English Teaching
I am not very good at wrinting blogs or sharing my experiences on the internet but i am going to try today in order to get out my rage and to share my opinion.
The thing I want to write about is English teaching. my question to community is,
"Does only a native English speaker have a right to teach English?"
In my opinion, NO.
I am from Pakistan (non native english speaker) but we have embraced English and implemented it in our daily lives and in curriculum and in offices and in courts and in hospitals and in every field of our daily lives when we realized that it is an international language and without speaking it and understanding it we will be left behind in an international community. In our country a kindergarten kid from each and every school starts learning English as a second language and continue to study through his/her whole academic life.
We learn to speak, listen and write English from our teachers who are non native speakers who are Pakistanies and not any school demands to hire a native English speaker even if they charge 10000 US dollars from parents just because they know how good our own teachers are in English.
But in China every school demands a native speaker even if there are not enough teachers from those countries. According to that no one other than native should teach English.
Teaching students is not only a job its a passion for some and a basic human right to teach whatever he/she wants. I love China and the people as I have lived here for 5 years but the demand to teach English only by native speakers is beyond my understanding. Well in other words I just want to teach here and the agents or the schools only wants native speakers and i am little furious about that.
It is my very first blog and I have no idea how should i have written it or what mistakes i might have made here, Kindly forgive me if i have offended anyone it was not my intent.
Thank you.
Tags:Teaching & Learning Business & Jobs Language & Culture
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You are writing to people that agree with you. You have to convince the Chinese about your views.
Apr 19, 2014 10:35 Report Abuse
The debate has been raging on for as long as I know. It took me all of two and half months to land a job here. For the record, I am a non native speaker from Singapore and also Chinese. The fact that I can speak advanced Chinese scored me a few brownie points but that wasn't the reason I got the job. You see, all the time I spent on sending out applications I only focused on teaching ESL. I got no replies and if I did get replies most reply that they only want natives. In the final two weeks of my search, I changed tack and applied only for subject teaching. I finally got 3 solid offers for economics teaching positions. I found that by competing with natives for ESL positions I will get very limited responses even if there aren't that many native ESL teachers. The demand for native ESL teachers outstrips supply but still most schools still want them. And if you are offered an ESL position, the pay is very little. I was offered RMB4,000 at one school in Guangzhou. I don't know whether to feel insulted or laugh at it. There is a valid reason for requiring natives for ESL. We, non natives tend to be very technical when we teach English. Many of the subtleties in the language are taught to us in class and we are very conscious of how we apply it. However, for natives, it is subconscious and they don't even need to think about it, it just comes out. Why? Simply because they are native speakers. You don't need to think when you speak your native language, do you? You don't need to pause and think which word to use or what phrases are correct before speaking. That's why natives will and always be chosen over non natives no matter how good your English is. So for non natives, we have to work harder and longer to keep our jobs. In the university I teach in, there is only one native speaker from the UK. The rest are from Pakistan, Switzerland, Russia and China who do not teach English. They are all subject teachers. The irony is that being a subject teacher pays more for a non native than a native teaching English. I suggest you change tack and look for a subject teaching position instead. Look at what you are good at, economics, math, physics, chemistry, design, etc. You will stand a better chance of landing a job plus better pay. The visa won't be an issue if you are employed as an expert on subjects. Good luck on your job hunt!
Apr 18, 2014 10:17 Report Abuse
There might be a solid reason for this as well. I have met excellent non-native speakers. However, as good as they are they still make their fair share of mistakes. More mistakes than a native would make. I can hear them when they speak and read them when they write. Maybe that is what schools want, to model speech.
Apr 19, 2014 10:41 Report Abuse
I really like your blog post and you raise a very important point. The idea of only wanting native speakers is rooted deeply in the Chinese consumer's excessive focus on appearance over substance. When they buy an English class for their kid they expect a "real" English person to be the teacher (in their minds "real" means from the US or UK, white skin, tall). Anything else will be considered inadequate and fake. Unfortunately, in China it has come to the point where foreign teachers have become commodities that are sold to the customer based on their appearance only. Physical appearance is actually more important than where your passport is issued or whether you are a good teacher or not (hence why many native speakers from Africa are not conisdered suitable applicants - it's blatant racism!). It's a very sad development but it is more common in the private language teaching sector than in international schools. I know that several of the decent international schools in Beijing employ many non-native speakers from Korea, India, Israel and so on. So if you have a teaching certification I would highly recommend that you apply to an international school.
Apr 14, 2014 12:12 Report Abuse
I'm Dutch and British; both nationalities. I grew up most of my childhood in Holland, and I know that the Dutch are among the best non-native English speakers in the world. Holland also borders on the UK, so the 2 languages developed next to each other, and share many similarities. Despite this, a Dutch person wil have an equally difficult time finding a school that will accept teaching from a non-native speaker. I think the Chinese nationality criterion for teaching English is definitely rigid, but not entirely without merit. It's betyter than being evaluated by the colour of your skin, the popular slang you know, or how much parents and children like you; all of which are used in schools to judge teachers competence, too. It's already so easy to become a teacher in China, and even you will have no problem teaching outside the big cities. So, stop complaining that you don't quality for the highest-profile, highest salary positions, and just find yourself a school that needs you. Visas are a different matter, but you didn't talk about that.
Apr 13, 2014 13:54 Report Abuse
I don't know about that one. Being white will be superior in the hiring hierarchy than a native black speaker. I have had school F.A.O. s tell me "we don't hire blacks or Asians." This also means blacks and Asians who have deep roots in English speaking countries. I can just point to Louischuam on this website. A school in Xinjiang hired an Italian girl who cannot even speak the language.
Apr 19, 2014 10:39 Report Abuse
In China it is about face and perception. I have been teaching in China for 4 years. The school I am in now demands I use a text book for the Senior (grade 10 & 11) classes. The point is the text is usless in oral english; at least the one I'm told to use. A Chinese English teacher can do the same job when there is a text book. But the desire for profit seems to trump the education of the kids.
Apr 11, 2014 08:34 Report Abuse
you may not realize that companies are currently unable to provide visas to teachers who do not have a passport form an English speaking country. If you are looking for 1 on 1 tutoring it may be possible, but you need to find a way to get your visa secured first.
Apr 10, 2014 22:08 Report Abuse
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