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This week in Shanghaiist
About 100 Chinese teachers are expected to arrive at state schools in the United Kingdom (yes, that haven of foreign language education) by next year, but schools which have already employed some of those teachers in their classrooms (which they described as "lovely") have already found problems, such as the following:
- "Their lack of familiarity with the English system of discipline, target setting etc is a problem."
- "They also tend to have different, perhaps unrealistic, expectations of pupils."
- "Concerns are expressed about Chinese teachers' abilities to manage pupils, particularly whole classes or where there is a tendency for students to be disruptive."
- "You need skilled teachers who can cope with the negativity."
We don't know who these Chinese teachers are that are being sent to the UK and where they've taught in China to begin with, but we do know we shortened our life expectancy by at least a decade or two teaching rowdy Shanghainese kids. But then again, most of the kids we taught either didn't want to be there or had no personal interest in learning English, and were simply forced to take up the class by their parents (who were able to afford it). One wonders if the kids in the UK are given some degree of choice in which foreign language they want to take up? Maybe some of those kids would rather learn Esperanto instead? Or perhaps a language as useful as Latin?
Schools have also requested the exam boards to "make GCSEs in Mandarin easier because the language was seen as too difficult even for bright pupils". We don't know what this means for the world fifty years down the road, but one need only take a look at the armies of students that China is sending to the ends of the world, and the number of them that are coming back as interpretors and translators in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, etc. Just turn on CCTV on any given day and whenever you have a top Chinese politician or diplomat meeting his/her foreign counterpart, you will see that both interpretors sitting behind them will undoubtedly be Chinese. We could be wrong, but we don't recall seeing any foreign interpretors.
In his previous life, Shanghaiist was a Chinese-English translator. And we were informed by the big boss that in the early days of China's opening up, the translation market was mainly dominated by English-Chinese services as foreign enterprises rushed to China. In the last few years though, Chinese-English translation services have grown exponentially as the world suddenly realises it needs to understand China on a much deeper level.
We've also been told by friends in the human resources industry that as fat expatriate pay packages become a thing of the past, many American/European managers (who refuse to master Chinese) are getting replaced by bilingual/bicultural Singaporeans, Malaysians, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, ABCs, BBCs etc., who eventually are replaced by local managers a few years down the road if they aren't able to continue bringing value to the company.
In the age of outsourcing and the internet, none of our jobs are for life. Any job can be packed and shipped to some other location, as Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat says. Now, good luck to anyone trying to tell that to British schoolchildren. But the real lesson for expatriates planning to stay on in China is this: Either be willing to gain more than a perfunctory ability in Chinese, OR prepare to ship out over the long run.
Related links
The Telegraph: Rowdy pupils disrupt schools Mandarin project
Richard Spencer: The tribulations of teaching Mandarin
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I was a technical trainer in the US many years ago. Initially I was employed to train engineers from China using Mandarin.
Later on, because I am bilingual, I had classes from engineers in the US, and all other international locations.
Well, unless one has done it, one would not realized the vase differences between how to teach Chinese vs US students or students from the S. American regions (for example). Teaching Chinese students is like 'stuff ducks (Chinese expressions)' They generally expect to have everything lined up for them.
Teaching US students, for example, one gives them lots of room for 'innovative' ideas. Therefore it is much harder to teach US students because THE TEACHER has to be very flexible, very knowledgeable, very active in responding to questions ...
In short, teaching Chinese students is a piece of cake. Teaching US students (I suppose UK students would be much the same) is not something I would take it VERY LIGHTLY.
Do what some Chinese professors do in the States, learn power point! Super hard tests for the win!
The picture of the Chinese teacher is not promising. Any young, inexperienced teacher in a classroom would get their ass kicked on day one, in a foreign culture it is much tougher. A better list of candidates would be those Chinese teachers who already teach foreigners in China. Though the foreign gov'ts would have to make it worth their while as these teachers are usually teaching corporate types for good money.
As for languages, english will probably still be dominant in 50 years and relying on kids of immigrants to the West or locally those gifted enough to master a language at the level of fluency is an expensive exercise. Math is the universal language and there is a great effort around the world to develop software that can translate among at least the major languages, the basis of this software is linguistic geometry I believe.
Regardless of your culture, if you are good in your field and are amiable with others there is no reason you can't do well for your company abroad. Your local peers will understand your ideas as long as you present them in the right context.
