Is it necessary to raise the bar for foreign English teachers?

Fatdragon (UK)

There is a danger in setting university degree standards as the measure of the potential English teacher. A university degree is not a measure of the ability to either teach English or of the quality of the spoken English practiced by the teacher.

"Native English Speakers" may or may not have the advantage of the correct standard of English as it should be noted that there is no universal standard of English and pronunciation can vary wildly, not just between English speaking countries but even within the UK. To overcome this issue of potentially strong regional dialects and grammar it would be necessary to grade English for neutrality.

The final point is that the higher you raise the bar then the fewer suitably qualified teachers you will end up having access to. This will in turn increase the wages that they can command and will probably price out smaller educational establishment who could no longer afford them. The result will be that the majority of Chinese students will only have access to native Chinese teachers with excellent grammar but bad pronunciation and an overuse of long, important sounding adjectives that would have the average Englishman reaching for a dictionary before he could understand the meaning.

Campers line up for a foreign teacher’s signature as a memento, at the 2nd international English summer camp hosted in Xiuwen international academy, during July 11-24, 2013, at the city of Zibo, Shandong province.