Are native speakers of English “natural English teachers”?
A piece of “confession” from one of my UK colleagues. Please do leave your comments/reflections, thanks 
“Hi Chen here is my account from working for a year at a private language institute in Korea from 2005-6.
I decided to go to Korea mainly for travelling after law school. The recruitment process happened so quickly (after an e-mail to a recruiter and a phone-call from the school’s owner I was hired) that I did not have time to obtain any TEFL qualifications. I was very nervous as my English, at least my explicit knowledge of English terminology and structure was next to nothing. I could explain what a verb was, an adverb or a clause etc? Forget it. I flicked though a TEFL book on the plane over there. It didn’t help.
When i arrived at the school I have to say that the owner was very kind and tried to help with absolutely everything. He introduced me to korean food, showed me where the bank, post office etc was and gave me a few hints about the culture (e.g. koreans are very shy, so respect for elders etc). The first day at work (which was actually the day after I arrived) was spent being introduced to the teachers and sitting in on classes all day to watch what the foreign teachers did. We worked 10am-6pm Monday-Friday.
The school was a private language institute with three foreign teachers (including myself), about four korean teachers as well as two or three support staff for reception/cleaning/cooking duties. The school’s owner was at the school all day in his office, but was not involved with any of the teaching. The person in charge of the teachers was his wife who set all of the curriculums. The school had approximately sixty students aged between five and eleven. I think the average age was about nine and the average class size was about eight students.
The owner and his wife were well aware that I had no teaching experience, but felt that after a day of observation and a brief explanation of the schedules for each of the classes I was to teach ( i.e. the textbook chapter for that day) that I would be fine. One of the american teachers sat in on my first class, but after that i was on my own.
We each had a korean partner-teacher for each lesson. What this meant was that each class came to the school for two lessons, one taken by the korean teacher and the other by myself. My partner teacher was very friendly and gave me a few hints on classroom management for some of the larger, noisy classes or particular naughty students.
What I found very hard in the first few months was filling the time in each fifty-minute class. I was just told which book was to be used in the class and which pages to teach that day. There was no instruction to or advice on making lesson plans. With some of the younger or more elementary classes the lesson for the day could be as simple as teach “hello” and “goodbye.” At the time, teaching these two words for fifty minutes to children who were easily distracted (and as I could speak no korean, difficult to control) seemed quite simply crazy. I would resort to drawing fruit/animals on the board and asking if they knew what they were called, or playing the ‘hangman’ game. Sometimes i would open the book to see what I had to teach on the way to a lesson and not know whether to laugh or cry.
I persisted for a month or two as the owner and his wife seemed happy. They just reminded me to speak as much as possible, writing and teaching the workbook was for the korean teacher. The idea seemed to be that by simply speaking in my native accent, about (seemingly) anything at all, would effectively teach the students english.
However i was losing the will to live fast and so asked the owner’s wife for advice on how to make the classes more interesting (her only comment on my classes was that i needed to make them more ‘fun’). She asked, “have you looked at the teacher’s guides?” “What teacher’s guides?” I replied. Looking back it seemed quite naive but I had absoultely no idea about teaching, my background was in law. I was amazed that i had not been at least shown one, they were hidden away in her office.
Anyway i started using the teacher’s guides and things got a lot better, they highlighted different activities and which cassette tapes to use. It gave me a lot more confidence and enthusiasm as I could now make rough plans for each class. The various time-filling exercises I had been dreaming up before to fill thirty-five minutes or more now just had to fill five minutes and were often not needed. My partner teacher noticed I was using the teachers guides and we begin to talk more about planning lessons and which kinds of activites each class or student preferred. At the time the teacher’s guides seemed very comprehensive, i have since learned on my MA that these are the most basic of plans.
