The 2022 Updated Teacher Training Post

A few years ago, I wrote a long post detailing every teacher training opportunity in Taiwan, from short certification courses all the way to a discussion of whether or not to do a PhD. That post is still relevant (and I've updated some links as well), but I'd like to offer a narrower focus. Cut out the noise and just look at a few key options that might be the best fit for the person who asks this:

I'm a foreign English teacher in Taiwan and I want to get some accredited training to do my job better. How can I do that without leaving Taiwan?

Depending on your needs, prior experience and teaching credentials, any one of these programs might be right for you. You may even choose to do more than one -- I stacked a CELTA (which is like a CertTESOL) on top of a Delta (like a DipTESOL) and topped it off with a Master's. Or, you can take one course and call it good -- you'll still know more and improve more quickly than just about any teacher that doesn't invest in their professional development.

The Trinity CertTESOL and TYLEC

These are fundamental certifications -- the CertTESOL is similar to the CELTA (although it is slightly harder) and focuses on the basics of teaching. You can take this and go on to teach children/young learners, however, your teaching practice will generally be with adults. Both courses require some pretty intensive input sessions -- the CertTESOL usually meets every weekday morning for a semester. You'll have to teach quite a few assessed lessons, do observations and take exams, as well. While it's possible to do this while having an afternoon job, you will be extremely busy. However, people do it. (If a 4-week intensive option is ever offered, you'll want to take time off for that -- it is not possible to take that course and work at the same time.) 

The CertTESOL can be taken by pre-service teachers, that is, people with no teaching experience, but is also helpful to teachers with experience who have no prior training. It is hard work, and you'll want to be ready for that. The CertTESOL is accredited at Level 5 in Europe and the UK. It's a 130 hour course, not including significant self-study time.

The TYLEC is a little different. The acronym stands for the "Teaching Young Learners Extension Certificate" and is a level up from the CertTESOL. It's actually significantly more difficult, accredited at a Level 6, so applicants do need significant teaching experience or an initial teaching qualification (which doesn't have to be the CertTESOL, by the way). It focuses on teaching younger learners and, as with the CertTESOL, you'll have quite a bit of input. You'll also have to keep an observation journal as you observe other young learner classes, and teach your own assessed lessons for more than one level of learner. The 60 hours of guided learning do not include a similar amount of necessary self-study.

If you want an initial high-quality qualification that will help you teach any age and level of learner, and have no prior certification and not much experience, go for the CertTESOL. If you are committed to teaching young learners and do have significant experience or a qualification (better yet, if you have both), the TYLEC is probably a better fit for you.

Both of these courses can be taken at InspiredCPD. 

The Trinity DipTESOL

Similar to a Cambridge Delta, the DipTESOL is for committed teachers who have an initial qualification and significant post-qualification teaching experience (usually the rule is two years, though it might depend on the quality of that experience). It's equivalent to a Level 7 on the European accreditation system. It requires more of a time commitment (150 hours of input sessions, plus far more self-study), but is split into multiple sections. 

As such, it's also more expensive than a CertTESOL or TYLEC, but if you're committed to teaching as a career, I would say it's worth the money (I have a Delta and found it to be the most challenging and rewarding of my various qualifications).

The CertTESOL runs about NT$55,000, the TYLEC is $70,000 and the DipTESOL runs about NT$110,000. Payment terms are flexible, however. 

Why not CELTA and Delta, you ask? Because while there are online options for both -- I did a Delta from Taiwan -- the Trinity courses are now offered face-to-face in Taiwan.

The DipTESOL can also be taken at InspiredCPD. 

The International Teaching Master's from Framingham State University (Master of Education with a concentration in International Teaching)

Brendan is currently enrolled in this program and seems quite satisfied with it. So, rather than talking about a course I didn't take, I'll let him tell you about it:

The program I’m in is entirely online due to Covid-19 (though I don’t know if that will continue to be true for future cohorts). It consists of nine courses, each of which lasts for about five weeks and are designed to be doable while also working full-time. The courses are spaced so that we get a month-long break between them. Tuition fees are currently just over $650 per course.

The material is clearly designed first and foremost with K-12 education in mind, which is different from what I do in my own work (my students tend to be university age or older). But I personally see this as a positive: my formal education in the field so far consists of a CELTA and a DELTA, which are about language teaching for adults, so it’s nice to be able to get a broader perspective on teaching. The professors are aware that the students are from a variety of teaching contexts, and there’s been nothing so far in the material that I haven’t been able to make relevant to my own situation.

Of the material I have studied so far, I would say the most relevant has been the course dealing with special education and learning disabilities. Although much of it was focused on young learners with disabilities, much of it can also be applied to adult students, and it really got me thinking about how I can more actively work to make my teaching accessible to all.

I like this program because I feel it is making me more well-rounded as a teacher and is helping fill in a lot of the gaps in my professional knowledge. I don’t know what I’ll be doing professionally ten years from now, and I feel this program is helping to prepare me for multiple options.

It's worth noting that the Framingham program is not specifically about English teaching, and there's nothing in it that focuses on TESOL in itself. However, it's useful for a wide range of teaching beyond TESOL. Framingham does offer a program focused on English teaching, but it's not available as often due to lower demand.

The link in the header to this section will take you to the program's main page. You can also get on the mailing list here. 

A teaching certificate through TCNJ or Teach-Now (through Moreland University)

Both of these programs focus on general teaching, not TESOL specifically. Both require practicums. TCNJ (Teacher's College of New Jersey) hosts lectures in Hsinchu -- or at least they did pre-COVID -- there's a solid chance they've gone online in recent years. Contact them directly to learn about their post-COVID setup, to see if there have been any changes. The program requires no dissertation but does lead to a Master's. From my last post:

TCNJ also qualifies you to take the Praxis II (teaching qualification exams in the US), available on a very limited basis in Taiwan.

The program requires you to be teaching more than English as it's not specifically a TESOL course but rather one for general young learner education, and your practicums are done at your own work location. The program doesn't require a dissertation but it does require you to take the edTPA.

 

TeachNow costs $6,000 and runs for nine months, but is flexible. There are nine modules -- a friend describes it more as a BEd program than a Master's, but praises the training as practical and reflective. "Quite sweet" he called it. They have rolling admissions so you can join anytime. There are virtual practicums in the last few months -- you have to teach 5 classes and record them. You should have a mentor in your local setting and through the program, and you cover everything from technology in the classroom to classroom management, lesson planning and learning culture. 

There is of course self-study which can take a variable amount of time. One friend in the program says it takes less than they say, another says that a single practicum cycle including recording and editing the lesson for submission takes 6-8 hours. I don't know how easy it would be to do if you don't have access to a local mentor through work, but it may be a good option. 

A friend doing TeachNow through British Council in Vietnam says that the program has definitely made him a better teacher. You can't get a better endorsement than that! However, unlike TCNJ, you'd mostly be interfacing with the program online. TeachNow leads to a K-6 teaching license.

