touted to be on many recruiter emails. However, if you sign up to do a job, any job, you are obligated to act as a professional as long as you’re taking the money.

Repeating a student’s mispronunciations – except if you are contrasting the wrong sound with the correct sound and offering some means for the student to achieve the correct sound – is not appropriate nor professional teaching.

I would mention to the OP, though, that Chinese teachers do this too. It’s likely that the teacher – in addition to having attitude problems – doesn’t know anything about phonetics or how to correct pronunciation. I encountered the same thing a few years back in a “正音” class taught by a well-known broadcaster. Her “method” was simply to repeatedly yell the correct sound in the face of the student mispronouncing it, in front of the group. Very embarrassing for the students and not at all effective in helping them improve their accents in Chinese.

If you’re paying for a language class, you have the right to have the class taught to the best of the teacher’s ability, and you certainly have the right to expect even an untrained, inexperienced teacher to treat all the students in the class with respect. I would speak to the teacher privately, maybe emphasizing that you wonder if he was having a bad day that session, but if it continues, I’d go to the school. Most cram schools are more interested in keeping bodies in seats than in keeping one foreigner or another one – they are a dime a dozen, after all. Failing that, if I were you, I’d change classes or schools. I think English teachers tend to forget that taking a language class can be a considerable investment for a Taiwanese student.

15

It’s the best thing for him to talk about because it is what he knows about and “wants” to talk about. It sounds like he is a bit of a blowhard though and if given the opportunity would turn the class into a “Study Islam” session. Topical, fascinating, important stuff but not likely to be very much comprehensible to Taiwanese students, and they would be just as likley to swallow it half heartedly in that vague way they do, as engage with it critically in any way.

“It doesn’t matter what a student believes that is important, but how well prepared they are to express what they believe,” that’s true, but I would point out that trying to change what a person believes certainly provides a lot of opportunity for meaninful recycling and also provides a good preperation for the real world where people have to learn to live with differences, compromise, and sometimes, change their opinions.

Strange that so few teachers recognize that.

With intelligent students I argue all the time. Most agree that that “you have your opinions and I have mine and neither is more correct than the other and lets all sit around and nod at each other talking in our sleep” thing that so many teachers do is boring as hell.

Lets “fight” goddam it!

If I had the Phd snob in my class I would do comprehension checks with the other students to make sure they understood what he was talking about and I would “gently” challenge him on absolutely everything.

The Islamic world makes a big deal out of deserving and demanding respect. If he was my English student he would learn to respect agnosticism, Phd or no.

You can’t teach people that you can’t dominate intellectually to some extent.

16

[quote=“jangmi”]I am a Taiwanese student and taking a foreign English teacher’s conversation classes at a cram school. I like the teacher’s ways to process classes but dislike his personality.
He seemed not to accept students’ opposite opinions to his when we talked about specific topics, such as religions and politics. For example, he once was angry at a student when the student showed his support toward Islam. I once was scorned in class because I said I liked Obama. The other example was an aged lady was laughed at for her strange pronunciation by the teacher. The way my teacher to laugh at her was to imitate her pronunciation when these words were mentioned. Terribly, he said he was practicing his sense of humor. [/quote]
Not having been there, we can’t know what happened. There is generally 2 sides of each story, colored by perceptions.

I’m wondering how you knew he was “angry” at a student for supporting Islam. Could it be the teacher was simply disagreeing or suggesting and alternative viewpoint? Similarly why do you feel the teacher “scorned” you for your support of Obama and wasn’t just inviting debate? In both situations, it could just be an effort to stimulate thought and conversation. The reason I wonder this is because some people are uncomfortable with conflict and may project all sorts of negative emotions on to people who disagree or debate with them when in fact there is no emotion attached to their comments at all.

With respect to the pronunciation issue, did the teacher laugh or did he imitate the pronunciation error? You wrote the way he laughed was to mimic. He did one, the other or both? I’ve noticed in learning Chinese this is how pronunciation was taught to me, by closely mimicking the teacher’s pronunciation. My jr/sr high school students often mimicked my speaking, which I thought at first was making fun of me but then realized that’s how they learned pronunciation.

The professor of my 3rd-year university French conversation class might disagree with this assertion. I got a tremendous amount out of this class. It’s where I learned and practiced how to put my own thoughts into words, with the guidance of a native French speaking PhD.

I also hope my trainees are the ones doing most of the talking, but I also see some value in the trainer sharing ideas, proposing alternative opinions and facilitating discussion as well as correcting mistakes and modeling patterns.

17

[quote=“jangmi”]
He seemed not to accept students’ opposite opinions to his when we talked about specific topics, such as religions and politics. For example, he once was angry at a student when the student showed his support toward Islam. [/quote]

Saying someone was angry is a judgment call about someone’s emotions. You cannot know what someone was thinking, feeling, or what is driving their actions. Give us specifics. What did he say or do? What did you see?

Again, that is another judgment call. What did you say and what did he say back to you?

This may be harder to type out exactly what you heard; since that requires tones.

I am going to call you out on this. You have an issue with the teacher; not with the people on this forum. You need to address the issue with the person you have the issue with; not complain behind his back to us.

