English villages in Taiwan

Taiwan’s first English language village has opened in Taiwan, where Taiwanese children go twice a week for English immersion classes.

The Happy English Village features themed classrooms: a bank, a hotel, an airport waiting room and a coffee bar amongst others, and attracts 120 students. It was the idea of a non-profit organisation called the King Car Education Foundation.

The idea came to General Director Morgan Sun after visiting similar immersion villages in Korea. Concerned about the relatively poor ranking of Taiwanese students on the IELTS exam, compared to Japanese, South Korean and Vietnamese students, he decided it was time for an immersion village in Taiwan.

He hopes that the emphasis on speaking with the volunteer foreign teachers at the village, will shift the emphasis away from rote-learning and exams in the Taiwanese education system, towards communicative learning through real-life experiences.

CamTESOL is organising its 4th conference from February 23-24 next year. The theme is “Building Bridges to the World”.

The conference is spearheaded by IDP Education, and includes the participation of classroom teachers and future teachers, administrators, publishers and ELT organisations, as well as interested Cambodian residents.  CamTESOL states as its aim to “increase the links between the ELT community in Cambodia and the international ELT community”.

David Nunan is scheduled to be the keynote speaker, and everyone working in ELT is invited to participate.

Sound interesting? Have a look at the CamTESOL website for more information.

The winner of a teaching contest in Korea, secondary school English teacher Song Jung-sun, has said that a college admissions test is to blame for inefficient English language teaching in the country.

The focus on preparing students for the tests, which “emphasise only reading skills”, means that English education is only a “yardstick for student selection”, according to Song.

She also says that many parents do not trust the school teachers, and enrol their children in private language schools where high scores in the tests are the main aim. The governement should spend its money on educating Korean teachers, rather than increasing the number of foreign teachers in the country, she argues.

One reader’s comment on the article suggests instead that the fear of making mistakes as a result of the “face” aspect of Korean culture is the biggest inhibitor to learning.

Do you teach in Korea? Is English teaching inefficient? If so, what is to blame? Post a comment below…

First of all, our apologies to all our readers for the long absence. But the TEFL blog is back…

The phrase “you know” is the 57^th most frequently used word or phrase in English. In fact, 60% of all use of the word “know” is in this phrase. That’s according to Professor Ronald Carter of Nottingham University, speaking at a session of the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference, which took place last week in Malaysia.

Another talk to make an impact, reports the Malaysia Star Online, was “Learning English with a Mobile Phone”. Dr Timothy Collins said that “a mobile phone can support many kinds of learning… where learners can see, hear and touch as they press buttons to express their understanding”.

Do you agree with Dr Collins? Or do you see mobile phones as a menace to English language classrooms, with teenage students spending whole lessons texting their friends under the table?

If you attended the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference this year, tell us what you thought. Next year’s conference will be in August in Bali, Indonesia, with the theme “Globalising Asia: The Role of ELT”.

The teaching of core subjects such as Maths and Science in English in Vietnam’s primary schools is causing some concern for education experts and members of the public, according to this article.

The concern is the effect it will have on the Vietnamese language. One primary school teacher is quoted as saying “Currently, many young people cannot write a grammatically-correct sentence in Vietnamese… there should be careful consideration when deciding on what language to teach subjects at schools”.

Nguyen Gia Phong, an expert with the Education Science Institute is also concerned that teaching core subjects in English may spread to higher education, which could accelerate the Vietnamese language’s deterioration.

The importance of teaching foreign languages in Vietnam is not underestimated, but, as another primary school teacher points out, “the teaching of foreign languages, and using foreign languages to teach other subjects in the official curriculum, are two entirely different things.”

What do you think about this issue? Post your comments below…

Japan is the focus of today’s post. First, an article from the Japan Times discusses the pros and cons of working for large and small schools in Japan, with the article Bigger is not always better for Japan’s English teachers.

Salaries, the article points out, do not differ that much between large and small schools, but there are some other points worth considering.

According to the article, job and income security are higher in larger schools and chains such as Nova, ECC and GEOS. If a branch of a large chain closes down for financial reasons, teachers can be transferred to another branch - not so in smaller, family-run schools.

