Point still stands: China places far too much stock in the notion of native speech as a model and this has caused a huge demand for paleface teachers. When demand outstrips supply, the standards drop and we are left with article after article about the terrible challenges faced by barely competent people who had trouble enough in their own country let alone working across a culture and language barrier.

Again, the root of the problem really is the marketplace and the fetish which the education system has for NETs. English is absurdly overvalued by the education system as a whole which officially mandates a CLT approach without the resources, training or even textbooks to support it. Whitey comes in as a sticking plaster because there is a vague understanding that what happens inside most classrooms is “grammar maths” and not language teaching but the results are less than ideal because the main factor in play is examination – which is standardized.

For most places that value of NETs is as a marketing tool – which is why I’ll never work outside universities.

My Mandarin teacher in Sydney was a white dude. He taught me more in a few months than any of the Chinese tutors I had in Beijing. My high school French teacher was also not a French woman or native speaker.

The monolingual language teacher is something which is infrequently seen outside English language education and the only reason it’s seen insde this field is because of the peculiar status of English.

In western countries, the idea of having a non-native speaker teach a language would never even cross a principal’s mind. All foreign language classes are taught by native speakers.

While Chinese teachers of English may often master the “langue” of English, meaning the formal rules, grammar and vocabulary, they are often less adept at its “parole” dimension.

Indeed, what you find is that while Chinese ESL students often have a very high level of the English “langue,” they tend to marry it to a Chinese-style “parole,” which can lead to all sorts of awkwardness and fumbling.

Enter the native ESL teacher. Ideally, their job is to help their students activate and practice their English “parole,” which includes culture, psychology, gestures, humor and arguably even word connotations. Only when the two have become seamlessly integrated has the student become fluent in the language. (What is “Chinglish,” after all, than English “langue” assraped by Chinese “parole”?)

There is a reason why native speakers teach “Oral English” at Chinese universities. The education authorities here are hip to Saussure whether they know it or not.

I would challenge your assertion that students in China come pre-packaged with excellent study skills. True, they often work very hard but they certainly don’t always work effectivley. Take practicing speech as an example: how many times have you heard a student repeating a clause, or perhaps a three or four word phrase, at breakneck speed? Not only is it a challenge to articulate the sounds correctly but stress timed intonation and any prosodic stress goes totally out of the window. You do this for long enough and you’ll train yourself in the bad habits. But most students are concerned only with the noise they make and have no grasp of what spoken language actually is and does (the CEFR places alot of emphasis on ideas like “suasion” which one simply never encounters in China-domestic textbooks).

Students would be better served by building independent study skills and developing their knowledge of how language works. Empowering students by giving them the tools to set their own language standard, which certainly doesn’t have to be a native like standard, and then developing their ability to work towards that standard is key.

But tell that to the Chinese education system.

If you are teaching students who are targetting a Western university (or a university in Hong Kong) then a teacher from the target environment can be a great help. However, this isn’t all about language – it should be about study skills, academic literacies, argumentation and composition, exploring how students can represent themselves in a second language and a whole host of other issues.

The notion that students *need* a native speaker to improve their speaking skills beyond a certain level is rubbish (and not supported by study data). That students might *want* one is a different matter. A mixture of fetishism (“oh such active classes!”) and a poor grasp of how language actually work is at the heart of China’s obsession with NETs and the sooner the education system can wake up and realise that it can put a white-faced sticking plaster over deeper flaws in how languages are taught and assessed then the better.

Things are beginning to change – the university in which I work has recently begun to group students into 15-person half ban classes for alot of their skills based courses (including speaking). We are the exception rather than the rule, but it shows what can be acheived, even down here in tier three, when the will and the means to effect change are in alignment.

Two things seem to have happened – one Chinese students have the balls to say that the Chinese education system is stupid and irrelevant and two society has created a middle class in which these kids can just keep on trying at various institutes until they ‘graduate’.

I have many students in this program that are unable to have even a basic conversation in English and many others that are just tired and have given up – I’m either telling kids to stop sleeping or asking them not to use their iPhones in class.

I feel that for the most part my job is a glorified babysitter to 19-year-olds who couldn’t care less.

The school is happy if I turn up and go to class as everything looks ‘productive’.

I imagine that soon there will be similar institutes for 16-year-olds that have failed the Zhong Kao. I’m sure many schools are actually waiting with glee for that to happen.