If you want advice on how to do that, we’ll gladly help. If you do talk to him and feel he was more of a schmuck than before, we’ll gladly hear that as well. Just do not talk behind someone else’s back while making vague accusations. That’s not fair to the person and it certainly will not do anything to improve your situation.

As for whether I agree with you, I would need to know more details. I think most of us would need those details to even give you good advice. Your story is definitely believable. I knew one guy who is 50, tried teaching his first time because his family’s business is finally going downhill, and got fired within a week because he had no clue what he was doing. (He said they didn’t like that he allowed the kids to sleep in the class; if that is any indication).

Just my :2cents: .

18

[quote=“Puppet”][quote=“jangmi”]
He seemed not to accept students’ opposite opinions to his when we talked about specific topics, such as religions and politics. For example, he once was angry at a student when the student showed his support toward Islam. [/quote]

Saying someone was angry is a judgment call about someone’s emotions. You cannot know what someone was thinking, feeling, or what is driving their actions. Give us specifics. What did he say or do? What did you see?

Again, that is another judgment call. What did you say and what did he say back to you?

This may be harder to type out exactly what you heard; since that requires tones.

I am going to call you out on this. You have an issue with the teacher; not with the people on this forum. You need to address the issue with the person you have the issue with; not complain behind his back to us.

If you want advice on how to do that, we’ll gladly help. If you do talk to him and feel he was more of a schmuck than before, we’ll gladly hear that as well. Just do not talk behind someone else’s back while making vague accusations. That’s not fair to the person and it certainly will not do anything to improve your situation.

As for whether I agree with you, I would need to know more details. I think most of us would need those details to even give you good advice. Your story is definitely believable. I knew one guy who is 50, tried teaching his first time because his family’s business is finally going downhill, and got fired within a week because he had no clue what he was doing. (He said they didn’t like that he allowed the kids to sleep in the class; if that is any indication).

Just my :2cents: .[/quote]

I completely agree…this thread is a waste of time since we can have no idea what really happened. It could be the OP has completely got the wrong end of the stick due to some kind of cultural misunderstanding. Rather like the girl who was robbed by the “Mexican” we need to discourage the use of this forum as a way to voice discontent by locals with specific foreigners in our community. Issues with teachers should be taken up with the teacher himself or with the school.

19

Well, we aren’t. Our family members die, we get dumped by our partners, we’re homesick, broke, bored, trapped, angry, sick, pre-menstrual, and all the things everyone else is. And there are few things worse than teaching ‘conversation’. That’s life.[/quote]

However, that’s no excuse. Any teacher should always remain professional in the classroom. Jangmi should report this teacher to the director/manager as soon as possible because his behavior is simply unacceptable.[/quote]

Agreed. My wife called our daughter’s Principal last night for the same reason, because after school our girl told us her English teacher had asked the class, “if its freezing cold and snowing outside, what would you do?” Our girl replied, “go climb a mountain,” and the teacher responded “then you’re not very smart.”

Her teacher was clearly wrong. Sure everyone screws up, everyone has a bad day, everyone makes mistakes, but a teacher should never personally insult students, whether by calling them stupid, by mocking their pronounciation, or mocking their political or religious views. Ok, maybe “never” is a bit extreme, but in general they should refrain from doing so, whether the students are 6 years old, like our girl, or in cram school or college. It’s unprofessional and wrong.

Incidentally, I was proud of my daughter’s response that got mocked, so last night I logged on the Internet with her and viewed photos and videos of people climbing big mountains in the snow. :slight_smile: We also explained to her that her teacher was wrong, made a mistake and didn’t know what she was talking about, but she should forgive her because we all make mistakes.

20

I can see both sides of this “incident”:

If the teacher openly ridicules his students or their pronunciation instead of being constructive, that is blatently wrong. On the other hand, it being a conversation class, is the teacher not entitled to an opinion? Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he wanted the student to retort or make a witty comeback, something with which not all students are comfortable. More than likely, he is a BA feeling challenged by a PhD who makes more money than he does and knows more about the world. Since it’s “his” (the teacher’s) class, he may feel threatened. That seems weird though, since the purpose of a “conversation class” is usually to give the students the floor and guide/gently correct them when necessary. Overall, I’d side with the student on this one, though. It sounds as though the teacher was wrong and gave in to human weaknesses.

A couple of notes about “conversation classes” (for Jangmi):
Your posts show a good overall knowledge of English syntax/vocabulary. As another poster pointed out, you are wasting your money in a “conversation class”. Conversation cannot be learned, it must be practiced using the skills you already have. Do yourself a favour and get together with some friends and hire a teacher with whom to practice or do a private class, or better yet, just hang out with some foreign friends from time to time, if you have them. Buxibans are designed to make money, not to actually teach a language, and conversation classes are generally a farce.

Maybe I’m being old-fashioned here, but IMHO, conversation is an art, and anyone who wishes to discuss religion or politics with should do so cautiously, especially in a foreign country or with a foreign group of friends. While heated debates may be a good way to practice language skills (though I doubt it), it doesn’t seem wise to put a group of strangers together to discuss these issues and then argue with their opinions. It doesn’t sound like anyone is achieving anythimg more than making some money.