Pros of going native

I take issue with some of the things Amnaat Jefferey says in his July 5 letter, “Foreign isn’t better”, about foreign teachers of English versus Thai English teachers.

First of all, while foreign teachers of English are paid more than Thai English teachers, it is risible to say “foreigners are heavily paid”, when you consider what they could earn at home or in many other foreign countries. By comparison they are paid very low salaries.

English teachers in Thailand fall into three categories: native English speakers, foreign non-native English speakers (many of these are from European countries where they learn English as a second language from a very early age), and Thai English teachers.

From my years of teaching in Thailand I can confidently say that there are good and bad teachers in all three categories. So I believe the question is not whether native English speakers and foreign English teachers are better than Thai teachers, but which person on an individual one-by-one basis is best qualified to teach.

Before I retired I was the director of a language institute at a well-known technological college and before I employed any foreign non-native English teacher I would require proof that the teacher had a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communications) of 600 or more, which I considered the minimum requirement for someone to competently perform the task.

I also decided to have the Thai English teachers tested and only one of the eight scored above 600. Some were struggling to get above 250.

A TOEIC score of between 255-400 is defined as “speaker has functional, but limited proficiency and is able to maintain very simple face-to-face conversations on familiar topics”.

So my question for Khun Amnaat is this: “Would you be happy for your son or daughter to be taught English by anyone whose abilities to speak and comprehend the language are so severely limited?”

The answer I am sure would be no, so the issue isn’t that “foreign isn’t better”, but which individual can best do the job.

DAVID BROWN