GoKunming Forums

Discrimination in ESL

misfit (113 posts) • 0

agree with qualification, but as far as i know native speakers dont need to be certified/qualified to teach in most of chinese schools and that is based by the wrong assumption that natives are,by definition, good teachers.

As science/economics teachers need qualification in their major, english language teacher would need the correspondent one, no matter if they are native or not.

Napoleon (1187 posts) • 0

@Misfit

No one is saying that a native speaker is an automatic qualified teacher. It seems to be only in your head that this state of play exists.

Regardless of where you are from you must have a university degree and a TEFL plus 2 years of teaching experience. Therefore anyone who meets these requirements (based on university location) is deemed qualified. If it was a case of Philidelphia bus drivers turning up and taking jobs off experienced teachers on the basis of where they were from, then your point would be valid.

As has been mentioned, there are standards and these are constantly being raised.

Anyone who is a non native (language) speaker and teaching here can get their work permits renewed, no one is having to leave in the morning.

If you don't meet these requirements then what's the point in coming and carrying on that you should be the exception to the rule. Find somewhere where your nationality won't be an issue or come to China and teach another subject, where nationality isn't an obstacle.

If a school wanted a non native English speaker, there are millions of locals they could hire. Accept that if you are a non native speaker who doesn't meet the requirements, perhaps you are hired as a pis aller due to your foreign features than your teaching ability, then put yourself in the position of a Chinese graduate trying to find a job in the language business.

Sure, there will be great teachers from Russia or France who can teach the back end off many a native speaker, but if the PSB had to come and attend a class to see if you were up to the mark or not in your classroom presence there would be visa delays into the months and years. The system is too vast to work on a case by case basis, so it's made the decision to make the educated guess.

Why would the boy going to the US not need British pronunciation? Are Brits and Americans not mutual intelligible? What is the worse offence? use of a British accent or use of ''When it comes to teach English''?

In your IELTS problem are you saying that exams, the sine que non of education and standards, should be done away with? Have you considered that the student who could build an illumination system could function and learn better in his native language than be taught things that, in terms of language, he couldn't understand?

You've come across all sour grapes.

misfit (113 posts) • 0

@napoleon im trying to move the issue from the worker point of view to the designer point of view. the boy who designed the illumination system might have some language problems but he is a genius, and if you are the college board for sure you wanna have it with you and possible keep it in your researching team after graduation...so a law that just rely on language merit is a barrier for your university. We can move the problem to politics (the designers) and see how a law that discriminates between natives and non natives in teaching languages is a barrier for the main purpose that s having a new generation with better english skills.

Napoleon (1187 posts) • 0

@Misfit

So If you are a genius engineer you think you would benefit more at Bei Da being tutored in Chinese, a language you have limited knowledge of, more than a top university in your own country?

Most universities offer foundation language years or terms for students who don't meet the minimum language requirement. This lad must have been even below that, so It was deemed a waste of everyone's time, school and student.

Surely raising the standards of language teaching is raising the language standards of future students, no?

misfit (113 posts) • 0

the best engineers are in us, because us has the best researching teams and i would recommend a genius to go studying in us than staying at bei da. his language problems can be overcome, he is studying engineering and not english literature. This issue was brought up by IELTS test designers, in order to discuss reconsidering the university admission criteria.

i agree with you that government should raise the language teaching standards but native and non natives should show the same qualifications, im not sure that s happening,but maybe im wrong.

Napoleon (1187 posts) • 0

The best Engineering schools are in the US?
The world's best ranked engineering school is Tshinghua University, Beijing. Fourth Place is Zhejiang University, seventh best is Harbin and tenth best is Hong Kong.

I can tell you're desperate to justify your ''foreign expert'' status but no European or American (bar MIT and Berkley) recruitment officer is coming to China on the premise of recruiting the county's best engineering students and charging them thousands for the privilege. This is not an area that most recruitment teams need tread.
If you are going around telling students they need to head to the US for a decent education in engineering then you're failing them in your advice.

Now, to work here we all need to meet the criteria set by the government. It isn't that Native speakers without qualifications can work here and non natives must show further or higher qualifications. We all must show the same things.

If you know something we don't, please say so.

misfit (113 posts) • 0

@napoleon as always you are very aggressive, just calm down. i dont wanna recruit anybody,im not part of any ~foreign expert~ organisation. it just happens that im an engineer, i know us education system and chinese education system and about engineering, that requires creativity and originality, i definitely recommend the first one. tsinghua is ranked number 59 as global university ranking in terms of academic research performance, while harvard is first, mit is second and berkeley is third in the world. then of course that s not a guarantee that the student will do good in there, but in terms of researching i would definitely recommend america.

Alien (3819 posts) • 0

Concerning the subject of the post and the original post: I believe that color prejudice, national prejudice and outright racism do exist in the hiring policies for ESL teachers in China, just as they exist within the general population. I believe that it is indeed worst for black people from African countries. Yes, of course one wants to hire teachers on the basis of their ability to do the job. That should be the only qualification, and very often I'm sure that it is not.
It's a rotten situation - my sympathies.

nnoble (889 posts) • 0

Beware the wikipedia warriors and those who swamp these forums with links to dubious sources. These people simply look for and, of course, find what suits their narrow opinions. With little effort I can find credible sources: World Bank, IMF, ILO, Economist, NBS (China) also: China Daily, SCMP, Credit Suisse etc etc that point to a demographic deficit, some suggest by 2025. No links from me because you can trade statistics for ever and day and expect contradictions within even a single source. China needs and would benefit from a significant rise in immigration and the cultural changes would need addressing sooner rather than later. Could it ever be addressed? On current form, maybe not but then China always acts in its best interests.

Liumingke1234 (3297 posts) • 0

I think the main problem is being dark in skin color. I use to work with a teacher from South Africa and his was white and he had no problem getting a job anywhere. The Chinese are influenced by what they see on T.V., movies and in printed media. It's terrible but it's the way it is at this moment. Hopefully it will change but it won't be soon. I agree that it should be based on qualifications. Many minds needs to be changed.

Related forum threads

Login to post