Thailand to recruit 10K English teachers

[reader]

From Thai Examiner

Thailand’s Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan has disclosed that a further 10,000 foreign English language teachers are to be invited to Thailand to help in his efforts to transform the country’s beleaguered education system and to attract inward investment. The announcement is a volte-face from the policy of the previous junta government which emphasised teaching Thai teachers the language and reducing the number of foreign teachers in the system.

The Thai Minister of Education has revealed that the government has approved funding for the recruitment of ten thousand native English language speakers in addition to seven thousand already working within the country’s severely challenged education system.

Mr Nataphol Teepsuwan was appointed to the cabinet in July last year and since his appointment has shown an interest in reaching out to countries outside Thailand for help in recalibrating the Thai education system particularly to attract inward investment.

Ailing Thai education system needs reform

Thailand’s education system derives in character from a huge public network of schools and institutions established throughout the kingdom overseen by a cumbersome and top-heavy state bureaucracy which includes not only the ministry of education but a range of other state agencies in addition to oversight from provincial administrations.

The system is facing a crisis with lower educational standards being achieved and rising problems including the key and intractable issue of teachers falling into debt.

In addition, there is also a divergence between the standards of education across establishments at all levels from well funded international schools in Bangkok to the poorest public schools in rural areas.

Despite this, Thailand’s system of education is quite elaborate and sophisticated in many respects but the system, including the vocational education sector is designed for a society in Thailand which is still looking inward with an emphasis on careers in the military, police or the civil service and old fashioned divisions in societal roles.

It is also a well-disciplined environment with a great commitment shown by families and students at all levels of a society which highly values education.

The minister made his statement this weekend while addressing a conference of international schools in Bangkok.

 

[Vessey]

Do we have anyone here who has direct experience of taking up such a post and could advise on the benefits/pitfalls of such a job? Qualifications needed, experience needed etc etc.

[t0oL1]

College degree (any major), native speaker and ESL certificate.

Willing to work 6 day weeks for low pay(more than Thai pay). 

Part time gig might be interesting but they prefer younger?

Didn't they have some Thai history class also you needed to take?

It's been years since I chickened out.

[spoon]

Native speakers, so i didnt qualify lol. Over here in malaysia, this line of work is not very popular at all, maybe only limited to private institution (international schools). Most english teacher in malaysia nowadays did their degree in malaysia, but some did their degrees overseas too, sponsored by the goverment. 

[hank75]

6 hours ago, Vessey said:

 

Do we have anyone here who has direct experience of taking up such a post and could advise on the benefits/pitfalls of such a job

 

Pitfalls: barely enough salary to cover falang food, rent, and essentials, without speaking of boys, bars and booze. 
Benefits: none that I can think of 

[vinapu]

22 minutes ago, hank75 said:

Benefits: none that I can think of 

year round hot weather ?

[spoon]

24 minutes ago, hank75 said:

Pitfalls: barely enough salary to cover falang food, rent, and essentials, without speaking of boys, bars and booze. 
Benefits: none that I can think of 

Benefits, its a way of staying in thailand, with additional income. If you already have a steady passive income or freelance jobs and not qualify for retirement visa yet, or dont want to dump money on the elite visa, this might be an attractive option. U also get to improve/learn thai language, andnall the benefits of being a teacher i guess. If you already habr a good full time job back home, this might not be for you. But if you are thinking of moving to thailand, have boyfriend in thailand, this might be another way to stay in thailand.

[hank75]

6 hours ago, vinapu said:

year round hot weather ?

I personally find the heat a downer. But that is just me. 

[reader]

The following article discuses pros and cons of teaching English in Thailand, and specifically in Phuket but with price comparisons to Bangkok.

https://tastythailand.com/pros-and-cons-of-teaching-english-in-phuket-thailand/

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, muscfair said:

The level of English in Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore is 100 times higher than in Thailand but they don't hire native English speakers. 

There is a reason for that. All have English as one of the official languages. I know some young Vietnamese whose English is vastly better than many of the Thais I have met.

I read somewhere of a poster who happened to meet a middle-aged African American lady who had been hired through the American Embassy to teach English. Problem was her southern accent was so pronounced the poster had difficulty understanding her. How Thai kids would know what she was saying I have no idea! The problem with inviting teachers to come to Thailand is the Education Ministry seems to have pretty wide guidelines and leaves selection up to Embassies or other third parties. Some will be good. A lot will be average and many end up complaining about the heat and their conditions of employment.

