English teachers are needed
Re: "Take English action", (PostBag, Nov 24), "Colonial benefit", (PostBag, Nov 26) and "Shaking up English," (PostBag, Nov 26).
While the first letter does make good points, such as the need to test students' actual speaking skills, I would have to take issue with the letter's insistence of having only those native speakers with English or Education degrees teaching in the kingdom.
What benefit does studying English literature have in teaching the language? If anything, it has been my experience that natives with English degrees actually make worse teachers than do others.
They seem to know so much about the language, that they cannot put themselves in place of the learner, and are unable to comprehend how hard it is to learn a foreign language.
While the second letter may have a point in stating that many countries have been able to produce adequate English speakers with teachers who reside in the their home country, the writer neglects to point out is that many of those Asian countries have previously been occupied by Western powers.
So English language proficiency has been transmitted in almost genetic-like fashion there. Thus, of course, they can speak and teach English better than here.
Nonetheless, I wish to point out that countries which have never really been occupied by Western powers, such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, employ native English speaking teachers en masse.
So while he is correct in asserting that having better trained English instructors who were born here would improve things in the kingdom, this does not at all imply that one should do away with native English speaking teachers entirely. There is still room for native English speakers in Thailand.
Now, even Southeast Asian powerhouses such as Hong Kong and Singapore are employing native English speakers, which is another point worth making.