HR people are trying to avoid expat packages by finding S. Asians because most of them are used to the shitty life that China has to offer, besides lingual and cultural familiarity.
It is also true that HRs and executive baby boomers are trying to commoditize and data warehouse knowledge on their way to retirement so that no one can use individually unique skills to make themselves invaluable and indispensable to the market. Thus, true innovation is stifled unless approved by management.
baby boomers suck. Rise up.
And what's WRONG with teaching "nia kara lingvo" -Esperanto - instead of English?
Vilchjo de Mesao Arizono, Usono.
Esperanto is a half-baked scrub language. Ebonics has more native roots.
i totally agree with this blog entry.
Some foreigners come to SH and think it will be so easy, it will be for now, but in 5 years, maybe even 2,3 years you will realize how hard it is to be successful without knowing Chinese.
thank god it is a hard language so the only persistent people will last studying it.
//Shopgirl's Shanghai Lifestyle Blog
wow a lot of haters on here. One would almost think there was more than a little jealousy of epxats with big phat packages at play here!
SHOP GIRL I LOVE YOU!
We can speak Chinese together any day!
"Shopgirl" is a moron and the fact she says what she does, means the opposite is true.
Chinese peole love to say that Chinese will be the number 1 language instead of English - it's not going to happen, ever.
UK students are NOT learning Chinese unless it's a specialty in a college. It's just propaganda.
The world learns ENGLISH, no one learns Chinese in school.
To "understand China more deeply", you just need to like corruption, not give a shit about anyone else and throw away female children. job done.
Shop Girl I love you even more!!!
Muwhahahahhaahah
as a white guy in the US i can't wait to learn cantonese. That said, the international language, unfortunately, is going to stay english.
I do think that to work in china you should at least know conversational cantonese (or is it mandarin that is spoken in shanghai?).
#11 if you do decide to come to China, do yourself a favor and at least learn some of the basics first. It's makes everything a lot easier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China
The English language will never stay the international language. It is not the international language now. Total delusion!
Prejudice against Esperanto however does exist. We need to fight prejudice
Esperanto is for idiots, learn to speak a real language.
I speak Esperanto fluently.
Why, therefore am I am idiot?
I speak a language that was created - by monkeys furiously typing on an old fashioned type writer!
Therefore, I ick ass, bitches!
Making up a language and mastering it is no great skill, mastering a real language with a long history behind it (including English, with both Germanic and Latin backgrounds) requires absorbing the way the native speakers of said language think.
Fuck Espresso, er, esperanto.
nanheyangrouchuan
Dear Nanheyangrouchuan,
Thank you for calling me an idiot.
I am fluent in Spanish, Esperanto and English,
learned in that order.
>learn to speak a real language.
Very good! Please tell me which language to learn.
Learning Esperanto took me about 5% of the time
it took me to learn English.
May I ask you please find out what Esperanto is?
I learned Esperanto in 1959. I have used it during
48 years. It is wonderful.
When I was at the home of people in other countries,
or when people from other countries visited in my
home, most of the time we spoke Esperanto.
I met those people, mainly because we all speak
Esperanto. Speaking English doesn't help me to
visit people in other countries.
I visited China in 2004:
http://www.esperantofre.com/uk89
This is what I found there about language:
"When they spoke English to me, it was
"because they wanted to sell me something.
"When they spoke Esperanto to me, it was
"because they wanted to be my friends."
Please email me at [Enrike (at) aol (dot) com]
You can learn and listen to Esperanto at
http://esperantofre.com/eroj/ilo01a.htm
lernu.net
Best wishes, Enrique
yeah bitches!
Reconaize the real deal.
Enrique,
Being either or both a native speaker of Spanish and English, it is no surprise espreranto was so easy, but it is still a fake language with no real culture or history behind it. You think in Spanish or English, not esperanto, because those are real languages and one or both are your native languages.
And I suppose you read esperanto newspapers? Write in esperanto? Communicate your deepest feelings in esperanto?
esperanto is merely a form of spanglish.
nanheyangrouchuan
I think the English mastery is still questionable, judging by your poor grammar ande usage. Perhaps the Esperanto lesson monies would have been better spent elsewhere.
