‘Unqualified’ English teachers get a bad rap

On Nov. 11, the JoongAng Daily reported that 100 teachers from India will be hired next year to teach English in Korean public schools. If that trial period is successful, more teachers will be accepted in the future. The education ministry official quoted in the piece remained anonymous, so it’s not clear whether the plan is set in stone. But it nonetheless raises interesting questions.

“I can’t imagine that a system that is so obviously biased toward white North Americans will hire Indians who those same North Americans can’t understand when they’re on the other end of a call center,” writes Mike.

Adds Katrina, “I am still shocked the Korean government is going to do this. How many stories have you heard of Irish or Scottish people having problems getting jobs because their accents are too thick?”

Accents might not be a big issue, though. “I know college students in Korea who are taught English literature by Korean professors in English and they can barely understand them,” writes King Baeksu. Peter writes, “I don’t see how the Indian accent is an issue; Koreans already study with teachers whose accents are all over the map. I don’t see what harm it would do to add one more accent into the mix. Besides, the majority of Koreans seem to only care about passing standardized written tests in English, so pronunciation is largely irrelevant to them.”

“I think it is a good idea for Korea to go outside ‘the big seven’ to find truly ‘qualified’ and ‘professional’ teachers,” writes Keith. “Yes, the Korean government doesn’t put too many stipulations for qualification to teach English. I fault them for going with the false notion that only native speakers can teach English.”

Some of my readers and I were especially interested in this line from the story: “The ministry has spent more than 300 million won [$259,625] a year on hiring and training those teachers but experienced difficulty gaining sufficient ‘qualified’ teachers, given that only 13 percent of them have official teaching certificates.” Words like “qualified” and “unqualified” shouldn’t be used since teaching certificates, after all, are not part of the qualifications required by the government of South Korea for English teachers. Writes Peter: “One of the most frustrating things about allegations of NSETs [native-speaking English teachers] being ‘unqualified’ is the hypocrisy of it. Many (if not most) Korean principals and hagwon managers simply could not care less what an NSET’s qualifications are, as long as they’re eligible for a work visa.”

Moreover, how does one determine “qualified” when many Korean English teachers do have training and teaching degrees?

“I am seriously at a loss for words when the government says they have trouble hiring native English teachers with teaching degrees when all they offer is a salary of around 2 million won,” writes Ryan G. “That’s like only $500 a week. Let me say that again, they are offering a mere $500 a week for someone who has come out of university with a specialized teaching degree. With teachers in demand in their own countries, Korea will have to do better than that if they want to attract the qualified teachers to come and ply their trade here.”

“The NSETs aren’t the problem,” writes Matt. “The problem is the Korean government started a program with no idea how to properly use NSETs in the classroom or give them any support. Without the proper direction, tools and support, it’s hard for anyone to succeed. Even a ‘trained, professional teacher.’”

Regardless of who is imported to teach English in Korea, it’s clear that a plan needs to be in place for using them. I hate to see NSETs unfairly criticized when the lack of support and planning by administrators has set them up to fail.

*Readers are welcome to send suggestions for topics that they wish to be covered or blogs that they would like to see featured in this column. Please e-mail us at: estyle@joongang.co.kr.

These comments were collected by Brian Deutsch from recent blog posts. To read more, visit his blog Brian in Jeollanam-do at: http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/.

By Brian Deutsch Contributing writer