I thought we’d grown out of this idiocy in Taiwan now? Obviously not.
I replied, as politely as possible, and encourage others to do the same.
[quote]I saw your ad on tealit and thought I should drop you a line. I’m
probably not what you’re looking for, as for some strange reason you
require a North American accent, but if you are interested in a teacher
who can actually teach all varieties of English then perhaps this
requirement will not be as strict. As my students can’t tell where I’m
from, and frequently assume that I am American, it seems like a very
arbitrary and pointless requirement to have of someone with six years of
experience teaching TOEFL. I work at XXXX University, and also at
YYYY University, and they don’t seem to have a problem with
my accent. At least, they were prepared to meet me before making a decision.
[/quote]
I thought we’d grown out of this idiocy in Taiwan now? Obviously not.
I replied, as politely as possible, and encourage others to do the same.
[quote]I saw your ad on tealit and thought I should drop you a line. I’m
probably not what you’re looking for, as for some strange reason you
require a North American accent, but if you are interested in a teacher
who can actually teach all varieties of English then perhaps this
requirement will not be as strict. As my students can’t tell where I’m
from, and frequently assume that I am American, it seems like a very
arbitrary and pointless requirement to have of someone with six years of
experience teaching TOEFL. I work at XXXX University, and also at
YYYY University, and they don’t seem to have a problem with
my accent. At least, they were prepared to meet me before making a decision.
[/quote][/quote]
Just another dumbfuck bunch of twats. 50 years of experience and they managed to learn sweet fuck-all. Tells you all you need to know about those particular pricks, at least. Or maybe they stipulate Canucks because they reckon they’re fresh off the boat and therefore easier to exploit.
I thought we’d grown out of this idiocy in Taiwan now? Obviously not.
I replied, as politely as possible, and encourage others to do the same.
[quote]I saw your ad on tealit and thought I should drop you a line. I’m
probably not what you’re looking for, as for some strange reason you
require a North American accent, but if you are interested in a teacher
who can actually teach all varieties of English then perhaps this
requirement will not be as strict. As my students can’t tell where I’m
from, and frequently assume that I am American, it seems like a very
arbitrary and pointless requirement to have of someone with six years of
experience teaching TOEFL. I work at XXXX University, and also at
YYYY University, and they don’t seem to have a problem with
my accent. At least, they were prepared to meet me before making a decision.
[/quote][/quote]
The very first job I applied for here stated something similar. Their loss. They want the kids to come away with an American accent.
I feel more sorry for potential teachers whose only “fault” is their skin colour.
I prefer ‘peckerheads’, but that’s beside the point.
I’m not saying I agree with their stipulation - just asking the question of ‘Do they have the right to hire who they want to hire for the job(s) they offer?’
Saves the applicants time knowing if they are who the company is looking to hire. Saves the company time by getting a pre-screened pool that meets their stated need/wants.
If Taiwanese are so “eager” to learn “American” accented English, how come most still reject the retroflex sound, as in the t in “water”. I mean reject, as in “that is not in the KK piao”.
I think it was one of the first things I learned, back in elementary school. Among other examples of how warped this thinking is -I know it may not be standard, it is just an example, but it is part of the differences in content/reality of what passes as EFL -yes, F as in foreign- teaching here.
'Course they have the right to hire who they want. No Brits, no kikes, no wetbacks, no niggers, no chinks.
Of course they have the right. Just like everyone else has every right to call them for being racist, stupid fuckwads.
TLI, folks, remember that name. Arseholes, Ltd.
I’ve seen the repeated conclusion on here for 4 + years now that English teaching here is a business.
Its a business in the eyes of the school owners and it should be viewed with the same understanding in the eyes of the ‘teachers’ who apply and work in them.
Over and over I see threads started by people who are p!ssed-off because the owner placed the school business ahead of what “they thought” was the ‘right thing’ to do.
And over and over experienced members here told them that simple fact : Its a business.
I see this as a business owner looking for applicants who meet a specified demographic. Nothing more.
