No, it isn’t about sex and drugs. This piece was written by an African-American contributor, who doesn’t seem to be too happy that he was turned down for a teaching job by a certain Korean university. I have to admit there’s a bit of complaining involved and this distracts what could have been a well written piece. However, he does make one pertinent point, which more or less sums up the situation.
Whatever you teach should be taught in a methodical way by qualified and trained professionals to facilitate effective learning. Without proper teaching methods, however good the reference books are, they will have little effect. That is what is happening here in South Korea. Somewhere someone has made a huge blunder by influencing the minds of Koreans that only native speakers can teach English!
That’s the problem right there. Besides the Koreans overdoing it with the learn English thing, there is a mind set that only native speakers can teach English. This leads to a high demand for them, and some institutions eager to meet the demand are skipping on background checks of native English speaking candidates which brings us to the situation we have now.
Personally, I do believe that English teaching positions should be opened more to qualified non-native English speakers. For example, there are a lot of qualified Korean teachers with real degrees from U.S. and Canadian universities who are not being hired or if they are hired getting less pay compared to the native speakers, just because they are Korean.
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But the advantage to constantly hiring a bunch of dubious and unqualified crackers is that the speaking abilities of most students will never get better. The entire system is designed to produce only a handful of talented people and keep the rest struggling for the perfect attribute of coherent and useful English. I think this is how the Chaebols prefer it…
Also, I’ve seen way too many Korean unqualified crackers with ridiculously over-exaggerated resumes, claims to be Korean-American, or even false diplomas to the likes of Ms. Shin. At least with a whitey with an American/Canadian passport can’t lie about his native English abilities. Nowadays it seems a passport is more valuable than a diploma from Yale.
At what is considered one of Korea’s top universities, I once participated in the interviewing of candidates of a position teaching English. There was one fellow who stood out head and shoulders above the rest. He was an articulate native speaker and had a BA in English, a TESOL certificate, and an MA in TESOL from a Canadian university.
I thought it was a clear choice, but the three Korean professors voted him down because students wanted a “real” native speaker. He was born and raised in Canada, but was of Chinese descent.
This hiring policy applied in Korea is manifestly unjust and clearly haywire.
But then, every country and culture has got its own principles, some of which are sensible whereas others are not. I am not entirely sure whether the principles applied in Germany are rational or rather devoid of reason…
Here in Germany race plays no part in recruitment, but there are other criteria which are quite rigidly, maybe over rigidly, enforced. For language instruction this is the principle that the instructor is supposed to be a native speaker of the language he teaches.
About three years ago I took part in a governmental quality check on language instruction in state-run secondary schools in Germany, the purpose of which was the ousting of non-native speakers of English or French who had, for hiring purposes, passed themselves off as native speakers of these particular languages. English and French are the languages that every young German is supposed to be fluent in upon graduation from high school.
Since it is the generally accepted belief here in Germany that a language can only be learned correctly from a competent native speaker, prospective language instructors are required to hand in sworn statements on oath by which they affirm their native speaker qualities. This means that, if this affirmation turns out to be false, not only will they lose their jobs but also will criminal charges be brought against them and they might well end up in prison. The reasoning behind this is the damaging effect of their instruction on the children who might pick up non-native accents, incorrect grammar etc.
Among the fraudsters we busted were Franco-Canadians who had passed themselves off as being native speakers of English, Anglo-Canadians who had passed themselves off as being native speakers of French, South Africans (English), and citizens of Luxembourg and Switzerland (French)…
We have never had any trouble with the Belgians because, in that country, citizens are classified by law into one of three categories:
- native speaker of Flemish/Dutch
- native speaker of French
- native speakers of German
So, I would advocate that each and every multilingual country should adopt such a clear classification system. Would save us a lot of work over here in Germany, since we would not have to hunt the fraudsters down in such a complicated manner…
I know full well that I am going to be bashed for this post, but I cannot help it, the laws here are simply such, whether we like it or not…
By the way, those we busted were almost exclusively white - although there are a good number of non-white English instructors in the German system (mostly from the US and from South Africa), as well as there are non-white French instructors (mostly from Belgium, France, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon).
Herr Fantasy,
I’ve seen a few Franco-Canadians pass themselves off as native Anglophones here in Korea.
But rather than having countries classify their citizens linguistically, I’d suggest simply having native speakers interview prospective candidates.
About non-natives teaching, when I was teaching ESL at the university level in the US, we gave qualified graduate students from different countries the opportunity to teach in the program. I remember one young lady from Latvia who was an outstanding teacher despite her slight accent.