[spoon]

The only way to justify teaching overseas with lower salary is you already wanted to go to the country in the first place. And i believe thai gov are banking on this too. That the country is offering much more than salary. Thus, u cant expect that they will get highly experience and great teachers coming to thailand. There might be few that are good and wanted to migrate and live in thailand already, but what the gov is offering own its own will not attract great teachers. In fact, its probably trying to get a well to do native speakers to have an adventure in thailand, spending money in the country. 

[lotus123]

I won't comment on the Ministry of Education's policies. What I will say as someone who taught in Thailand 20 years ago is that the salaries for foreign teachers in publicly funded schools in Thailand -- which is a category that takes in all public primary and secondary schools, as well as many colleges and universities -- were fixed at 25K baht per year (17K salary + 8K housing allowance) back in the 1990s. They have not changed since, as far as I know, or at least they hadn't the last time I checked, which was in 2015. Twenty-five thousand a month was a decent salary in the 90s, but I wouldn't care to try living on it in 2020. There are sometimes opportunities to earn more, either through overtime or by taking on extra classes in after-school programs. That said, private schools, colleges, and universities may offer higher pay, as will commercial language schools, especially ones that specialize in corporate language training. The most lucrative teaching positions by far are those in the international primary and secondary schools (i.e. schools run on foreign curricula where at least 70% of the pupils are foreign passport holders). For those jobs, however, you *usually* need to be licensed to teach in public schools in your home country. In other words, you need to be a properly qualified career teacher. If that's you, hooray. You could be making a salary similar to what you would make back home, plus benefits like free flights for home leave, multiple weeks of paid vacation, a generous housing allowance, top-of-the-line health insurance, etc., etc. In nearly all cases, you would be recruited from abroad, often at international school job fairs. There is one loophole for those not properly qualified: international schools that have to fill unexpected vacancies on short notice are permitted to hire under-qualified foreign teachers on local contract, on the spot. You won't get the benefits, but you will get a salary comparable to what your more qualified colleagues get. The tricky bit is to be in the right place at the right time...

[anddy]

I also find the Thai obsession with native teachers weird. For me, it's straight out of the "TiT" tool box. As has been pointed out in this thread, the quality of teaching doesn't depend on the nativeness, but on the teaching skills. Native English teachers were unheard of when I went to secondary school and everyone got along just fine. The Thai teachers would need to get a good education themselves though, obviously. They still might find it more difficult than, say, Europeans because English is so much more difficult than and structurally & grammatically different from Thai than it is from other European languages. 

What I really wonder, though, is what is a "native" speaker in their book. A few months ago I read a story about the Covid risk of bringing a planeload of Filipinos in as English teachers (of course that wasn't a problem due to the mandatory quarantine). But seems Filipinos are "native" enough to qualify?

As for the job itself, a friend of mine who has plenty if insight into it, said it involves a lot of admin work too, like writing regular progress reports on each student on a regular basis (was it even weekly? Don't remember for sure). Freelancing may therefore be a more easygoing  alternative. 

Another issue with the 10k native teachers they are aiming at is consistency. So common in Thailand. Apart from this project possibly falling victim to the NATO rule (No Action, Talk Only), they may pursue it for a while, then later (under a different government) finding it no longer desirable or too expensive or whatever. My friend tells me it has been going like this for decades. No wonder general English proficiency continues to be, uhm, underwhelming in Thailand.

Having said that, I've met Thais with superb English. A good friend of mine is an example, but he has studied in London for several years. But another recent one was a sales guy for a hotel upcountry at a travel fair promoting domestic tourism. I asked him about it, he said he's from Bangkok and hadn't studied abroad. 

[spoon]

I might be biased to my own experience, but local teachers have insight to teaching locals better than any native speakers, simply because they know and speak both languages and can explain better to the locals. I assume any native english teachers wanted to work in thailand would have to learn the thai language too for them to be great at teaching the locals, but is it a requirement? 

[Boy69]

The problem is that there aren't enough proper local teachers who are qualified to teach English.

[spoon]

23 minutes ago, Boy69 said:

The problem is that there aren't enough proper local teachers who are qualified to teach English.

Erm thats pretty much a giveaway. What the gov need is to train more locals teachers. Perhaps hiring experienced esl teachers to train local teachers would be better. Of course if there is a serious effort, there need to be attractive compensation packages to attract locals too. Some of the neighbouring countries even sponsors some locals to study in the western countries and returned to teach. 

[lotus123]

5 hours ago, spoon said:

Perhaps hiring experienced esl teachers to train local teachers would be better. Of course if there is a serious effort, there need to be attractive compensation packages to attract locals too.

You've hit the nail on the head. Educated young Thais who are good at English generally don't go into teaching; they leverage their English skills in other fields that are far, far more lucrative. Since the most English-competent people don't self-select for teaching, the only solution is in-service training and development for those who HAVE self-selected and are already in charge of classrooms.  

