Filipino Teachers

[HHTel]

I would hope this doesn't degenerate to foul language and unproductive critique.
I recently received a PM from an individual:


"I have worked at four schools in Thailand in the past. Three out of four of these schools had teachers from the Phillipines. A high proportion of them are just not good teachers. Most of them teach by rote, and a lot of them do not speak using the correct English grammar.
They are NOT native English speakers, their native language is Tagalog.
I would happily sit any English test, written, spoken, grammar, whatever, against any native of the Phillipines! Can you set it up"

'a lot of them do not speak using the correct English grammar.' - Of course no-one from any country speaks grammatically correct. As most language teachers will know there is a huge difference between the written and spoken word.

My reply was as follows:

"Thank you for your mail however.....

I am a university educated, ex grammar school boy (which shows my age). I was a school governor in the UK. My teaching in Thailand is mostly limited to universities. I'm not saying there are no bad Filipino teachers but there are also very good ones. I think every school with farang teachers have their share of bad farang teachers. Whatever your thoughts, it doesn't entitle you to make derogatory remarks about teachers from the Phillipines. I criticise the Thais, but I also understand that the problems lie in their culture.

I have met a lot of Filipinos both here and in the UK. In general they are more qualified and more devoted than Europeans. As I'm sure you're aware, there is a huge influx of Filipinos into the UK. The NHS would suffer even more without them.

With regard to the Philipines, let's just correct some of the things you seem to believe.

1. Cebuano is the largest spoken dialect in the Philipines with Tagalog coming a close second. 24.9% and 23.82% respectively.

2. English is one of the two official languages. The other being Filipino which is derived from Tagalog.

3. Newspapers are written in English. Education is taught in English. Business and government matters are in English.

4. And I quote: /English is the most widely used language in the country, especially for education, commerce and the professions. In fact, the Philippines is the third largest English speaking country in the world./unquote. "

I would love to hear other peoples views on being taught by Filipinos. I have a great respect for them and they certainly don't deserve some of the comments on this forum. If you are a Filipino teacher, now's your chance to put the record straight.

[DawnHRD]

With reference to your last sentence, does that mean that you are only interested in views from Filipino/Filipina (far more often) teachers?

[HHTel]

No of course not, Dawn. I was looking for views from anyone with regard to Filipinos teaching English. It would of course be interesting to hear how the Filipino teachers themselves feel.

[Vital Spark]

OK, HHTel, I'm not a Filipino teacher, but I've just had an interesting and enjoyable evening with a young lass who goes to a school in Hua Hin and has a Filipino teacher.

Now these are her words, not mine. 'The Filipino teacher is OK, but she says words in a strange way and I can't always understand what she says'.

I looked at her homework book and she had a page of 'word association' which she copied from the board. Quote: Horoscope = small, telescope = far . The reason that she was round my house was because she needed to interview me for her homework. All the questions she had written down were given to her by her Filipino teacher. Some were OK, but there were glaring grammatical mistakes in some of the sentences.

I've worked with some great Filipino teachers in Bangkok, and I've also worked with some ignorant and incompetent 'true' native speakers. Just like anything in life, you can't generalise.

I doubt if you'll get any Filipinos writing on this board, they're too busy preparing their grammar lessons...

VS

PS. I went to a grammar school too, and, yes, I am that old.

[HHTel]

Thanks, VS,

Yes of course there are good and bad in all walks of life. Your story reminded me of my daughter coming home from school some time ago. Her homework was to practice the use of -these're- and -those're-.

Nicely printed out worksheets etc.

Q: What are these?
A: These're books.

Thai teacher of course. Maybe she listened to 'The Worzels' when she was younger.

"I've got a brand new combined harvest'r...........

[Brit Jim]

Just diverting slightly!

Retiring to HH in the next few years.

Just wandered what the teaching job front is like in HH for foreigners?

Any demand for it or do you have to be in BKK?

No previous experience, Just got Degree with TEFAL to follow.

