Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Filipinos ‘more able’ operators of ESL schools - foreign linguist
IF A FOREIGN linguist will have his way, schools offering English as Second Language (ESL) courses in the Philippines should be run by Filipinos.
Dr. Paul Robertson, chief executive officer of Asian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Journal, noted the proliferation of ESL schools in Cebu, a development that occurred with the increasing number of Korean nationals in the province.
“It seems that the Koreans are invading the market for ESL here and are running the schools. For me, this is a tragedy because you have here a nation with people who speak good English,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
He said some ESL schools are even “fly-by-night” businesses run by foreign nationals who are not concerned about the quality of the curriculum. These schools do “irreparable damage to the image of Cebu and to the Philippines as a whole,” he added.
Bonifacio Belen, executive director of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (Cedf-it), said the proliferation of ESL schools may have made Cebu as a potential hub for English learners but it also produced players who are not concerned with education standards.
Robertson said ESL education is a new industry in the country, giving Philippines the “golden” chance to grow it and control it.
He believes that the demand for ESL education in the country will grow “massively in the regulated or unregulated sense,” especially as the Japanese and the Chinese come to the Philippines to learn English.
He cited data that show that 93.5 percent of Filipinos can speak and understand English well.
“It would seem that I can teach English better because I speak it. But now, the thinking is that only someone with English as a second language can be a true teacher because he or she can teach the complexities of learning another second language. I don’t have that experience, and yet that is now the trend across the globe,” he said.
Robertson is also a Korea-based official of the Time Taylor International Ltd., which produces the Asian EFL Journal, Asian ESP Journal and Chinese EFL Journal, among others.
While he believed that Cebu has a good chance of becoming a hub for ESL or Tesol (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) education, he raised the need for the private and public sectors to organize an independent Tesol organization to assist government authorities and check ESL schools based on quality of curriculum and teaching.
“Compared to India, Philippines has a good supply of teachers who learned English since elementary,” he said.
He urged Filipinos to open and manage ESL schools because there is a “huge” demand for such institutions.
“If only there is a regulatory body that can guide the development of ESL here, then Cebu can take the lead” in a million-dollar industry,” Robertson said.
“I believe the quality of teaching here can meet the demand of the market.
What needs to be improved is the (quality of) training and the standard of the curriculum. But with (Filipino) teachers moving to other countries, this country also needs a huge supply of teachers, especially if more than 200,000 Koreans are coming to learn English,” he said.
Robertson held a workshop for a group of more than 10 ESL teachers last Saturday as part of Cedf-it’s efforts to upgrade ESL standards in an Asian context and to develop Cebu into a major ESL industry player. (NRC)