[Boy69]

I am amazed from the low level of the Thai high school graduates most of them can't speak even basic English. That's show you the huge current problem of English teaching at the Thai education system.

[10tazione]

3 hours ago, muscfair said:

Just as English is difficult for the Thai, the Thai language is also difficult for the Europeans/Farang.

It's mostly due to the tones, phonology and different grammar which is completely different to Indo-European languages. 

I've seen many farang struggling with them even after living in Thailand for more than 7 years, they can't even do a simple conversation except ordering food. So to find a native English speaker who can speak Thai well is like the number of panda bears i.e. very few.

Phonetics:
In Thai you hardly pronounce final consonants t, k, p in sillables and when you do this in English it is really hard to understand. The famous example is "I like you" and it sounds like "I lie you". Many other words don't have a sense at all if you skip the final consonant: pet => pe, cat => ca etc.
Even if they would pronounce these consonants, there are many others that don't occur as a final consonant at all like s, r, f and l. Everyone who tried to learn a foreign language as an adult knows how difficult it can be to learn consonants that don't exist in your mother language and it can make you feel like you have a knot in your tongue!
It can be even worse if your ears are not used to distinguish certain sounds - like the classic l/r problem of Japanese, and I think Thais have it as well

Writing:
The English writing system is a crime in itself - there is no logic at all. Spanish is much straightforward - if you know (approx) 5 rules, you can read every Spanish word correctly. Thai writing is also rather straightforward, if you know the rules you can read 98 percent of the words correctly - you only need to learn all the new symbols. And there are a few more than 5 rules. Learning to read Thai can give you an idea how an illiterate person feels. By now I can somewhat read the standard Thai font, but I still struggle with all those "artistic" fonts used in commercials.

Grammar:
While grammar of European language can be rather complex, Thai grammar isn't really to bad. But while a Thai using simplified English grammar can still be understood, a someone with really bad pronounciation can't be understood unless you are used to.

Teaching System:
Tons of articles on the web that repeating what the teacher sais and not asking any questions is still the predominant way of teaching in Thailand.

Panda bears:
I had to google how many Panda bears are left in the world, and Dr. Google sais 1864 in the year 2014. So there are at least 1864 qualified people to teach English in Thailand

Other things that make language learning difficult: Dialects (Cockney, Isaan Dialect, Burmese Boys who speak Thai in Gogo Bars), different levels of formality, 10 different words for the same thing (I just recently discovered how many different words for "to hold something" or "to carry something" exist in Thai), ...

Personally I hope that Google will never be able to translate Thai well ... What will we do I everything we do can be done by AI ... no reason to go shopping no reason to learn anything, no reason to drive ... only sex all day long?

[vinapu]

4 hours ago, 10tazione said:

... What will we do I everything we do can be done by AI ... no reason to go shopping no reason to learn anything, no reason to drive ... only sex all day long?

not necessarily even that as our dicks may wither along with our brains

[anddy]

On 9/21/2020 at 2:03 AM, 10tazione said:

The English writing system is a crime in itself - there is no logic at all. Spanish is much straightforward

I couldn't agree more. I fully came to realize this fact when I learned Thai and the writing system, which (a) makes a lot of sense, (b) has a clear system behind it for the tones (which unfortunately even Thais are unaware of as they aren't being taught their own scropt in that way. So it is best avoided learinng Thai script from Thais, farangs do a better job at it), and (c) all vowels (36 of them, if I recall correctly) make one, and exactly ONE sound, and there are separate characters for the same sound but of differennt spoken length (short and long). That's unlike in English where a written vowel makes a multitude of sounds (just consider "a", what sound does it make? Many if you just look at a few examples: Sam, same, sample, awning (the latter being ore an "o" than an "a"!). So I sympathise with Thais finding English difficult. 

My own theory (which I believe to be very plausible) for this mess in English is, that English in fact does not have a script for it's own language. Instead, it hijacked the Latin one for it's purpose. But that was invented for Latin, and nothing else. Thus the difficulties encountered in many languages using Latin script. Spanish being a descendant of Latin apparently has much less of a problem as @10tazione mentions. which also seems only logical. Other languages made some adaptations to Latin (such as German for the Umlaute, French has accents, Vietnamese alls sorts of "extras"), but English made so such attempt. Latin having only 5 written vowels is simply unworkable for English with many many more vowel sounds. So the 36 in Thai may sound like a lot, but it's actually far far easier that way. 

 

On 9/21/2020 at 2:03 AM, 10tazione said:

In Thai you hardly pronounce final consonants t, k, p in sillables and when you do this in English it is really hard to understand. The famous example is "I like you" and it sounds like "I lie you". Many other words don't have a sense at all if you skip the final consonant: pet => pe, cat => ca etc.