On the other hand, teachers may be more likely to face contractual problems with larger schools. According to Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers, quoted in the article, larger schools are “particularly adept at writing contracts which protect themselves”.

Teachers may also feel that they are working for a faceless company, rather than experiencing the family atmosphere of a smaller school. But this can have its downside too, with more pressure on teachers: “If a tiny cog in a huge machine breaks down it’s unlikely the whole thing will come to a shuddering halt. That’s not the case when the teacher is the machine.”

If you’ve had experience working for a small school or a large chain in Japan, or both, have a look at the full article and post a comment below - do you agree with the points raised?

The second article asks Why do the Japanese struggle with English?

The author, Steve Kaufmann, writes that most Japanese people he meets in business struggle with their English, compared to, say, Swedes. One of the main reasons for this, he says, is the “language or cultural ego”, the belief that Japanese language and culture is so unique that to become fluent in another language would cause a learner to lose that uniqueness. In part 2 of the article, the author points to other factors, including the differences in sentence structure, vocabulary and pronunciation, the Kana writing system and less exposure to English-speaking culture.

Do you agree with Steve? Post a comment below…

If you have made a customer service call in the last few years from the UK or the US, your call may have been answered in one of the many call centres in Indian cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai, which handle customer service enquiries for a large number of UK and US companies.

Bangalore has gained a reputation as the “world’s back office”, an “information-technology outsourcing champion”, says the Toronto Star. But it is a reputation which could be in jeopardy if state government plans to close schools which continue to teach in English, rather than the local language Kannada, go ahead.

You only have to look at the changing names of Indian cities (Calcutta to Kolkata, Bombay to Mumbai) to see the success of movements to promote indigenous languages and shake off colonial-era legacies. But the move to change the language of education in Karnataka state (of which Bangalore is the capital) has sparked criticism from educators, parents and, of course business leaders who say that Bangalore could”lose its competitive edge if it shuns one of its greatest assets”.

What do you think? Is English indispensable for India to continue its economic rise? Or should the trend to promote indigenous languages over English continue? Post a comment below…

According to this article on ShanghaiDaily.com, the vice chairman of China’s top legislature has said that English study in China is to blame for many of the mistakes found in Chinese publications in the last decade. Studying English, the argument runs, means that Chinese studies suffer.

The author of the article disagrees wholeheartedly, and blames the problem instead on an exam-oriented education system. English, the author suggests, is merely a scapegoat…

Do you live in China? Is the education system too exam-oriented, or is English to blame? Post a commment below…

The Korea Times reported last week that teachers are being refused jobs in private language schools in Korea because of their skin colour.

An American college graduate of mixed-race was, according to the article, told by a potential employer “I’m sorry but we only want white people. We want a native speaker that parents approve of”. The article highlights the similar case of a black American teacher who was told by 10 schools that he could not be hired because he was not white.

The owner of one English language school is quoted as saying that the parents are to blame, because they only want their children to be taught by white native speakers. The American teacher mentioned above says that “not only are [the parents and directors] racist, but they lie about it, deny it…”

According to the article, there is no legislation to protect against this discrimination, which means that skin colour often takes precedence over qualifications or experience when it comes to hiring teachers.

So, have you taught in Korea? Is this article a true reflection of the situation, or do you think it exaggerates the problem? Post a comment below…

The Chinese government has launched a campaign, according to this article, to clean up mistranslations and bad English, in preparation for the world descending on Beijing for the Olympic Games in 2008.

Warning signs such as “Nice to live. Pay attention to safety” and menus offering “Swallowing the clouds” have made the government realise that if things aren’t changed, the city will “lose face”, according to Liu Yang of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages program, quoted in the article.

As well as correcting signs and giving Chinese dishes in restaurants standardized names, citizens are being offered free English classes to boost the number of foreign language speakers and police officers and taxi drivers are being taught useful English phrases.

Will everything be completed to the government’s satisfaction in time for the Games in 2008? If you’re teaching in China at the moment, let us know how things are progressing by posting a comment below…