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Topic: destinyeric 's blog Choosing a Foreign English teacher in China

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aw0101
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Hey Destiny Eric, I had a look through this and looked at this point pretty objectively as possible and you have a valid argument to an extent but for the love of God, what are you doing? Allow me to explain: Your biggest failure throughout is that you lack the ability to articulate concisely what you are trying to convey. You lack clarity with the terms you are trying to put across and use them incorrectly. Trying to comprehend it, I am confident that your objection is that current legislation regarding the overriding criteria for which an ESL language teacher's ability is judged on, is without merit in two/three categories: 1. The classification of the term 'native speaker' 2. The country of origin from which the term 'native speaker' is associated with and who has owernership/validity of this classification of 'native speaker' 3. A native teacher (choose classification - mother tongue or origin) does not merit the term as teacher solely on this classification. Straight off the bat, and without even needing to look at any literature to confirm, you have made an assumption that puts your argument dangerously close to invalid. You are attaching the term 'native' in contexts that are confusing yourself. I'll need to throw in just a little terminology to help clarity. The socio-geographic and political context has been overlapped. Socio - is the social, a society, and 1 classification of a society's identity ( among many others like, laws, custom, tradition, religion etc,) is yep, the mother tongue - language-. Stay with me here. This is different from the geographic term to the word native, which is 'origin of' or something of similar semantic nature, your reference to Native Americans for a quick example are the people who lived (natively, by geogrpahy) on the land before the social and therefore before the influence of the language and 'native tongue) - You still with me? Now look at the spread of the English language - it is the social and geographical becoming amalgamated together as the native social slowly absorb the native geographical. Last little point about it, the social, and geographical become one as the social seeks to outline and border its geographical location - hence countries. Within these countries there are laws that govern the social and in our particular case ESL teachers. So when a country decides to classify a speaker as 'native English, they do so in terms of the socio-geographic and political nature and not the terminology or semantic definition of 'native' Because you have failed to grasp this concept you fly off into wild accusatory assumptions about, eligibility and qualification, moral and ethical as the basis for your argument. You are latching onto this as proof that 'teachers' are determined by their skin color or nationality in recruitment. It is just not. There are other requirements like a degree, TESOL etc which are deemed by the 'laws of the social' as adequate in terms of suitably qualified teachers of ESL. If this is adequate enough, claimed is true or not is for the research. Unfortunately, Chinese law does not put in place legal requirements for personal opinion or choice, therefore decisions bsaed in terms of age, race gender, etc are applied subjectively to businesses within ESL. This choice and personal opinion can stem from many mitigating factors of unfounded or misguided prejudice and you are right to argue some of these, like race, color, culture, pronunciation ( you say they think its not good - its only not good by their perception of good, because of familiarity with your pronunciation, it'd be the same, if the countries were vice versa) of sounds then too i guess if they say that too you. But to broadly sweep and appear to call everyone and living thing in China, racist, xenophobia etc is a stretch. I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with the notion that everywhere no matter where has some from of it - but man you exhibit a lot of it yourself throughout this paper. A lot of public choice is just purely down to exposure and familiarity. The spread of English was greatly influenced by the likes of entertainment industries, eg, Disney and Hollywood and the spread of 'westernism' in other forms such as music blah blah. This lead to exposure and a sense of familiarity that we unfortunately do not have with other nations in terms of culture and language ( broadly speaking). The only point i will agree with you on is 1 but man it's embedded well in there. The laws of the social and the requirements of a ESL teacher are prohibiting well qualified 'non native speaker' English teachers to China, which deprives China of a skilled workforce, but that is the choice of the social. To try and blame the eligible teachers ( deemed eligible by the social remember) and highlight peas in a pod examples of 'drug dealers' 'Chinese want 'white' etc etc in an attempt to admonish you're own discriminatory viewpoint by appearing 'concerned' and emancipate the ineligible teachers in the hope to influence the social - as you have done throughout this entire pile of tripe is exactly the bias you claim is being served - Racist - just choose your own particular subcategory. Shameful! English classification as an official language by A, B, and C countries. No country is under any obligation to accept another country's standard definition of anything and that includes what a country determines as an official language in name or not. Also, for you to call English a neutral language is unbelievably vague and without question, categorically, in an argument for and against a topic within ESL, among expected readers with expertise in the language, about as useful and welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. You had positives: Sort of managed to be clear that the Chinese are missing good qualified teachers because of poor legislation. Highlighted racial inequalities between non white and white workforce showing favourability examples. Negatives to be worked on: 5 questions - 5 extremely poorly articulated attempts at answers. Sweeping, generalist, derogatory statements throughout vague anecdotes, 'teaching is profession' well done. but if i want a physics teacher i don't ask for a swimming teacher. To be honest mate, the general overview of what you are saying had its points but for goodness sake man. You ranted and raved, called people'homeless' etc and druggies blah blah then attempted redemption by claiming to defend China's poor long suffering parents and the money they spend, for sub par education that will affect their offspring for generations to come. Look at me, i'm sensitive to the need, its those pesky whites you should be worrying about! What the hell man?? Look at your point 'my worst worry'. Just be honest, its not your worst worry, you said 1 sentence about Chinese and money and it was to highlight the effect on you. Your worst worry is your are not being afforded the same chances as others, who may or may not be as qualified as you, and for reasons you cannot change, you are discriminated against - which my friend, is a much more damn plausible worst fear for any one of us!! I'd certainly not be ashamed to write about it and express discontent. Just next time, do it without attack and at the expense of others, here just simply doing something we bloody want to do. Do it with a bit more dignity, class and in depth knowledge of the subject at hand. You are after all, a teacher and you rightly put it 'teaching is a profession'. Goodnight.

May 17, 2015 03;44
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