For both TCNJ and TeachNow, you have to do the teaching license exams. TeachNow gives you a teaching license in Washington, DC but it can be transferable. If you're not American there are some extra steps to follow, but theoretically it can be rolled into a UK qualification like QTS (Qualified Teacher Status).

Other local and online options

These training opportunities are not the only ones available for foreigners looking to improve their teaching qualifications and abilities. My earlier post outlines some online options including MATESOL, PGCE (a British qualification) and programs through Nile, Bell and The Distance Delta. It also covers local options through Taiwanese universities, the Teaching Knowledge Test and a local certification program which runs 35 hours and now includes online options. Have a look there for more details.

Teacher training in Taiwan: expanding your teaching skillset without leaving the country

The picture isn't related to the article unless you want to get very metaphorical 

Update! I've written a shorter 2022 post focusing specifically on face-to-face options in Taiwan (though some have gone online for the time being due to COVID). Additional resources include updated links to the CertTESOL/DipTESOL and TYLEC, my husband's experiences on the Framingham program and a new option through TeachNow.

When I first arrived in Taiwan, opportunities for professional development as an English language teacher were rare beyond workshops of varying quality through cram schools. Though I can't speak for local English teachers in the formal education system, the lack of professional development options was also an issue for local teachers in cram schools.

I honestly regret coming to Taiwan as an unskilled random white person and starting out in a cram school job - a situation I sought to change as soon as I could afford to - and I think part of that regret is what drives my desire to contribute more to Taiwan than I take from it. As my profession is education, I feel that's where I might be able to make a real impact.

With that in mind, I've hoped for some years that new paths to teacher development could be opened in Taiwan, so that a new generation of English teachers might simply, well, be better teachers and not have to go abroad for that training, as I did. Fortunately, due to the efforts of people who want to effect real change, there have been real improvements and I hope and believe this will improve the overall situation of English language education in Taiwan.

Since joining the community of teacher educators (teachers who develop other teachers), I've been asked a few times about teacher training and development opportunities in Taiwan, and I wanted to consolidate a list of resources for English teachers here - foreigners and locals alike - who want to develop themselves professionally, while staying in Taiwan. 

There's another good post on this topic here, but there are some things not covered in that post, so I'm writing this one. 

Full disclosure: I train on some of these courses, but not all of them. There's no sales motive, and this is not any kind of sponsored post. I receive nothing, and if anyone signs up for a course due to this post, I honestly wouldn't even know.

All of these are open to both native and non-native speakers, so I hope Taiwanese readers of my blog who may be interested in teaching will also consider these suggestions. One way to end white supremacy and native speakerism in language teaching is to make  professional development more accessible to local teachers, which I very much hope to do. Although the TESOL world still discriminates against non-native speaker teachers, the international qualifications (such as the TKT, CertTESOL) will be an advantage for any Taiwanese looking to teach English abroad.

It's worth noting that most of these programs are not officially recognized by the Taiwanese government. Different schools have different requirements: public schools generally want a teaching license but will sometimes take permanent residents with other qualifications. Private schools are more open in what they can accept, and international schools vary quite a bit. Your average cram school often requires nothing (which honestly is a problem), but better jobs in the cram school system either appreciate or require basic certifications. These also provide a good filter when job-hunting: if the school you are applying to doesn't know or care about the certifications listed here, they might not prioritize education. It's good to know that up-front.

I've organized the list roughly by lowest to highest barrier to entry. The first few items are simply online resources and readings, not classes per se. Actual courses you can take will be discussed later on.


Online and Reading Resources


Online resources

There's a whole world out there of webinars and other online teacher development resources, most of which is free or very low-cost (though some is of much better quality, and some is questionable - use some critical thinking to deduce what's what).

Joining an international community of practice through IATEFL membership

Anti-racism resources for teachers

TEFL Equity Advocates

Teacher Training in Taiwan Facebook Page and Facebook Group


Online Courses

If you want to take an online course that isn't quite as intense as, say, a Trinity CertTESOL or CELTA, there are many options. Nile, International House and Oxford University's Department of Continuing Education are generally well-regarded providers. These courses tend to focus on particular areas (e.g. Business English, CLIL, Teaching Young Learners), and can be done with no certification, or after an initial certification. More than one initial certification is now available face-to-face in Taiwan; these are discussed below. 


Reading

Again, there's a whole world of reading out there, so I'm just going to provide a short list of books I've found useful in my own development.

About Language - Scott Thornbury: crucial language awareness for English teachers, especially native speaker teachers who don't know how their own language works

Teaching English Grammar - Jim Scrivener: a resource breaking down how to teach key grammar concepts, including common issues and points to remember

Learning About Language Assessment - Kathleen Bailey: if you're interested in knowing about what makes a language assessment worthwhile and useful

Teaching Collocation - Michael Lewis: this changed my whole approach to lexis as a system, and how I approach it in the classroom. Lewis' other work such as "The English Verb" are also highly recommended

How Languages Are Learned - Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada: a short and engaging introduction to the field of SLA (Second Language Acquisition)

Grammar For English Language Teachers - Martin Parrott: this is not something to read so much as a resource every serious English teacher should have (Swan's book is fine too but I prefer Parrott)

A good learner's dictionary (any publisher, whichever level suits your learners): this will help you develop  your ability to clarify language and concept-check. Big Bad Wolf's 7-day sales often include them at steep discounts. 

The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language - Alastair Pennycook: If you don't have time to read Orientalism (Said), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Friere) and Teaching English as an International Language (McKay), this book provides a useful introduction to all of those ideas, and takes them further. A word of warning: it was written in the '90s and needs an update, and takes a postcolonial perspective that doesn't always fit Taiwan's situation (colonized more by China than any Western nation).

The "How To" series (various authors)

This is a whole series of books - they are not very long and not particularly academic, making them perfect for new teachers finding their way. Each book is clearly titled (e.g. How To Teach Speaking, How To Teach Business English, How To Teach Reading, How To Teach Grammar) and easy to read. Other than How To Teach With Technology (not recommended), these are useful introductions to whatever area you feel you might need to improve. They aren't cheap so choose judiciously.

If you are really new to teaching and need a grounding in the basics, How To Teach English from this series is a good start. 


Everything above is a targeted online course, or a self-access resource. Let's leave those for now, and talk about coursework and general teaching certifications that can be done in or from Taiwan.


The first two on the list - the TKT and local TESOL certification - are more directly aimed at local teachers and other non-native speakers. However, every course after that (the CertTESOL, TYLEC and DipTESOL, etc.) are also open to all teachers, and I specifically encourage non-native speaker teachers who think they would be valuable to look into them. A community of talented local teachers is a powerful weapon in fighting for equity in the field.


TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test)

This is the least expensive option among all of the non-free choices, though it's not a course. It's a three-module test aimed more at local (non-native speaker) teachers, though native speakers can take it as well. It's a good way to put an internationally-recognized teaching qualification on a resume and the knowledge that is tested is all worthwhile. With no practical element (that is, no real teaching), however, consider this to be mostly a way to gain some formal recognition of your teaching knowledge, though not necessarily your ability in the classroom.

It's possible to self-study for this test if you have experience and were trained on the job, so a study book (The TKT Course: Modules 1, 2 and 3 by Mary Spratt is a good choice) and the cost of the exams are the only financial layout. 


TESOL Taiwan teaching certification

Of the certification courses that require practicums, this is the most affordable. It's a 35-hour course with one teaching demo at the end and covers all of the basics, and is open to people with no teaching experience. The cohort is mostly local, but foreign teachers do take it, and more than one has said that their school specifically recommended it. 

The curriculum includes a basic knowledge of methodology, foundational knowledge for teaching various skills (speaking, writing, reading and listening) and systems (grammar, lexis and pronunciation) including demonstrations, and incorporates classroom management, lesson planning, assessing learner needs and more. Assessed content includes a short lesson taught by the trainee as well as several written assignments, two observations and an online component. 

This course is taught in English but specifically designed to be accessible to both foreign and local English teachers, non-native and native speakers alike.

The course is offered mornings over 2 weeks (occasionally two weeks plus one Monday), or all day Saturday or Sunday for 6 weeks, all in Taipei. Once a year or so, the Sunday course is offered in Taichung.


Trinity CertTESOL and CELTA

For many years, it was impossible to take this course - or the equivalent CELTA - in Taiwan. That was a major gap in development opportunities for teachers here, as these are internationally-recognized certifications that are required for many teaching jobs outside Taiwan. I had to go abroad to get mine. That has finally changed - the CertTESOL is here!

It's a longer course - Monday-Friday mornings over a semester - with more teaching practicums, which does mean it's more expensive (though divided by input hours, it is technically better value for money). There are other assessed areas too, including exams.

The CertTESOL is a more challenging course. Having done the equivalent CELTA was so beneficial for my teaching practice that my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner, and I can usually tell the difference between a teacher who's taken a course like this and one who hasn't.

CELTA is not offered in Taiwan, but can be done online or through blended learning through various providers. I did mine in-person at ITI Istanbul and can vouch for the quality of the face-to-face course.


TYLEC (Teaching Young Learners Extension Certificate) and other Young Learner Courses

I know less about this program, as I don't train on it and don't teach children, but if you do teach children and want to become amazing at it, this is the course for you. It costs the same as a Trinity CertTESOL - that is, expensive, but cheaper than doing a whole teaching license. It's offered based on demand. It involves input sessions, a written assignment on materials and five hours of assessed teaching practice (I'm not sure how the assessed practice is organized). 

Theoretically, other similar courses are also possible to take in Taiwan, specifically the CELT-P (for teachers of primary school students) and CELT-S (secondary school). I'm not sure what stage of development/availability they are at yet, but check this space for updates, or join the Teacher Training in Taiwan Facebook groups above to hear about the latest developments.

You can do the CertTESOL, TYLEC and DipTESOL in Taiwan at InspiredCPD.



Trinity DipTESOL and Cambridge Delta

This is the next level up from the CertTESOL, and is also finally available in Taiwan starting this year. It is a higher-level certification, meaning you need to meet certain educational and experience requirements. A basic TEFL certification is also highly recommended.

It is equivalent to the Cambridge Delta, meaning that in Europe it's recognized at the same level as a Master's degree (though it isn't one). The DipTESOL is organized into four units and in Taiwan, I believe that three of those four are taught intensively over a number of weeks - ask directly for more information. The first unit - an exam - can be taken after the course. The DipTESOL includes four practicum hours and several written assignments and a research project.

A good reason to do the DipTESOL in Taiwan is that you won't have to find a local tutor for the teaching practicums - it's all handled here, so there's no need to go around asking qualified teachers if they'll take on that role for you. I was lucky in that someone offered. I'm not sure how the teaching practicums are organized (whether they are your own classes or organized by the course).

I have a Cambridge Delta, obtained in Taiwan via distance learning. This can be done entirely through Nile, (yes - the Nile Delta) Bell or The Distance Delta. ITI Istanbul also offers Modules 1 and 3 online.

Module 1 is an exam - you can study for this on your own, but I recommend taking an online course for a few hundred pounds.

Module 2 is teaching practice and written assignments: four hours of assessed teaching practice plus one diagnostic lesson and one experimental lesson (not assessed). The papers for these are killer as the word limits are tight, but you'll learn a lot doing them. There's also a professional development assignment and observation requirements. You can do this in Taiwan through a local tutor, whom you have to find yourself. The fourth assessed lesson is done externally, which may involve flying someone in, which you pay for. They do try to keep costs down, often sending one external assessor across Asia, so you only have to pay for a regional flight and a night in a hotel.

Module 3 is an extended written assignment based on real learners - meaning you need a group of real learners to work with. You write about a sub-field of TESOL, assess their needs and create a course based on the fundamental principles of syllabus design and assessment.


Various teaching license programs

I won't say much about these, as the level of recognition given by Taiwan's Ministry of Education is variable. Online searches bring up a few options, but I've only found one that seems to still be available in Taiwan and comes recommended by people I know: the global teacher certification and Master's program offered by the College of New Jersey in Hsinchu, with courses (and coursework) happening every few weeks. This is a real program through a legitimate university in the United States, and can land you some better jobs. It also qualifies you to take the Praxis II (teaching qualification exams in the US), available on a very limited basis in Taiwan.

The program requires you to be teaching more than English as it's not specifically a TESOL course but rather one for general young learner education, and your practicums are done at your own work location. The program doesn't require a dissertation but it does require you to take the edTPA.

If your goal is an international school job, you might also consider doing a British PGCE online. Here's just one way to do that (there are surely multiple providers). This won't qualify you for public school work but will still be a step up and is likely to be accepted at some international schools.


Master's programs

Most people don't realize that relevant Master's programs can be done in Taiwan. English language programs are held at various universities, including NTNU (National Taiwan Normal University), NCCU (National Cheng-chi University) and NTUST. Others exist - including those at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages and National Tsinghua University - but I am not sure of the proportion of classes taught in English.

Framingham State University is also looking into (once again) offering courses in Taiwan, though these are not set yet. The course would lead to a Master's in Education with a focus on international education, but does not include a teaching license. You can get on the mailing list here, if you are interested in future courses.

Nile also offers a modular face-to-face MATESOL accredited through the University of Chichester. As you would not actually reside abroad, but rather take courses over a 2-3 week intensive period, I am not sure how or whether this would be recognized in Taiwan.

