Dubius Maximus
- 2016-04-25
Governments fight with business over the matter of certification because the latter needs supply to cover its demand.
The concepts of NETs in Japan and HK and FETs arose in the past to finesse this very problem.
Governments love to invent new ways to register, certify, control people, but trust to businesses to figure workarounds.
If not them, lawyers can do it but at such cost that it must be important to be worth it.
Penelope
- 2016-04-24
Getting degrees and certifications attested is very costly. I had to get it done in the UAE and costs me well over $400.00. Nine out of ten times, a service is need since degrees/certs need to get attested at local, county, state and national level. There is a least four channels to go through and it takes close to three to four weeks to get done.
CarCarGo
- 2016-04-24
As much as I enjoy your contempt for white faces making meager salaries for highly annoying work that doesn't require advanced degrees...
..It's not so flawed and ineffective. In fact, for most students practicing oral English with a native speaker is the very best thing they can do, the most effective and an all important confidence booster.
Of course, there is also the cultural exchange. Today I suggested they use 'Rooster' instead of 'Cock' and how, as retarded as it may seem, we call a hen a 'chicken' and then the 'male chicken' a rooster. We say Roosters are chickens. It might be senseless but in fact its something only a native English speaker can get them through.
Anyways, it really does amaze me you think teaching degrees and experienced holders would ever want to be in China for 3X less than they make back home.
And that you think they'd be better at this job!
Or that they aren't rife with missionaries, alcoholics and at rates nearing that of native Chinese or the despicable 'dancing white monkeys' (and I suppose your 'dancing black monkeys').
paul fox
- 2016-04-24
The education department of the Chinese
government deserves kudos for attempting to improve educational institutions in a
commitment to provide a supportive learning environment for Chinese students.
You'll get no argument from me on the above point, however, I believe much of what the government are doing is essentially paying 'lip-service'.
I have a few transcripts from a seminar that was held in Shanghai back in 1990, which my college professor attended.
The subject back then was how to improve the methods by which English education was essentially delivered in China, to ESL students
I'll dig them out when I get chance and post a few of the topics here. You will see that 24 years later, not much has changed.
The ESL industry in China DOES have many issues that need addressing, but I'm still to be convinced that these latest measures are doing so in a positive and constructive way.
amused
- 2016-04-24
Regulations in every country are variably enforced. China is no different.
Some provinces will continue to institute modified forms of compliance. Some public institutions will expend their 'guangxi' with officials to keep FTs whom they choose to keep.
And private schools, dependent on white faces to market their 'education', will continue to break the rules, enticing naive new FTs to arrive in China on tourist visas.
China's economy has changed radically in the past decade. The government's commitment to the learning of English is no longer of enhanced importance. Rich kids and businessmen in countries around the globe are studying Mandarin. In Shanghai and Beijing and Guangzhou a westerner speaking Chinese no longer attracts attention.
The government of China sees FTs for what they are: native language speakers, not genuine teachers. And like NGOs, FTs are rife with missionaries, alcoholics, drug abusers, and other flotsam from Western countries. Universities and wealthy high schools that want credentialed foreign teachers can recruit them; the school must however spend two or three times the routine FT salary and provide enhanced living quarters to attract these true 'foreign experts'. Every province has shown it is eager to provide visas for teachers with genuine qualifications.
The education model of a dancing white-faced western monkey, ignorant of grammar and pedagogy, to 'perform' oral English while Chinese teachers lecture and drone PPTs at passive students is a flawed and ineffective. The education department of the Chinese government deserves kudos for attempting to improve educational institutions in a commitment to provide a supportive learning environment for Chinese students.
Aside from the fact that China is going to lose a whole load of FT's simply because they were born in the 'wrong' country, there is another 'issue' that will affect the ESL industry in China.
All degrees must now be verified in the country of issue before a FEC can be issued.
OK, so one can argue that the readily-available 'fake' degrees that can be purchased online are now essentially nothing other than expensive toilet paper, but didn't the Chinese government kind-of 'force' the proverbial 'degree-mills' to open in the first place?
When I left school back in the 1970's, people were more interested in doing 4-year apprenticeships than doing a 4-year degree. Apprenticeships meant on-the-job experience as well as pay, so it was far more attractive back then.
Teaching English usually requires that you are a NES and have a TESOL cert, the law states that you must have a degree.
I graduated with my degree at the age of 36, but if anyone had asked me to consider taking a degree at the time I left school, I would have laughed in their face.
When it comes to teaching ESL, TESOL is important, but you'll never convince me that a degree in 'ballroom dancing' even comes close to a 4-year apprenticeship in ANYTHING, yet the 'ballroom dancing' graduate would be accepted (over the 'time-served apprentice'), simply because they have a 'degree'.
I accept what that foxy-little-chick (amused) says about China trying to 'clean-up' the ESL industry, but at the same time why can't we have a little 'common-sense'?
There are some damn good English teachers in China who have 'fake degrees' and were not born in a NES country, and China is going to lose those people for the sake of absurd bureaucracy that makes absolutely no sense at all.
After all, what on earth does sitting in a classroom in 1972 in order to graduate with a degree in art have to do with teaching English to ESL students in 2016 - with a RECENT TESOL diploma?
The whole thing is as absurd as it is stupid!