6/24/2006

another reason to hire native English teachers

Chua Mui Hoong wrote her piece today explaining the need for native speakers. Her reasons, why not, as long as they are trained and capable. Then why not trained Singaporeans who are capable? If the conditions are capabilities and being trained to do the job, you don't need native speakers. She then argued that with native speakers, you can create a conducive environment for the language to flourish. True, how many do you need to create such an environment? 5 native speakers in a school? Here is her answer and the main problems that our society will have to deal with. 'Students need good speech models. Hiring a few more hundred English lanuguage teachers can help create a good English speaking environment in neighbourhood schools. Students will benefit.' Sure I also agree. Just have 100 native English speaking teachers should be sufficient for a school to provide such an environment. Just a minute, how many teachers are there in a school, 50? How many schools are there? There are 178 primary schools. Just primary schools alone we will need to recruit 17,800 native speakers to provide the environment. And do we still have room for local teachers? If training the teachers is the solution, maybe recruit a few native speaking teachers if we can't find any local teachers good enough. But this will not be able to create the conducive environment as required. Or like some local international schools did, hire a few foreign looking teachers and print their faces on the school magazines, that will give some credibility that the schools are really international and world class with world class foreign looking teachers.

6 comments:

  1. That's akin to saying importing a few hundreds angmos and we can declare that we are democratic or have more freedom of expression.

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  2. By importing those native teachers, it can only just give a boost to the system, it can't last. It is like taking liquor. After providing the high, it get worst after sobering up, even the native teachers may get themselves comtaminated and required stronger doses such employing professor of english to save them. Ha ha ha, a never ending process.

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  3. no lah, it is not an issue of democracy or freedom of expression. it is angmocracy.

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  4. Chua's argument was "Hiring a few more hundred English lanuguage teachers can help create a good English speaking environment in neighbourhood schools.". Likewise, importing a few hundred angmos is going to make S'pore more democratic. Can you see the silly assumptions made? One sparrow does not make a summer, neither do hundreds.

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  5. can call that silly can we? it all depends on what is the objective. if the objective is to make ah lian and ah huat to speak like janet and john, then it is the right way to go. all the schools must employ 50% of their teachers from native speakers. now that will provide the real environment necessary for good english sounding speaker.

    and to prevent dilution of this effort, half of channel 8's programme must also be in english. and our friends like jack neo, mark lee and their merry men,and phua chu kang, please go to taiwan or batam. their presence will sabo our effort in promoting good english.

    you can't on one hand teach people to speak good english and on the other hand try to promote speak good singlish right?

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  6. best regards, nice info » » »

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