There used to be other ways to get a face-to-face Master's in TESOL while living in Taiwan - such as the summer intensive program I am wrapping up at the University of Exeter, but most of them seem to have ceased operations (Exeter is closing its MEd summer program, for example).

Online options exist, but can be expensive. These aren't generally recognized in Taiwan, though any exams you take in person might be. It's worth checking with your current or potential employer - I can't provide any guarantees. 


PhD and EdD (Doctorate of Education) degrees

If you've come this far, you might be wondering about PhD and EdD degrees. Here's the thing, though: if you've gotten through a Master's, you probably have a clear idea of where you want to go in terms of a doctorate and there's not much I can tell you. Several options do exist that would let you live in Taiwan while doing some coursework abroad, but I can't specifically recommend one, and I doubt any are widely recognized in Taiwan.

All I can say is that PhDs are more widely recognized than EdDs, and as with Master's programs, official recognition generally requires full-time residency and in-person classes.

I'd also say that if you really want to do a PhD, you should not be paying for it. This might not be a big deal if you go to a public university in Taiwan where tuition is low (NCCU offers a PhD in TESOL - same link as above), but I wouldn't plop down the tens of thousands of US dollars that programs abroad charge.

Honestly, either get funded or don't go. I mean it.


Still have questions? Leave a comment, or e-mail me. I can also refer you to good people, including some of the people in charge of some of these courses. I won't put my personal/main e-mail here, but I can be reached at jennalynk (at) yahoo (dot) com. Or join the Facebook groups above. 

Native speakerism, teacher training, culture and place

I don't have a good cover photo so just pretend this is metaphorical or something. 

I've been meaning to write this for awhile but current events have been pushing it to the bottom of the queue. Feeling depressed and anxious about the state of affairs in Hong Kong and the rise of Big Uncle Dirk in Taiwan, however, I think it's time for a more uplifting topic.

Teacher training has been my main source of income for about a year now; my trainees are mostly (though not entirely) locals whose first language(s) are not English, but are highly proficient English users. There's a mix of experience levels, though most have had no previous training. 

In the real world, where this is what I'm 'known' for as much as talking smack about Taiwanese politics, I get asked all the time what it's like, how I feel about it, what my impressions are. So I thought I'd share something about that here, as I so rarely write about my actual profession.

Having no particular order in mind for this, I'll just start with what I think is the most interesting part, focusing mostly on the cram school system. 

Native speakerism has been, quite honestly, a cancer in English language education in Taiwan.

I appreciate and value that the work I do is one tiny cog in the fight to end that. Training local teachers who already have the language proficiency but need the classroom know-how to plan and execute a lesson, ascertain and meet learner needs, manage a class room and understand key theoretical basics gives them a leg up: a piece of paper, yes, but also actual knowledge and skills that will make them more effective in the classroom and therefore more likely to succeed in a market that is biased against them.

Not that the word 'native speaker' means anything. I have a former student whom you would not be able to guess, even by accent, was a 'non-native' speaker unless you combed carefully through her writing. I've also met 'native speakers' who were not particularly proficient language users (yes, that's a thing, and the major English proficiency tests generally acknowledge this) and people who have used English since early childhood from countries like India, Singapore and the Philippines but are considered 'non-native'. 

Because, of course, when people say "native speaker", what they really mean is "white". They'll deny that of course - I'm sure I'll get some angry comments - but you it's true. You know it's harder for non-white English teachers, whether they're what might be considered a 'native speaker' or not, to find jobs and command similar pay to white teachers. This was also the attitude on display when everyone's favorite Uncle Dirk dismissed the idea of English teachers from the Philippines (who generally can be considered what most people would call a 'native speaker'), saying "how can a Maria be our teacher?"

Although I don't think that there is a big difference in the classroom between an untrained foreigner and an untrained local with strong English language proficiency, it's hard to argue this to your average person. Training up locals on what I think is a quality course helps make the argument that a "non-native" teacher is no less capable just a little more persuasive.

To be frank, it also feels good to have mostly relinquished my former place in what I see as a racist system. I don't particularly like being a white lady taking up a teaching job that an experienced and trained local could do, and being paid more to do it. It's not that I want to stop all future foreign English teachers from coming here because all the jobs have been taken by locals - I just want the bar to be higher, and the best way to raise the bar is to have better-trained local talent as competition. Bringing in trained and experienced talent from the Philippines and other countries is a great idea as well, and that will be easier if more parents and students (including adult learners) get used to a non-white face leading the class.

This is related to another aspect of teacher training that I find deeply rewarding: the creation of future role models. My trainees, when they become teachers, can be role models to local learners in a way that I could never be as a "native speaker" from an Inner Circle culture (look it up). Someone learning English as a foreign language in Taiwan is going to have a different experience, context and set of reference points and will benefit from having someone with a similar background and experience to look up to and think, "if she can do it, I can too". That's not only more achievable than trying to be 'more like' someone like me, which sets up the impossible standard of learning English as a second language in an attempt to imitate people for whom it's a first language, but I'd argue it's less problematic as well. If the notion of encouraging Taiwanese to imitate Westerners - especially white Westerners - as though we are some sort of ideal - doesn't squick you out...it should. 

Here's where I admit that I lied above: I don't think that's the most interesting issue concerning my job. But I needed to say it to set up my next point. The cultural/identity aspects of Taiwan's education are often thought of as being in flux, depending on who's in power, between "Taiwanization" and "Sinicization". I'd argue, however, that since the debate about identity formation through education has existed in Taiwan - that is, ever since the Taiwanese electorate had a say in the matter - that it's actually been a three-way pull between Taiwanization, Sinicization and internationalization. It's a bit more complicated than that, with both sides trying to claim 'internationalization' alongside their preferred foundation of 'Taiwanization' or 'Sinicization' and both sides being somewhat insincere in the implementation process (though I'd argue the 'Sinicization' side, which I'm sure you've guessed is spearheaded by the KMT, is somewhat more insincere). 

I also happen to believe that 'Taiwanization' is more compatible with internationalization than 'Sinicization' is, despite being dismissed by critics as a form of ethnic nationalism (which it no longer is - if anything that attitude is more evident on the pan-blue, pro-China side). Taiwanization doesn't only seek to promote the notion of a distinct Taiwanese identity, which is a civic identity as much as an ethnic one, and a nation founded on that principle. It also seeks to situate that identity, and Taiwan as a nation, in a regional and global context. Sinicization doesn't go far beyond "we are all Chinese and you just have to accept this identity we've assigned to you". Although this wasn't always the case, it's currently more of an inward-looking movement.

What does all that have to do with teacher training? Well, a lot of people misconstrue 'internationalization' as going no further than a concept of English teaching as something done by foreigners, to Taiwanese students - and bringing in more foreigners to do this. The smiling white person at the front of the classroom telling Taiwanese how to be better "global citizens" through improved English, with "global citizens" of course meaning "people who act in ways that make Westerners feel comfortable".

