As well as a language teacher, I am a language student - which in my case is Mandarin Chinese - one of main near future ambitions is to go to a Chinese university for a year and learn Chinese and improve it. I have to pay money to do this, and I don't expect anyone to do this for free.starchild5 wrote:
I think you totally missed the point of my post. You took it personally, since you are an english teacher.
I was talking about my MOTHER TONGUE not english ???
My Mother Tongue is NOT ENGLISH.
Most people who are language teachers have usually learned the language as a native speaker, I don't know why they have to depart their knowledge for free, first of all - most teachers who have some relevant academic qualifications are taught linguistics, teaching methodology and classroom management - that's not instilled in you from birth.
The one thing is that English has become the lingua franca of the world, that isn't my fault or any other English teacher, it would be nice if Danish, Estonian, Quechua or yes - even Hindi had the same universal appeal as English - but they don't, the same rules apply for an Estonian who wants to teach his native language to people in the Far East as it does for you. English is the language that people want to learn and they're willing to pay lots of money like I am willing to pay lots of money for when I put aside a year to learn Chinese.
But why?If my mother tongue was popular like english I would teach for free was my point, english will sound like a curry accent since its not my mother tongue so who wants to learn with an Indian accent was the point i was making.
You missed the mother tongue part completely and only took the teaching english part.
Do you expect the working girls of the Philippines and Thailand to give you free sex because they were born with a vagina.
You pay as do lots of other men, in fact, they come from all around the world and that generates more revenue than all the English schools combined in Asia - no-one goes into a brothel and expects the women there to give their vaginas away for free, something they were born with.
The world these days is a capitalist one. If I want someone to teach me something - from Chinese, learning to drive to cutting hair - I'll pay them the going rate - there is no difference between teaching English or teaching Chinese for a native speaker of Mandarin.
The thing is, you're right - the English teaching industry in Asia is generating billions, they bring a lot of barely qualifed people over, some can't do the job, there are a lot of bad eggs, all those accusations have gravitas, the reputation ESL has is f***ed up....I was stressing that Chinese schools are paying very low to english teachers and making more money from parents having a western teacher around. To kill the corporate greed, I was suggesting, we should teach english for free. I totally get it...We all have bills to pay.
I was talking about one's Mother Tongue not english per se and you took offence to that. You were only agreeing as much as my curry Indian accent teaching english. You never said anything about one's Mother Tongue being natural to oneself.
However, we are lucky as native English speakers to have this option to be 'happier abroad' even Xiongmao was willing to quit his well paying job in London to go and teach English - we are lucky in the way a Polish man isn't who wants to live a happier abroad as in we can teach English. It's a good way to make a living, are there a lot of problems with it at the moment? Yeah there are but the governments are doing something about it, the Chinese are now making it harder and harder for someone without a degree to find work and become legal. Hopefully, this will lead to better people coming over to teach and sharpening the lousy reputation ESL has in Asia (and it has... )