I take back my previous comment, I’m reminded by the Western Confucian that many “native Canadian” teachers here are francophones, and I’ve met quite a few myself (including my coworker). It must be fun in phonetics class, “No, you leetle frog, it’s ‘eehrrrrr’ not ‘r’.”
3. I think I used to work with the guy you’re talking about. One of the best language teachers I’ve ever met. Great qualifications, great experience, great person. (I was his supervisor for a while, and when I think about it, it could/should have been the other way around.) He eventually landed a very good position — at another one of Korea’s best universities — but I can recall being contacted as a reference by a couple of prospective employers/interviewers about whether or not he was an “original” or “real” Canadian. (His last name was Chinese, so…) As he is Canadian — born and raised - I assured them that he was as “original” a Canadian as I was. This was a truthful answer, but probably not the one they were digging for.
Western Confucian,
I agree with the contents of your post. But please do not address me as “Herr…”. I know that citizens of other countries (e.g. France, Spain, Mexico, Italy…) appreciate being addressed as Monsieur, Señor, Signore…
But for us Germans, being addressed with “Herr” or “Frau” in texts otherwise written in English or French invariably has got an unpleasant ring to it.
Being addressed in this manner by someone who does not know my appearance invariably makes me want to point out that I am a non-white German. Because this “Herr”, when used gratuitously, in our ears somehow has got a Nazi ring to it. I know that there is not really any connection between the two, it is merely a collective German feeling of unease…
Well, I’m african american and I thought the article was crap. It sounded like someone who’s been here long enough to see the symptoms, but not to see the actual cause–the cause being that Koreans simply don’t see foreigners as actual human beings. Someone on Dave’s ESL cafe made the remarkably astute observation that, to Koreans, we are “english speaking holograms”. We come to work, we talk our wacky language, then we go home and pretty much disappear.
Non-english speakers teach english better? Yes and no. Anyone simply *trained* to teach will teach better. Flat out. Korea’s problem is that they want WACKY CRAZY holograms instead of seasoned, qualified teachers.
I’m not even saying that they shouldn’t hire untrained people straight out of school, but where are the “on the job” training programs? Where are the TESOL classes in Seoul? Why not give discounts if teachers want to take a summer and get their certification? There’s no incentive to even be a good-non-hologram here. So, fuck it, gimme my money Korea.
I know plenty of Dutch, French Canadians, Scandinavians, and a few Koreans who speak with more intelligible accents, possess better vocabularies, have a stronger command of grammar, and might possibly make better TEFL teachers than a few of the native speakers I’ve met here over the years. (Not to mention multitudes of native speakers I had the pleasure of meeting in Canada, the US, or England!)
Having native speakers being involved in the interview process, as the WC suggested, might be one way to avoid excluding otherwise qualified candidates on the basis of country of origin.
Also, should Koreans be learning English from native speakers exclusively? Odds are that many - maybe even most - of the people they will use English with internationally in the future will be fellow non-native speakers. Additional exposure to non-native speaker varieties might be a good thing.
“Also, should Koreans be learning English from native speakers exclusively? Odds are that many - maybe even most - of the people they will use English with internationally in the future will be fellow non-native speakers. Additional exposure to non-native speaker varieties might be a good thing.”
globalvillage:
agreed - I was just stating the legal situation in Germany.
BTW, the policy of making all young Germans trilingual in German, English and French is also at the root of the German fascination with Canada, as this is one of the few countries or territories where we can potentially recruit instructors for both of the foreign languages we require, the other countries being Cameroon and Mauritius - and arguably the British Channel Islands (with a preponderance of English in Guernsey and of French in Jersey).
Maybe people here have long been wondering about my fascination with the linguistic situation in Canada. I do not concern myself with this for fun - it is my job to do so. My interest in the village of Casselman in Prescott-Russell, Ont is also strictly professional. I’ve been there once, the place is not really very exciting. But I have to keep up with each and every step they are taking over there. After all, that’s what I do for a living…
@Fantasy:
Define “native speaker.” Do you mean someone who speaks that language as a first language? Here in the US, with our large multilingual population which speaks one language at home and another in public, we have millions of people who are competent bilinguals. Most of our Hispanic students were born in the US to Spanish-speaking families. Their first language is Spanish. Some of them arrived in kindergarten as competent English speakers. A majority qualify for ESL support, but by third grade, most of these will demonstrate full proficiency and be out of ESL. Last year I had a first grade kid move from ESL to a third grade reading level by the end of the year. He was bright and loved to read. Because these kids are in an English-language rich environment for seven hours a day, most of our Hispanics, born and raised in Spanish-speaking homes, will become English-dominant by the end of elementary school. Moreover, there are plenty of native speakers with a poor command of English. Western Confucian is right. A language exam should be part of the hiring process. US public school teachers are required to pass a battery of English tests that include reading, writing, and usage components.