In a word, barf.

I see internationalization as improving the state of foreign language education without overly focusing on Western countries (which isn't to say that language can be divorced from culture - the general consensus in the field is that it cannot). It's understanding not just the cultural, international and socieconomic context of English learning, but English learning as appropriation - learning it for one's own purposes, to communicate with the outside world as a lingua franca - rather than subjugation to a foreign ideal. And you don't accomplish that with idealized Westerners at the front of every class. You do it with locals up there, or teachers from a range of international backgrounds beyond "Bill is from Canada, and Janice is from the UK!" It helps society get used to the notion that English doesn't have to be a "thing we learn from and about white people", but something additive rather than subtractive, taught for themselves and (mostly) by others who may be like them. And you accomplish that by training up mostly local teachers.

Finally, I simply appreciate a chance to offer the fundamentals of good teaching practice to teachers who will go out and not only use them, but build on them. It's been argued that the sort of approaches I champion are themselves ultimately derived from teaching practices that suit Western cultures better, but I'd dispute that. First, we do talk about methodologies that are currently out-of-fashion, though I don't encourage them. Besides, such methods weren't common in Western countries either until the late 20th century: before that, the way language was taught wasn't that different from how it's taught in much of Asia now. The difference is one of time and institutional constraint, not one of culture.

More importantly, those 'traditional' methods are research-proven to be less effective, depending on what your goal is. If that goal is to communicate, do you think sitting in a 50-person class memorizing texts and repeating grammar points will be the most effective approach, regardless of culture? That English class in Taiwanese schools alone, without outside practice, does not lead to particularly stellar results, should be sufficient evidence that it will not.

But, most vitally, it's that local teachers and students have shown themselves to be open to other approaches. Despite unfounded stereotypes to the contrary, your average Taiwanese student does want their language classes to be more vibrant - fun, useful, communicative - than a traditional grammar-focused approach affords. Your average Taiwanese teacher wants to deliver that, as well, although institutional constraints (such as testing requirements) make it difficult. And as time passes, some of my best students will become head teachers or teacher trainers themselves, and will impart their own advice on what works and what doesn't, and "what works" will be forged of an entirely home-grown consensus. That can happen without me in the picture, but I feel grateful that I get to be a part of it. 

That's just it - I'm not seeking to put people down (such as untrained foreign teachers who come and get jobs easily) or push my own ideas on others. I just want the state of English teaching in Taiwan to be better. My Big Bad - my Final Boss - is probably the national-level exam (and the over-testing that takes place leading up to it). Although there have been changes and improvements, it's not nearly where it needs to be in terms of creating positive washback on the classes learners take. There's not much I can do about that now, but if the overall state of language teaching is both more localized and simply better, it's a step in the right direction. 

If a "bilingual", "globally-oriented" Taiwan is the way forward, immigration reform for educators is imperative

Just a quick thought at the end of Lunar New Year that struck me as I chatted about my life in Taiwan with a friendly British couple on the beach. Links to come later as I can't easily add them on an iPad. 

They asked me if dual nationality in Taiwan was even possible, or if I would have to give up my original nationality to get it. I told them sincerely I was happy that recent changes to the immigration laws in Taiwan created a pathway, but dismayed that the path was entirely too narrow and impossible - as an educator, I'd have to be a university professor (assistant or associate - I forget which because that's so far off for me that it doesn't matter yet.) I mentioned that I have friends at prestigious institutions like Academia Sinica who have been told that this is interpreted (incorrectly) to mean "when you have tenure", so they won't even write the necessary letters for their academics until that happens. 

"Imagine," I said, "having to get tenure at Academia Sinica before you even qualified as an educator!" 

It was the same thing I'd told Legislator Karen Yu just a few weeks ago. 

My husband joined in, "It seems like a rule that was put in place with very little thought - like some people in a room just decided that sounded good, but which has a huge effect on people's lives that the folks in that room are totally unaware of."

And I've come to realize, as those whole "bilingual country" and "English as a second official language" talk starts slowly creaking its wheels towards actual action, that if the government is serious about it, that immigration laws, especially for educators, simply need to be loosened. Now. 

The usual pushback to people upset that they don't qualify for dual nationality in Taiwan (like me!) is "this is the set of talents/skills that the government has decided it needs, that's why it's comparatively for someone in STEM to jump through the hoops, but difficult for teachers. They want STEM workers but don't need so many teachers. Deal with it!" 

This is of course nonsense, though I do acquiesce that this is what the government *thinks* are the skills it needs to attract to Taiwan. What's horseshit is the notion that Taiwan actually needs more talented foreign STEM professionals. Taiwan has reams and reams of local STEM talent, the best of whom are leaving Taiwan due to low pay and poor working conditions. (and even so, if anything there's a surplus of engineers and IT professionals. Perhaps pay would go up if they were more scarce.) Foreigners aren't going to take those jobs in any great number because the jobs aren't very good; what it needs is to provide attractive enough opportunities to get its own talent to stay, and perhaps some foreigners as well. Taiwan is not a developing country; what it would take to satisfy top Taiwanese talent is not far off from what it would take to attract foreigners. Expectations don't differ that much. 

But what Taiwan actually does need - or will need in the coming years - is talented educators. It's true that there is a surplus of not-very-well-trained "English teachers". While I support a way forward for them in the field that involves better apprenticeship and training than what is on offer now, they are not the ones I mean. We have a lot of those (too many, in fact) and not enough trained and experienced foreign educators - whether you have a teaching license, a Delta or a postgraduate degree. Among those who are here, a disproportionate amount are English teachers or non-specialized teachers of young learners; teachers who specialize in other subjects are harder to come by. We have even fewer experienced language teacher trainers - and I don't just mean among foreigners. There aren't that many options for teacher training in English among locals either. 

The government seems to have realized this - the talk at the meeting before Lunar New Year focused at times on this need. But they don't seem to have realized that if that is the talent Taiwan must attract, then one of the best ways to get those already here to stay and attract new professionals is to make it easier not just to move here, but to stay. That is, to further amend immigration laws so that teachers who want to build a career here have a hope of staying on as citizens, someday, if they wish. 

If we're going to really go ahead with a "globally oriented Taiwan" - that is, a country where English is integrated culturally to a degree that eases the road to greater internationalization, which is the actual goal - Taiwan is going to need more than a handful of professors who currently qualify. 

They are going to need teacher trainers (you know, like me). Not just to train up foreign teachers, but locals as well (which is what I focus on). No country actually achieves the level of 'bilingualism' that the government says it aspires to with foreign teachers alone: you'll notice that English medium teachers in countries like Singapore, India, Hong Kong (I'm calling it a country and don't care what you think) and the Philippines are overwhelmingly local. They're going to need advisors, translators, editors and tutors. They are going to need English proficiency test examiners (even though tests like IELTS suck for political reasons and you should not take them if you can avoid it.) 

