[quote=“Truant”][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.[/quote]
he he heh
[quote=“Muzha Man”]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]
The point is they don’t even give you a chance for interview. The fact is most teachers here moderate their accents to the ‘californian’ bland shite they want to hear here… personally I find the problem is easily solved by speaking slowly and through my nose
Even if they have their own accent so what…who said English belonged to N.Americans, a lot of this is in trying to maintain a monopoly over English education for N.America by casting negative aspersions about other English speakers.
I’m an American and have an American accent. No one ever specifies which American accent they prefer.
When I first arrived in Taiwan, everyone thought I was Italian. Spanish is my second language and right before I left for Taiwan I spent a lot of time speaking Spanish with a lot of native Spanish speakers. Maybe I still had a pretty good roll on my r’s and a nice Salsa rhythm to my English. So, I guess it made perfect sense for all these Taiwanese to look at my American passport and ask me if I was Italian.
Horse hockey.
You run a business, you cater to your customers’ wants and needs, perceived or otherwise.
If you don’t, they’ll take their business elsewhere. Loretta, you have a real, discernible modulation to your speech that clearly differentiates you from a N. American native speaker. So does Buttercup. So does Truant. So does TomHill. If I were lame or desperate enough to actually hang out with him, I’d probably find that Stray Dog has one too.
If you’re teaching students spoken language, they’re either going to be confused that their last teacher said “toMAYto” and you say “toMAHto”, or they’re going to start saying it like you. And spare me the bushwah about the global mosaic of variation. Their parents, or boss, or whoever is PAYING the teacher, has the right to dictate the details of the product they’re purchasing.
Say I were running a bar, and someone came in wanting a, just say for example, Bacardi and Coke. Now, I might suggest that he try, say, Havana Club and Coke, because it’s much smoother and tastier, being distilled in Cuba the same way it’s been for 100 years, as opposed to the Bacardi, which is mass produced swill that’s full of all manner of additives and supplements.
But IF the dude (or tranny, as the case may be) wants Bacardi, well, shit, I ain’t going to refuse him and insist he have something else because it’s betteerrrrr.
Seriously, who does business like that?
Well, OK, this guy, maybe:
And I ain’t saying this because I happen to have a N. American accent.
I had a rough go of it too, when I started working in Taiwan and had to learn to write A-MER-icun.
I’m not going to go on a tirade trying to convince IBM, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Motorola, and the United States Patent & Trademark Office (all recipients of my work) that Canookistanian Engrish is superior.
Long as they pay up at the end of the month, I’ll fuckin write it in Pig Latin, if that’s what they want.
Imagine you run a school for learning French and many of your students’ parents say to you: “Could you make sure that the teacher is from France and not from Quebec.”
So you don’t really want those French Canadians. Do you still invite them for an interview? Do you take your time to evaluate them when there are plenty of people from France available?
[quote=“hannes”]Imagine you run a school for learning French and many of your students’ parents say to you: “Could you make sure that the teacher is from France and not from Quebec.”
So you don’t really want those French Canadians. Do you still invite them for an interview? Do you take your time to evaluate them when there are plenty of people from France available?[/quote]
Some schools don’t simply teach language. They might teach history, culture and whatnot. If the curriculum is based on country and culture, I’d say the nationality of the teacher may be more significant in determining which candidate is more suitable. I know dick about British history. I wouldn’t want to be a program teaching King Fred of Bendover when I had no idea of who he was and what he did.
[quote=“Surly”][quote=“hannes”]Imagine you run a school for learning French and many of your students’ parents say to you: “Could you make sure that the teacher is from France and not from Quebec.”
So you don’t really want those French Canadians. Do you still invite them for an interview? Do you take your time to evaluate them when there are plenty of people from France available?[/quote]
Some schools don’t simply teach language. They might teach history, culture and whatnot. If the curriculum is based on country and culture, I’d say the nationality of the teacher may be more significant in determining which candidate is more suitable. I know dick about British history. I wouldn’t want to be a program teaching King Fred of Bendover when I had no idea of who he was and what he did.[/quote]
In the process of teaching English, your culture is also invariably taught to students.
It seems to me that a lot of parents are putting their kids in school to learn English so that they can one-day go to a University in (N.) America. So it makes sense to want your child to have a teacher with a N. American accent so their child develops a N. American accent and learns about (N.) American culture, slang, idioms, etc. Also, a lot of older students desire to have a N. American accent.
If the school is run as a business (as most schools seem to be) and
In order for a business to be successful they need to cater to the customers’ needs and desires
Then hiring teachers with N. American accents in the above circumstance is only logical
And when the kid finally goes of to the US for college, you know what difference it’s going to make whether or not his bushiban teacher had an American accent? nil
You ain’t wrong, Doc, but the original point was that the employers were wrong to be asking this, when in fact, they’re only serving their market.
You’re arguing that the girly-man who insists on Bacardi will have a much better drink if they get the HC.
Everybody knows that.
But you can’t stay in bidness that way.
Savvy??
Savvy.
At the end of the day, this is what it comes down to. Upon arriving here, one of my first colleagues was a Scottsman who survived the whole debacle by fronting a perfect East coast American accent. He saw the situation and chose to adapt rather than complain about it.
To play devil’s advocate here, I seem to recall hearing that a lot of TOEIC prep courses hire exclusively British teachers, since the listening portion of the exam is in the Queen’s English. Did I hear wrong?
At the end of the day, this is what it comes down to. Upon arriving here, one of my first colleagues was a Scottsman who survived the whole debacle by fronting a perfect East coast American accent. He saw the situation and chose to adapt rather than complain about it.
To play devil’s advocate here, I seem to recall hearing that a lot of TOEIC prep courses hire exclusively British teachers, since the listening portion of the exam is in the Queen’s English. Did I hear wrong?[/quote]The listening part of the TOEIC now features some speakers with British and Australian accents, although it’s still mostly American accents. Perhaps you’re thinking of IELTS or BULATS, though I think the listening for those also features a range of accents.
At the end of the day, this is what it comes down to. Upon arriving here, one of my first colleagues was a Scottsman who survived the whole debacle by fronting a perfect East coast American accent. He saw the situation and chose to adapt rather than complain about it.
To play devil’s advocate here, I seem to recall hearing that a lot of TOEIC prep courses hire exclusively British teachers, since the listening portion of the exam is in the Queen’s English. Did I hear wrong?[/quote]The listening part of the TOEIC now features some speakers with British and Australian accents, although it’s still mostly American accents. Perhaps you’re thinking of IELTS or BULATS, though I think the listening for those also features a range of accents.[/quote]
My mistake, then. I under that impression based on the comments of a few friends who said they had to learn “Britsh English” for the exam.
Is that true? I learned Chinese in Taiwan and there are many places in China I have a hell of a time understanding what is being said. Different vocab, different accent, and even different ways of asking common questions?
Mind you, you do pick up the differences fast, so overall it doesn’t make much difference. But still, I would have no problem specifying that I want a Taiwanese Chinese teacher over a Chinese one.
Is that true? I learned Chinese in Taiwan and there are many places in China I have a hell of a time understanding what is being said. Different vocab, different accent, and even different ways of asking common questions?
Mind you, you do pick up the differences fast, so overall it doesn’t make much difference. But still, I would have no problem specifying that I want a Taiwanese Chinese teacher over a Chinese one.[/quote]
I’m just saying that over his academic career, a Taiwanese student will go through many many English teachers, and by the time they grow up and decide to go overseas, one particular bushiban teacher is not going to make much difference. Just my opinion. I knew a lot of Indian students in college and they didn’t have too much trouble with their British English. They called zero, zed.
