Well, I refused a post in South Korea as they were merely interested in whether I was a native English speaker, who must be caucasian, young and blonde. However, on a recent CELTA course, which I undertook, my none-native speaking fellow trainees lacked knowledge of idiomatic phrases and slang lexis, which are imperative components of natural English. Therefore, while they could teach formal English they couldn't teach natural English. This needs to be addressed in your research,
When I was working in Taiwan, I worked alongside non-native English speaking teachers. The practice in my school was to advertise on websites for foreign teachers and then advertise locally for Taiwanese staff. I wonder how big of a role local advertising may play in the hiring of non-native teacher speakers? Also are certain website such as Dave's ESL mainly targeted at recruiting teachers from abroad? Of course racist hiring policies are to be condemned and those schools should be held accountable but I'm not sure whether they are the rule and not the exception. It's a good argument that you present but it's hard to condemn only websites such as the companies presenting their jobs as holiday opportunities when the industry standard in a lot of countries is a 4 week CELTA course. Ultimately, there are many issues that we need to look into as a profession but unless organizations such as TEFL Equity Advocates unionise teachers working in different countries then I think it will be hard to make much of a difference. Thanks for this paper though, good stuff.
Well, I refused a post in South Korea as they were merely interested in whether I was a native English speaker, who must be caucasian, young and blonde. However, on a recent CELTA course, which I undertook, my none-native speaking fellow trainees lacked knowledge of idiomatic phrases and slang lexis, which are imperative components of natural English. Therefore, while they could teach formal English they couldn't teach natural English. This needs to be addressed in your research,
When I was working in Taiwan, I worked alongside non-native English speaking teachers. The practice in my school was to advertise on websites for foreign teachers and then advertise locally for Taiwanese staff. I wonder how big of a role local advertising may play in the hiring of non-native teacher speakers? Also are certain website such as Dave's ESL mainly targeted at recruiting teachers from abroad?
Of course racist hiring policies are to be condemned and those schools should be held accountable but I'm not sure whether they are the rule and not the exception. It's a good argument that you present but it's hard to condemn only websites such as the companies presenting their jobs as holiday opportunities when the industry standard in a lot of countries is a 4 week CELTA course. Ultimately, there are many issues that we need to look into as a profession but unless organizations such as TEFL Equity Advocates unionise teachers working in different countries then I think it will be hard to make much of a difference. Thanks for this paper though, good stuff.
Yes market driven, but we need to understand how this role affects our students and their relationship with the language and their own identity.