An English-teaching platform aimed at the $4.5 billion market for online language lessons in China is looking to hire 100,000 Filipino English teachers over the next five years to meet growing demand.
51Talk, which has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2016, currently employs 18,000 online English teachers, of which 16,000 are Filipino, said its founder and CEO Jack Huang on Philippines television.
English proficiency is key to tapping demand, with online education estimated to be worth $50 billion, Huang told ANC’s Early Edition.
“We believe that Filipino teachers are the best teachers, best online English teachers in the world to teach Chinese kids,” Huang said.
“Naturally happy and friendly” Filipinos are a perfect fit to educate children ages five to twelve years, who make up about 80% of 51Talk’s students, he said.
The problem is that Filipinos are not native English speakers therefore students will pick up the wrong intonation and pronunciation. Teachers should be from the 7 native English speaking countries; US, Ireland, Canada, UK and so on.
https://www.kenjie.me/why-i-believe-native-speakers-are-the-authority-on-teaching-english/
Both comments and Kenjie’s article could be best translated to “the world should not hire NNES as an English teacher. Only Native Speakers – be it educator or not, have the sole right to become an English teacher. English language teaching is a birthright.
So, those NNES countries who offer English Language Program to their students aspiring to become English teachers someday, must close and stop offering the program. They don’t have the right to offer such a program because since birth the NES-be it educator or not, have already been endowed with the gift and the right of becoming an English teacher regardless of age,educational, and professional qualifications.
I wonder what I would do now. I am not a native speaker. Lol!
The English Grammar(Written English) is more or less the same all over the world. And English is no longer the sole property of the so called English speaking UK & other native speaking countries as it is the lingua franca. The non native speakers are not comfortable with the intonation & pronunciation of the native speakers. Naturally the most comprehensible English is the non native English to other non native speakers of English. There are very good NN English Teachers all over the world like in Sri Lanka & they should be recruited in those countries including China for effective learning.
It’s not really the expectation of a Chinese parent to have someone with an awkward accent teaching their child English, when said person cannot pass the English exams to get into say America, the same country that said Chinese parents are expecting their child to study when they go to Harvard.
Thank you for posting.