With regards the other teachers, one (an american) had been teaching in korea for four years and had done a BA in education and didn’t seem to plan lessons (I think his plans and ideas were in his head and he had taught all of the same textbooks many times before) -he was seen as the ‘head’ of foreign teachers but tended to only give advice on ‘problem’ students and stories about trouble with students parents. The other teacher (another american) had been in the US army most of her life and had come to korea to save money. She was very confrontational with the koreans and complained a lot about the ‘inadequacies’ with koreans and korean culture (I sometimes wondered why she had come to korea). She refused to plan for any lessons for her whole time at the school, claiming she just needed to glance at the book before going into class.
On three occasions we had ‘training,’ where a couple of people (usually Western) would come in and give a presentation about teaching. Unfortunately these presentations were completely useless, usually involving marketing a new textbook or giving us basic advice such as “make sure you check that all of your board markers are working before going to a class.” The owner’s wife seemed disappointed that we did not think much
of the ‘training’ sessions but never asked why and was not interested on any training suggestions we made. The lack of communication was a problem -conflicts were often caused when she would announce that we would have to come in on a saturday (e.g. for a school ‘open day’), the main issue here being that instead of giving us a few weeks notice she would inform us on the friday morning before.
Although I enjoyed my time there I think the main thing that I didn’t like was the lack of support and encouragement (let alone the absence of any rewards or incentives). This was very important for me as a novice teacher. If I was doing a good/satisfactory job I could expect the owner’s wife to show no interest, if I was not doing as expected she would immediately come to criticise. The only positive feeback I got was from my students parents, who would come up to me at parents evenings to say their children were really enjoying their classes, some of them even invited me to their apartments for dinner or for a day out at the weekend. A simple “good job” from my supervisor would have been tremendously encouraging and increased my confidence as well. She only said that I was a good teacher in the last month of my time there (when they were desperately trying to get me to renew my contract and even offered me the post of head-teacher!).
I think one of the key things that helped me through my time in korea was my fascination with korean culture. I knew very little about Korea before I went there and did not have any idea what to expect, I had never visited Asia before. But when I got there I made a point of only eating korean food, studying korean intensively and trying to make as many korean friends as possible. I think it helped me to understand how my supervisors felt about certain things and what they expected of me and the foreign teachers (on more than one occasion I found myself acting as a mediator between the two americans and my supervisor when there was an argument). I made a point of getting to know all of the support staff well (they could speak only a few words of english so it was a good opporunity to practise my korean) eat with my students (instead of eating in the foreign teachers room) and generally try to integrate with the koreans as much as possible. My intention at the time was to stay in Korea for a few years as I was enjoying my time there so much (however I met my fiance who was due to come to England to study at the same time my contract finished).
I cannot fault the support I was given outside of work -if I had a problem with my apartment, needed to book a trip, sending money home, etc etc, the school owner would go out of his way to help me. He even invited me to his parent’s house for the traditional Sol-Lal New Year celebrations. It was the lack of support in work, which seemed to be based on the premise that native-speaker = can automatically teach english, which meant that me and my fellow westerners were simply not used effectively. By the end of my year there I felt like a teacher, unfortunately then, as for most other people who teach TEFL in Korea, it was time to come home. I can understand that these schools are businesses and probably do not have the time or resources to devote more than a day or two for training new teachers. But if they will persist on not requiring any teaching experience or relevant qualifications for native-speaker teachers then constant, ongoing support to these teachers must be given to ensure that they and most importantly, the students, are getting the most out of their native-speaker teachers.
I am due to return to Korea in September this year having finished my MA in TEFL. I will return as a teacher of english and not just a native-speaker of english. The two do not necessarily equate.
James”
URL: http://cn.stevenlichen.com/archives/1425
April 1st, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Well, in the real world, nothing can be perfect and ideal. Any endeavor cannot escape the harsh rule of economics. Money comes first.
The source of income is from the enrolment of students. Juggling between student enrolment and foreign teacher recruitment is pretty tricky.
I can attest to this as I have had 4 years of foreign teacher placement experience. I interviewed foreign teachers over the phone from Hong Kong and placed them in uni and schools in China. Things are pretty tricky.
The confession aptly reflected the real situation almost everywhere foreign teachers are being hired.