Any ideas welcomed??

Cheers

[DawnHRD]

OK, I don't think you're going to like my answer, either, HHTel, sorry.

I've worked with & seen Filipina teachers in Hong Kong. My impression, of the ones I've seen/worked with is that they were excellent support teachers or assistants; very good with the kids, pleasant, friendly etc. But they weren't good language teachers (English). As VS states, the accent can be very strong and the ones I saw didn't really have a strong grasp of grammar or the reason why you write/say things in English. By that I mean, in certain cases, they could correct something but not state why it was wrong.
A lot of the teaching was done by rote, but then, many of the Chinese schools in Hong Kong like the children to learn that way, so I can't say that that was the teachers' faults. I can definitely state though that Filipina teachers were invariably a step up on the local Chinese teachers who taught English. Some of them were incredibly bad.

[johnnyk]

English is indeed the 2nd language of The Phillipines.
Coming from a poor country, Filipinos may well be likely to work for less than falangs and perhaps be more glad of the job.
Maybe not the best English teachers but nice people though you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of Manny Pacquiao.

[Spitfire]

One of the reasons they get a hard time in Thailand is because the Thais view them as cheap labour, can speak better English than the Thais but cost only half what a white-skinned farang costs(sad but true).

The Thais also know that they can earn more money here, even under the present situation, than they can in their home country, so it is exploited. Thai cultural perceptions also get in the way.

Agree with those that say they are good support teachers. The thing that sometimes lets them down is that they are not so good at modern teaching methods, like PPP, TBL, student centered learning, the lexical approach, real language skills lessons, etc, etc.

Many are still teaching in a Victorian style, ie through grammar and nothing else, which has been totally de-bunked and is now only a side show of the full picture.

But, having said all that, they have a useful place to fill and without them many schools here would be up a certain creak without a certain something.

[Lev]

HHTel, do you realise that republishing PM's in full or part is against our terms and conditions? Please read them.

[HHTel]

Yes Lev, I do realise.

However, the PM involved has already been put on open forum by the sender so that already puts it into the public domain. OK?

[Super Joe]

To me it's quite simple, you talk to a filipino or filipina for two minutes and you know what their accent is like and whether you'd want them teaching your kid English.

I worked with dozens of filipino's/filipina's, some way above my station professional, degree-qualified engineers/surveyors etc.
Lovely friendly genuine people on the whole, and would never question their work ethic, knowledge etc, but their accents were the butt of friendly ribbing.
I haven't met a Filipino/a to date without a serious accent and been to Phils about 15 times.

But to be fair I haven't met one who is an English teacher yet, so hopefully they do not have the same accents as will be teaching my kid one day soon.

SJ

[HHTel]

The UK has many diverse dialects. I lived in Glasgow and I still have problems understanding a broad Glaswegian.

People from North Wales commonly use Welsh when conversing. They have a strong accent when speaking English but they're still classed as 'native English Speakers'.

Although the Filipino accent is different, why is it singled out from every other accent. Seriously, I'm curious.

[Super Joe]

I wouldn't single it out Tel, that's a revelant point.
I also wouldn't want my kid to grow up being taught English by anyone with a strong accent.

When I wrote 'accents', that included pronounciating words incorrectly, at least to me.
They all seemed to say "fick up the tele-pone" and "pilipinos".
As I say, those were degree qualified people BUT NOT teachers.
So maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but a simple conversation can usually decide.

I'm certainly not trying to put them down as a race, the opposite, I'd put them right up there with respect to work etc.

SJ

[HHTel]

I would agree with you to a point,SJ. Some years ago, Salesian had only one farang teacher. He was Irish. After he'd gone, I became aware that all the students being taught by him had an Irish accent.

Hence the importance of using tapes. Students need to hear many voices and dialects, otherwise they do finish up talking like their teacher. Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that English has so many variations. It doesn't mean that a teacher without an accent is better than one with an accent. As long as the students are exposed to a variety of dialects, there shouldn't be a problem.