Esperanto is a joke. Not only SHOULD everyone learn English, but everyone DOES - so ha ha ha
Not sure how serious you thought you were being in suggesting Esperanto for English school children, but it's happening!
The Springboard2Languages project provides a two-year syllabus and course materials for introducing primary school kids to foreign language learning, by teaching them Esperanto as a "starter language".
Through it, they learn a lot about their own language too; they succeed in learning and speaking a foreign language; they use it to correspond with partner schools in Germany, France and Hungary, and there's an exchange coming up next year too.
Just a quick comment to/about nanheyangrouchuan:
I find it really interesting, seriously, that people often feel they MUST have an opinion about Esperanto. The opinion often seems to be either very strongly for or very strongly against. And I'm not sure why that is.
If you ask people what they think about Bulgarian, or Swahili, or Arapaho, people usually just say, "I don't know much about them, really." It's rare to find someone who'd say, "Don't waste your time learning that crap!"
Nanheyangrouchuan seems to have trouble accepting that a language can grow out of a man-made project, but that's exactly how Nynorsk was born (before Esperanto) and of course Modern Hebrew (when Esperanto had already been around for decades).
That Esperanto is a fully-fledged language is hardly open to debate -- just go and observe it being used. Why does it surprise people to find out that it's used for drunken conversations, dissertations, flirting, Nobel-prize-nominated poetry, botany, online chatting... in other words, all the same things you'd use any other language for?
Modern Hebrew is hardly false, like modern english, modern chinese or any other native, genuine language these are all based on ancient languages with long and rich histories that have to do with the rise of man as a species.
Esperanto is like a flavor of Linux, used by a small group who swear up and down it is the best and love to keep little secrets that no one else can understand.
Swahili from what I've been told is a major international language of commerce and conversation in Africa, Bulgarian may not be as wide spread but none the less is a real language. Arapaho is hardly arcane and if you live/work in the SW US, it might not be a bad idea to have it as a back-up behind english and spanish.
Nanheyangrouchuan wrote:
> Esperanto is [...] used by a small group who
> swear up and down it is the best and love to
> keep little secrets that no one else can
> understand.
Maybe you've only come across a few evangelical nutjobs who happen to speak Esperanto; if so, well, sorry about that, but I'd recommend that you don't judge every speaker of the language on the basis of those few.
You may well be right, that some people try to ram it down people's throats as "the best thing ever, that everyone should learn immediately, or they're stupid". Again, if that's the first contact you've had with the language, that's rather unfortunate.
However, as I said, lots of really quite ordinary people also use the language, mostly for meeting and conversing with people from a broad range of foreign cultures.
Lots of mixed-nationality couples form, whose only common language is Esperanto, but if you think that that somehow restricts their possibilities for expressing their emotions for each other... well, you've clearly never chatted anyone up in Esperanto! It works just like it does in any other language. :o)
An obvious product of this phenomenon is that of the first-language Esperanto speaker. Nobody in the world speaks *only* Esperanto, but something like 1000 people speak it as a "native" language, i.e. learnt from their parents as a small child alongside one or more other languages.
William Auld's poetry was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. He didn't win, unfortunately, and has now sadly died, so that's one prize he won't be winning, but you don't get even a nomination for writing junk in a non-existent language.
You could be forgiven for not knowing about any of the above. It's not something you read about in the papers very often. However, that doesn't make it any less true.
no one can provide any proof that esperanto is a real language and not some coffee shop, marijuana induced foolishness passed off by liberal elitist snobs as a language.
down with esspresso, er, esperanto.
Well, I can see you're coming to the subject with an open mind, so after you've read the BBC article about poetry in Esperanto being nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature (see link above), why not spend half an hour or so reading through a couple of dozen personal accounts of how the language has influenced people's lives?
Enjoy!
PS I do usually have a strict rule about not replying to forum trolls, so this is probably my last post here.
There are a few foreign interpreters on the market, but not many (some ethnic Chinese, some not). They're quite low profile.
However there aren't actually that many truly professional interpreters out there doing Chinese - the idea of a professional interpreter is still in its infancy. Plus professionals don't often take the sort of jobs that see you sitting behind government leaders - conferences are way more interesting and pay better, and leaders' meetings tend to be done by in-house embassy, MFA or MOFCOM people, who vary enormously in quality.
MFA and MOFCOM now have extreme trouble retaining talented interpreters, as you might expect.