And yes, they're going to need just regular teachers. Not just English teachers; if Tainan is any indication, this push is going to go hand-in-hand with a bilingual education model, where regular subjects are taught in English. This model isn't particularly common in Taiwan, although schools with multilingual curricula exist; educators who are familiar with it will be needed, and a number of them will be foreign. Teacher training programs and certification courses will hopefully become more readily available in Taiwan - I have high hopes for international standard pre-service certifications, including those run by Cambridge and Trinity. But those require trainers, and to get to a point where locals can do those jobs (as such training does not currently exist in Taiwan), we'll need foreign teacher trainers. 

So, it makes absolutely no sense, from this moment forward, for the government to imply through its immigration law that it does need foreign engineers but it doesn't need teachers. It makes no sense to set the bar for educators so ridiculously high that almost no-one meets it, and to predicate it on a job some valuable educators may not even want. 

Personally, while I think I'd be a fine academic, I find a lot of meaning in teacher training, especially training up non-native speaker teachers. This is a real contribution to Taiwan - but to become yet another university professor teaching the same old academic writing and speaking classes? That is also meaningful, but we have a lot of them already. Are more of those what Taiwan really needs, at a time when it will be gearing up to train a bunch of new teachers in modern methods that are not currently common here?

Many of us are already here, and have made Taiwan our home. We want to stay and contribute, and one of the best ways the government can ensure that we do is to make it feasible for educators to gain dual nationality. Taiwan is a fine place to live as well; surely some newcomers will want to stay. 

It's time for Taiwan to truly open the door to them, and amend its immigration policy to reflect the talent it says it needs. 

Taiwanese teens know that their English classes are terrible

As an English teacher who believes in the power of authentic communication in language learning -after all, that's how I learned Mandarin - I've been following the work of Taipei Teen Tribune with interest. It's an English-language 'new media' website with articles written by Taiwanese teenagers, with a lot of really great content (and a useful site to follow if you want to know what Taiwanese youth are thinking). And as a professional, I'm interested in how it has helped Taiwanese youth to develop their English language proficiency.

Recently, 12th grader Irene Lin wrote this insightful piece about what it's like to learn English in Taiwanese schools. It goes something like this: 


Many students, who are able to get high grades on tests, are incapable of having an actual English conversation nor write an 
essay on their own. Lessons are designed for students to be able to answer grammar questions and fill vocabulary into sentences rather than practical usage.

Treating English like a math problem is the major flaw in Taiwan’s English education. Students are taught to look at a sentence by breaking them down into pieces based on parts of speech. Overemphasizing grammar and neglecting content causes students to misuse vocabulary and leads to a lack of ability to comprehend meaning.


Lin suggests a solution that pretty much every professional educator with solid training can get behind:


The amount of reading, writing, and speaking needs to increase to solve the problem. However, we not only need to increase the amount but also its difficulty. Students learn more vocabulary through a novel compared to a five paragraph text; learning to write an essay provides the opportunity to learn critical thinking, an ability that Taiwanese education has never taught.


The analysis itself could go deeper, but what is said is spot-on. I'd bend over and do backflips to have a student like this in my classes, and I don't even teach teenagers (I work with adults). Essentially, she's spot on that macroskills work needs to be increased by a massive amount, with an eye to creating users, not learners of the language. Taiwan's secondary school language curriculum currently focuses on passing the various national exams, which in turn are focused on a grammar-structure-heavy view of language.

It's a classic example of negative washback, and the effects are already well-known: while many Taiwanese English teachers are open to more communicative-competence oriented language teaching, only elementary school Taiwanese teachers of English feel they're able to actually incorporate this into their teaching. This is true even in Tainan, where "English as a second official language" has been a policy for a few years now: elementary school teachers are overall more enthusiastic than junior high school ones, almost certainly due to the pressure of preparing learners for national exams.

At the secondary level, teachers repeatedly say that the pressure to prepare learners for exams (which do not focus on communicative competence at all) keeps them from meaningfully incorporating learning approaches that are shown to produce competent users, not just test-takers.

There is just no way to incorporate anything like communicative teaching, task-based learning, a lexical approach or the Big Mama of bilingual education - CLIL, or Content Language Integrated Learning - at a national level as long as the teachers are still pinned to the wall vis-a-vis the national exams.

The exams themselves need to either be scrapped (at least the foreign language sections, though I'm of a mind to say the whole thing should go, with more proficiency-oriented assessment methods taking their place), or revamped so completely that they look nothing like what learners do now. There is just no place in modern language learning for pages and pages of grammar analysis without any nods to practical usage or even meaning in context.

There's just no other reasonable way to teach English for proficiency - you can't expect teachers to do that and to produce test-takers who can handle a grammar-heavy sit-down exam at the same time. The tests have got to go - but good luck convincing parents, some old-school teachers, and more conservative officials in the Ministry of Education that.

Certainly, meaningful skills and systems practice should be a part of any meaningful language-learning curriculum, but it's not enough to say "increase the difficulty."  As other professional educators in Taiwan have noted when reading this, another big issue is that the ways in which language classes in Taiwanese schools are already difficult are not the ways that will produce proficient users of English.

For example, as a knowledgeable friend pointed out, there's a glut of vocabulary in the current curriculum - far too much to absorb in any real way. If the target language for each class is 4-5 new words at most - but those words are truly used in terms of collocation, colligation, common usage, presence in idiomatic speech and more, and strongly contextually presented, by the end of a typical Taiwanese student's education, they will have still learned thousands of words - more than enough to be proficient, if they can use them across several collocations and phrases.  The difference is that they'll be more likely to actually remember what they learned, rather than trying to cram five times that many lexical items into their brains, vomiting it all up on tests, and then forgetting most of it soon after.

That Lin and her peers already know they're receiving a sub-standard language education is a start. That Lin is able to say clearly that her education does not teach her to think critically is, ironically, a sign of critical thinking ability. It gives me faith in the new generation, so I'll kindly thank you to stop calling them strawberries and mindless phone drones.

All of this leads right back to issues with making English a "second official language" in Taiwan. 

The idea itself isn't a bad one, and the stated goals of the program are actually quite reasonable. The goal isn't to make everyone a fluent speaker, or even necessarily a fully proficient one. They're to make Taiwan a more navigable, understandable destination for foreign visitors and businesspeople - essentially, to internationalize. They're to make English less 'scary' (so, for example, maybe shop assistants won't run away when they see me because they're afraid to speak English; nevermind that I speak Mandarin), and to improve the English curriculum that Taiwan already has. The timeline is reasonable as well.

That said, the fact that Taiwanese youth already go through about a decade of English classes in school, and most who don't come out speaking English in any meaningful way (those who do have almost always taken additional after-school language classes) is a massive problem. Simply having more classes won't help if the curriculum is ineffective. But if the curriculum doesn't work because it's preparing learners for exams rather than teaching them to use a language, it can't be changed unless the exams change.