Hardly pronouncing final consonants t, k, p is actually only half true. It depends on the vowel preceding it. Some vowels can have an ending consonant, some cannot. The "ai" sound as in "like" (Thai: ไ) can't have one. Therefore "like" (and our fave app LINE) become "lai". Pet, ont he other hand is a permitted combination, and indeed the word exists in Thai: เผ็ด pronounced the same as the English "pet" but meaning "spicy". Skipping the ending "t" is actually a Burmese accent for the Thai language, they apparently don't have many ending consonants. Makes them difficult to understand when they speak, Thai, but I got used to it by now as I chat (and flirt lol) with some at my regular eatery al  the time.

 

The upshot of all this is, when speaking Thai it makes understanding Thai street English so much easier, as one knows where they're coming from with their seemingly odd pronuciation.

[10tazione]

2 hours ago, anddy said:

Hardly pronouncing final consonants t, k, p is actually only half true. It depends on the vowel preceding it. Some vowels can have an ending consonant, some cannot. The "ai" sound as in "like" (Thai: ไ) can't have one. Therefore "like" (and our fave app LINE) become "lai". Pet, ont he other hand is a permitted combination, and indeed the word exists in Thai: เผ็ด pronounced the same as the English "pet" but meaning "spicy". Skipping the ending "t" is actually a Burmese accent for the Thai language, they apparently don't have many ending consonants. Makes them difficult to understand when they speak, Thai, but I got used to it by now as I chat (and flirt lol) with some at my regular eatery al  the time.

The upshot of all this is, when speaking Thai it makes understanding Thai street English so much easier, as one knows where they're coming from with their seemingly odd pronuciation.

I need the help of wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script says:

"At the end of a syllable, all plosives [my note: p, k, t - sounds] are unvoiced, unaspirated, and have no audible release."

 I think, and I may be totally wrong (my Thai is rather simple and theoretic, not living in Thailand, I'll need to recruit a cute Thai teacher here in my city), that the problem lies in the "unvoiced" and in the "have no audible release" (or maybe in the combination of all 3 above), what makes them "hardly pronounced". Maybe it's because the western ear is not used to this, or maybe is just me being hard of hearing, but for me กะ kà, กับ kàp, กัด kàt all sound more or less same same (spoken by a Thai).

Do we have a linguist among the posters, specialized in Thai men language?

[vinapu]

11 hours ago, 10tazione said:

 

 (my Thai is rather simple and theoretic, not living in Thailand, I'll need to recruit a cute Thai teacher here in my city),

that would be too distracting and not conductive to a learning process

[PeterRS]

On 9/20/2020 at 9:03 PM, muscfair said:

Just as English is difficult for the Thai, the Thai language is also difficult for the Europeans/Farang.

It's mostly due to the tones, phonology and different grammar which is completely different to Indo-European languages. 

I've seen many farang struggling with them even after living in Thailand for more than 7 years, they can't even do a simple conversation except ordering food. So to find a native English speaker who can speak Thai well is like the number of panda bears i.e. very few.

The reason most farang do not speak Thai is laziness. I know - I am one of them (although I do speak a little). If tones are the problem, why is it that many foreigners living in Hong Kong and the south of China can master the 9 tones required in Cantonese, or those living in the north the 4 tones in Mandarin? The same is true for grammar. Why should it be any more difficult for a foreigner learning Thai than an Englishman learning German? The grammar is not very similar.

[anddy]

15 hours ago, 10tazione said:

I need the help of wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script says:

"At the end of a syllable, all plosives [my note: p, k, t - sounds] are unvoiced, unaspirated, and have no audible release."

 I think, and I may be totally wrong (my Thai is rather simple and theoretic, not living in Thailand, I'll need to recruit a cute Thai teacher here in my city), that the problem lies in the "unvoiced" and in the "have no audible release" (or maybe in the combination of all 3 above), what makes them "hardly pronounced". Maybe it's because the western ear is not used to this, or maybe is just me being hard of hearing, but for me กะ kà, กับ kàp, กัด kàt all sound more or less same same (spoken by a Thai).

Do we have a linguist among the posters, specialized in Thai men language?

they are unvoiced and unaspirated, that is true, but they are still "audible". Similar to the ending "p" in "stop" which is usually unaspirated (if I'm not mistaken). Or the leading "b" in "bus" or "boy". Not sure what wikipedia means by "no audible release". 

It surprises me a lot that you say that "to me กะ kà, กับ kàp, กัด kàt all sound more or less same same (spoken by a Thai)." Maybe you just need some more listening exposure to allow your ears to "tune in" on these sounds?