[quote=“Icon”]If Taiwanese are so “eager” to learn “American” accented English, how come most still reject the retroflex sound, as in the t in “water”. I mean reject, as in “that is not in the KK piao”.[/quote]You mean the flapped “t”? That’s not actually a distinct phoneme, is it? I’d have thought it would be represented perfectly well by /d/ in the KK system.
My service, my product, meets the need of the consumer, aka the student. If nobody tells my students that I’m not American then they are usually very surprised when I tell them the truth. In other words, the consumer is not capable of differentiating, doesn’t usually care, and therefore the requirement is meaningless. From a business perspective, the school is preventing itself from buying a product that meets their need - and thus hurting my business - through the mistaken belief that this is actually a requirement of their customers, the end-consumers.
Very few students state a requirement for a particular accent, and given that only 1/3 of students going overseas are headed for North America I’m not particularly disadvantaged when they do. The vast majority just want a competent teacher and, while I might disagree with many of them about what constitutes a competent teacher, accent is not usually the issue.
This is simply a case of a “school” putting uninformed prejudice before good business sense, not to mention that as a “school” they should know that accent is not really relevant. This is odd, because the same school expressed a desire to interview me when I first came to Taiwan. Presumably the ad doesn’t even reflect company policy, they just happen to have hired a twat to write their ads for them and he/she is now hurting their business.
I know Americans who teach IELTS prep classes. I don’t complain about being asked to use American books with my junior high kids and nobody complains that anybody doesn’t have the right accent. Nobody cares about such trivia in the classroom, because the business of the day is teaching people how the language works and despite the hullabullah (or however you spell it) the differences between real English and that bastardised simplified shit you speak are really so small as to be inconsequential. These are people who can’t remember to use the past tense when describing past events in a class devoted to writing about past events in the past tense. I’m pretty sure we all do that the same way, wherever in the English-speaking world we come from.
(NB: TLI is known as an adult school and the ad specifies teaching adults and school-age students, not kindy. We’re not talking about teaching kids how to pronounce apple correctly. They’re beyond that and I’ve never had an adult class where correct pronunciation was an issue.)
Just charge more for you ‘uniqaue’ ability to do the Cambridge exams.
I have never ever met a Taiwanese person with an ‘American accent’. They speak the same mangled Chinglish that all Chinese speakers speak. It’s such a dumbass prejudice because parents and bosses know no different.
I do remember the parents at one school questioning the accent of the upper intermediate level Belgian, hired illegally. They told them he was South African.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]You protest too much and too hypothetically.
I’ve seen the repeated conclusion on here for 4 + years now that English teaching here is a business.
Its a business in the eyes of the school owners and it should be viewed with the same understanding in the eyes of the ‘teachers’ who apply and work in them.
Over and over I see threads started by people who are p!ssed-off because the owner placed the school business ahead of what “they thought” was the ‘right thing’ to do.
And over and over experienced members here told them that simple fact : Its a business.
I see this as a business owner looking for applicants who meet a specified demographic. Nothing more.
Too much angst from the UK contingent.[/quote]It’s true, many of us do see sexism and racism etc as bad things, we can’t justify them by saying “it’s business”, we usually can’t justify them at all. Must be one of our failings.
Maybe it has nothing to do with accent. Maybe they have just found that people from the UK love to complain bitterly, as evidenced by this thread.
Seriously, though, would you accept an employer asking you in for an interview but then not hiring you because he felt your accent was too strong? There’s little regional variation across NA, except the very south, which is not true of the UK. I have problems understanding you guys sometimes, and it’s common for American TV stations to actually subtitle UK speakers on the news.
Maybe these policies are a holdover from the early 90s when Taipei was a hotspot for the Liverpudlian diaspora.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]I prefer ‘peckerheads’, but that’s beside the point.
I’m not saying I agree with their stipulation - just asking the question of ‘Do they have the right to hire who they want to hire for the job(s) they offer?’
Saves the applicants time knowing if they are who the company is looking to hire. Saves the company time by getting a pre-screened pool that meets their stated need/wants.[/quote]
I thought this was sarcastic humour (yes that’s spelled with a u) but I believe you’re serious. Shame.