Tainan is already doing a good job with this on the tourist end, with improvements such as English audioguides now available for major temples, so that any visitor can take a self-guided English-language tour of a number of Tainan temples, and by all accounts the work is quality.

When it comes to improving actual education and proficiency, however, my big worry is that there's simply no way to know if it's working. There seems to be no assessment mechanism built into Tainan's program, which is a yellow (if not a red) flag itself. Even if there were, it's so new that we'd have no idea if it were working by how anyhow; it's too early to know. That Lai has announced the initiative at a national level now is pure politics.

These issues aside, the problem that Lin dances around in her piece is exactly the thing that I fear will torpedo the program: we have no idea whether the continued existence of the national exams in Tainan is having an effect on the "English as a second language" program there, because there's not only no data, but no mechanism that I know of to collect it. Now, imagine that problem on a national level. I just don't see how this is going to work unless we kill the test-heavy way languages are taught in Taiwan now.

That itself is hard to do unless we clean house in terms of the teachers and Ministry of Education officials who will fight such changes, and not just hire "more teachers", but implement improved training for those teachers (both foreign and local - the time is here when it comes to no longer allowing uncredentialed 'native speakers' to be hired as English teachers in Taiwan, with little or no institutional support or meaningful training once employed. Although that's how I got my start, the system simply has to change.) For foreign English teachers, insisting on an internationally-recognized certification - especially now that one will soon be available in Taiwan - and setting parameters for which certification programs are accepted is just a first step.

On top of that, an entirely new curriculum will have to be written, which challenges learners in appropriate ways. What it means to assess learning will have to be entirely re-vamped. Only through consulting with experienced, trained teachers can we ever hope to do this well. 

Until that happens, we might be told that English education in Taiwan is going to change, but teachers will continue to prepare for the ludicrous national exams, and students like Irene Lin aren't going to see their language education get any better.

I'm not holding my breath. 

An internationally-recognized English teaching certification course is now available in Taiwan!

Trinity CertTESOL is coming to Taiwan!

As a teacher trainer myself, I'm very excited about this. One of the biggest flaws in the industry of English-teaching workhouses and abbatoirs here is that, once here, if you don't already have a basic pre-service teaching certification, it's difficult to get one as there were no offerings in Taiwan. No Trinity CertTESOL, no CELTA: two of the only - if not the only two - internationally-recognized programs that include practicum hours. And, as a teacher trainer, the only two that I can personally wholeheartedly recommend.

In addition to tuition fees, that meant leaving the country for a month (and losing a month's worth of income, if you could get the time off at all) and paying all associated costs with living in another country for that month - possibly as well as rent back in Taiwan. I know it was a huge financial burden when we went to do CELTA in Turkey.

Now, that's no longer necessary: on November 5th, a part-time (Monday-Friday, 9:30-13:30) certification course is finally available locally! If you can be free in the mornings, you don't have to leave Taiwan or stop working.

Trinity is equivalent to CELTA, which means that it will be useful to you even if you leave Taiwan. Having not only been through CELTA but also Delta and in the middle of a Master's program in the same field, I can say that it's worth it. The curriculum is sound - and I'm a teacher trainer who has completed an equivalent course herself, I would know - and the practicum hours set it apart from weekend or online courses. You will certainly become a better teacher because of it, if you take what you learn from it and incorporate it intelligently and thoughtfully to the classroom while developing your own style.

It's also important to remember that these certifications aren't meant to create insta-teachers or classroom superheroes. Nothing can do that except experience, reflective practice and consistent, high quality professional development. They are pre-service programs, which means they are open to people who have never taught. They aren't even meant to give you all the skills a professional needs: entire multi-year teaching programs exist for that, and not even they can accomplish it. They're meant to give you the fundamentals you need to be competent in the classroom as a novice teacher, or to improve your practice as a current teacher, with the assumption that you will receive further development and institutional support from your employer (how much institutional support you are considered to need post-certification will vary). They are stepping-stones to higher-level in-service teaching degrees. They get you on the track - they're not the end of the road.

You may be wondering how such a certification can help you in Taiwan. I admit that's a real problem here: the complete lack of any sort of qualifications needed to be a "teacher" in Taiwan, and how certifications are generally not rewarded well, which feeds the cycle of mediocrity and poor teaching practice.

But, better jobs in Taiwan do exist. There are fewer of them, but they are generally only open to teachers who have these certifications, or at least, those who do get their resume pushed to the top of the pile. These jobs tend to be more professional and pay better (though I wouldn't say they are wonderful - almost no job in Taiwan is). You may be frustrated that at Happy Oxbridge Engrish Scholar's Acadamy, you won't get a raise for doing this program, and I'm sympathetic to that.

But, better places to work will actually consider you seriously if you do, and that will come with better pay and other perks, like the ability to request more time off (unpaid) or more time off in total (perhaps paid).

Oh, yeah, and you'll just be a better teacher for it.

Doing a part-time Master's from Taiwan

I'm having trouble reading this - 朝山？潮汕？Is that a radical or a design element?

So, my first full term at Exeter is finished, grades are in, and I'll just say I'm quite happy.

It's important to me to write about professional development - after all, I'm interested in Taiwan for personal reasons, but my actual profession isn't related to Taiwan Studies, affairs, policy, any of it, and although I know there are others here who take TESOL seriously, it's hard to see that just looking online. Besides, people have asked. There aren't a lot of professional development opportunities locally, so for those who are actually serious about the profession I figure it'd be good to talk about what I've been up to.

I have less to say about this than I did about doing a CELTA (taking over a month away from Taiwan) and a modular Delta locally. I'm in the groove now - I know what I need to do and how to go about it, and there's less initial confusion and stress. So, it just feels like "life" rather than "something worth writing about".

But, there are a few things worth saying:

A bit about my program

I'm enrolled in the MEd Summer Intensive TESOL program at Exeter: it's the only highly-ranked school I could find that had a program quite like this - I've written about this issue before. It's not a "distance learning" program: you take your classes face-to-face over the summer, and then go back to wherever you live to write your papers. This is enough for it to be considered fully face-to-face.

The same program is offered full-time, and the summer program tends to be attended by people like me: working professionals in the field looking to level up (I have heard that the full-time program skews quite a bit younger.) Most of my classmates are non-native speakers, which I appreciate, and the entry requirements are stringent enough (though, to be honest, I did not fear that I'd be rejected.)

The main issue was finding relevant literature - in general:

There is just not a lot of TESOL literature available in Taiwan. Caves has a modest selection, I haven't yet figured out if I can use an interlibrary loan system here and, given that the best university doesn't offer my program, I'm not sure it would be fruitful to try. I can get most journal publications electronically, but it can be hard to access books, as many relevant titles aren't available in digital copies (when one is available, it's usually offered in a read-online format through the Exeter library).

