Abstract
This chapter focuses on the common character traits, teaching philosophies, and pedagogical practices of foreign language teachers native to the East Asian region. Their teaching practices and styles are characterized as being largely teacher-centered, constrained by needs to adequately prepare learners for high-stakes testing, and relatively textbook-focused. All of these traits are discussed in terms of both the environmental and cultural contexts which promote them. Generational shifts in teaching styles and attitudes toward nontraditional practices are noted, but the pressures imposed upon the educational community by introducing English curricula at ever-lower ages are used to demonstrate that there is still tremendous room for professional development, regionwide. Finally, the chapter looks at the role that ALTs and foreign teachers generally play within this educational framework, highlighting potential areas of difficulty between foreign and native-Asian teachers.
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Notes
- 1.
And unfortunately, this view of language learning also tends to underserve learners who often find themselves at a loss in dealing with native speakers of the language, who do not “stick to the script”.
- 2.
The error in question was a sentence which stated: “…get on the car…” instead of the intended “…get in the car…” (there was an accompanying illustration which made the intent clear). Happily, the change was eventually made at the local (school) level, although the fact that it took several meetings to accomplish such demonstrates the obsequious attitude towards textbooks (particularly when, as in this instance, there was some concern that the high-stakes exam which students would take later might repeat this very error, and thus penalize the students if they failed to repeat the textbook’s mistake).
- 3.
It’s not just non-natives who might not know the answer. I can remember one instance, while teaching French in an American high school, when a student asked me how to translate a certain slang term, and due to the generational gap, I had no clue what the English word the student was asking about meant. It took several minutes for him to explain it to me before I could even begin to translate the term to French.
- 4.
I have worked in the “Oral English” departments at two such schools in Taiwan during my career.
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Williams, C.H. (2017). Teachers in East Asia. In: Teaching English in East Asia. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3807-5_4
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