Sonagi,
I fully agree that there are happen to be people who, because of their upbringing in favourable circumstances, are indeed fully bilingual or even trilingual.
The experience in Europe with its vast variety of languages and dialects, however, does show that full multilingualism will, even in the most favourable circumstances, always remain the absolute exception, the realm of those particularly gifted in this field.
Example:
Luxembourg, the country with the highest per capita income in Europe, has long been proud of the trilingualism of her citizens, who claim to be equally fluent in Luxembourgish, French and German. And visitors to this small but elegant country really might get the impression that each and every Luxembourger is fully trilingual.
But then the Luxembourg government took the daring step of testing this bold assertion - and their findings were not entirely to their liking:
18-year old Luxembourg high school graduates were, as an experiment, confronted with complicated texts from the fields of history, sociology, politics and economics, which had previously been part of high school graduation examinations in Germany respectively in France and francophone Belgium. The students were required to reiterate the arguments presented in the texts.
The result was sobering.
The examiners felt that, in the German language exams, the Luxembourgers could merely be credited with roughly half of the percentage points that the German school-leavers had obtained.
In French the Luxembourgers fared a little bit better. But even in this language they managed to obtain only 60% of the score of the French and Belgian students.
For want of a reference group the question of how good the Luxembourgers are in Luxembourgish could not be examined, Luxembourgish not being spoken outside the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, except by expatriate Luxembourgers…
Recently I had the chance of meeting an engineer from Luxembourg with whom I had entered into written correspondence before (in French). I first talked to him in English. But then I thought it might be more polite if I switched to French, although my French is not really up to scratch, as DDA and Someguy will be able to confirm.
But it seems that I was not doing him a favour - he stopped me after a couple of sentences with the words: I am sorry, I can read and write French, but your spoken French is simply too fast for me.
Now maybe he was merely trying to be polite and intended to prevent me from making a fool of myself by speaking a language which I do not fully master.
But my impression was that meant what he said, that he genuinely had problems with the understanding of French spoken at an above-average speed…
It should have read:
I fully agree that there happen to be people…
whatever…
Is it just me, or was the article linguistically just a little off? No offense to Dr sunder, but when you’re complaining about this sort of thing it’s best to make sure your writing is up to the task. Or of course the KT editors might have been the issue…
“Is it just me, or was the article linguistically just a little off?”
Yeah, I was labouring under the same impression. But then, of course, I am not a native speaker of English and in no position to pass judgment…
“Here in the US, with our large multilingual population which speaks one language at home and another in public, we have millions of people who are competent bilinguals. Most of our Hispanic students were born in the US to Spanish-speaking families. Their first language is Spanish. Some of them arrived in kindergarten as competent English speakers. A majority qualify for ESL support, but by third grade, most of these will demonstrate full proficiency and be out of ESL. Last year I had a first grade kid move from ESL to a third grade reading level by the end of the year. He was bright and loved to read. Because these kids are in an English-language rich environment for seven hours a day, most of our Hispanics, born and raised in Spanish-speaking homes, will become English-dominant by the end of elementary school.”
Yes, I can fully subscribe to this point of view. These students certainly have the potential to teach English in later life. I wonder, however, whether I would let them teach Spanish to my kid (if I had one). Because I would imagine that their Spanish might be a tad bit limited to domestic vocabulary…
In other cases Spanish might be the dominant language. But then again, in these cases the ability to teach English is usually rather limited. Granted, there are numerous exceptions to this rule, these are people with a particular knack for languages…
Genuine bilinguals, e.g. Canadians with the ability to write a Ph.D.-thesis in English and French with equal ease, are few and far between. Maybe a certain number of these exist in areas such as Prescott-Russell, l’ouest de l’île de Montréal / Western Montreal Island, in the Outaouais and in the Cantons de l’Est / Eastern Townships around Sherbrooke and Magog. Also in parts of New Brunswick / Nouveau Brunswick. The goal of general bilingualism for a certain region or area seems to be unattainable…
Genuine bilingualism requires outstanding linguistic talent which is given only to the chosen few, with me not among them…
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