I lucked out in terms of having access to a large library of relevant titles through a helpful classmate, but if I hadn't made that connection, I might have spent thousands more just on books.

...and relevant to my context

Because this is a Master of Education program, and not a Master of Arts, it is very much tied to one's teaching context. You can't write abstractly: you have to find real teaching situations, evaluate them, and often propose your own output or adaptations for use in these real-world contexts. I appreciate that - it's relevant, not too up-in-the-clouds - but to ground your ideas in principled pedagogy and relevant literature, you need such literature about said contexts. And there just...isn't a lot. There are TESOL and AppLing researchers publishing research from Taiwan, some of which is crap and some of which is fine - but there's just not enough of it. In the field, Taiwan simply does not represent very well.

It can be a bit lonely

I did Delta with Brendan - we had each other to talk through the hard parts, read each others' work, make each other dinner and talk each other down from stressful moments. I also had a local tutor for the most difficult module, which helped a lot.

On the Master's, although one of my classmates is Taiwanese and we've become good friends, I don't see her often as she lives in Hsinchu. Otherwise, it's just me...going it alone. I'm quite extroverted so all that time stuck in books or behind a computer screen, without other people doing the same thing, got a little lonely. I started feeling a bit like a slug - not enough exercise. I felt trapped indoors on beautiful days. Finding friends working on their own stuff to be around and choosing outdoor cafes on occasion helped, but frankly, you're sort of on your own.

There's not a lot of local support

To be blunt, Taiwan does not seem to value qualified English teachers. It can feel sometimes like nobody cares. I quit one of my (many) jobs in part over frustration with what I saw as academically-underqualified management, feeling as though, if I wasn't going to get support at work, where my degree would be immediately relevant, I would at least need time to finish my papers. My other workplaces were highly accommodating of my time needs and I'm thankful for that - those papers, man - but weren't resources in terms of discussing module content and writing.

I'd worked with highly qualified academic managers in the past, whom I would have happily gone to with questions or for advice, but that dried up. I got some very helpful support from the person I consider as a kind of mentor (thanks, yo), but he's busy with other things too.

I know there are other qualified people in Taiwan I could talk to, but I have found once you get to this level, you tend to be horribly busy (as I have been), and I feel as though there's no such thing as a truly helpful workplace in Taiwan. Not even necessarily the universities. I have to hope I'm wrong.

Yet I can't help but feel as though English teaching here suffers from the same blight as journalism: professionalism is just not valued. It's depressing. Come on, Taiwan.

The best part is the travel - the papers are...papers

Seriously - the classes are lectures, a bit long (three hours) but fun to attend. Otherwise, you are free to ramble about Exeter, although many students will spend time in the library looking through the physical collection to take notes, get ideas on what they might need, or scan relevant passages. First year students have to write a fairly simple formative essay and take study skills seminars - we'll see what it's like for second years - but otherwise, we could enjoy the town (quiet as it is). There was never a point when we were too busy to go to the pub or out for dinner, or to enjoy theater and other performances with our student discounts. In fact, people commented on my constant social media posts having fun with my classmates asking if I was actually doing any work (some).

And, of course, if you're already in England, you may as well poke about Europe...last year I went to Georgia, Armenia, Greece, Czechia, Hungary and Austria. This year I'll go to Portugal, Wales and Italy (and there is talk of a weekend trip to Spain.)

Then, the papers came. They're not easy - I mean, it's Master's level at a fairly prestigious university. I did very well but I had to work for it, and I felt like I spent most of January, February and March deep in a hole with only my computer screen for company.

There are no exams (yay!)

I always found this a bit odd about my friends' Master's programs. I thought exams were for college classes where you could assume the average to...let's say "differently motivated"... students couldn't write a decent paper (sorry if that sounds mean, but...) and if you were in a Master's program, especially in any kind of liberal arts or humanities field, you would certainly do away with the nonsense of timed exams and express your literature-grounded, principled and justified ideas in writing. Apparently - according to people I know - that's not always the case.

My program, however, has lots of paper writing but no exams. As, frankly, it should be.

Time can be an issue

I was lucky - as above, my various employers were very accommodating. I also took on a new teacher training role during this time, which I've been really getting into. It was a steep learning curve, though, so I found myself teaching my first teacher training course while finishing up my first paper, and not sleeping much at all. But, the job presented itself and I jumped on it, as I'd always wanted to do teacher training.

However, it's less clear that others doing this program would be so fortunate: I remember being dependent on an employer for a work visa, and I remember not having the power or resources to tell an employer to buzz off if they weren't accommodating. Most employers in Taiwan don't respect teachers' time - you're scheduled without being asked, pressured to work weekends or take classes you don't want, corralled into doing extra unpaid work (judging [ridiculous] speech contests, pointless paperwork, 'English corner' or whatever) and aren't even paid particularly well for the honor.

I could easily imagine someone without my resources - the experience of having done a Delta, the course exemptions from that Delta, accommodating employment, permanent residency, a persuasive resting bitch face* and a supportive husband - struggling to get all of the papers written.

Even I - a fully-resourced person - gave up my Lunar New Year to spend 6 straight days writing a paper on testing and assessment, with a cold so bad it bordered on the flu. I didn't have the time otherwise.

It's caused me to re-think similar programs in Taiwan.

Looking from the perspective of someone who had done a Delta, MA TESOL programs available in Taiwan didn't look particularly impressive. I didn't see how they actually trained one to be a good teacher (and I have been told that the MA Teaching Chinese programs tended to focus on the linguistics of Chinese rather than how to teach it).

But, I'm finding that's true with pretty much any Master's program. You get a lot of background in the field and a deeper theoretical and academic knowledge of it, but if you are looking to get better at classroom practice, they aren't going to do that. Period. No matter where you are. The academic knowledge is worthwhile, but it's best to know what you are signing up for. 

It's still absolutely worth it

Seriously, I'm lovin' it! I feel like I've found my superpower - a great hidden talent - writing academic papers that keep getting high marks. When you enter the field as an inexperienced nobody, as I did, and continue to work in it despite it being dismissed as "not a real job" by so many other expats (which I want to say is not fair, but so many "teachers" treat it as "not a real job" that I can't even blame the haters too much), there's always this desire to do something to set yourself apart as a real professional. Besides, although I don't write about it much, I do care about the field. I've toyed with starting an TEFL blog but Lao Ren Cha is enough for me, I'd rather write as a hobby and leave the work at work. Besides, it is interesting (to me) - I enjoy knowing enough about second language acquisition that I can shrug off all of the folk theories and pontificating. Leading TESOL training and developing future language teachers simultaneously really drives home that I do have a body of professional knowledge worth sharing. It's great.

I mean the papers can be torture, but also, it's great.



*no, seriously, sometimes you just gotta don the face and tell people how it's gonna be