News Forum - OPINION – Thai government making it hard to live and work in Thailand

[Marc26]

43 minutes ago, oldschooler said:

saying that not all Thais have inferior degrees is the opposite of your “ point”.

I said that Thai University degrees are not competitive globally and you replied that a lot of Thais get degree/educated overseas

 

Again, that has nothing to do with my point

And again, you are illustrating my point by highlighting that many Thais go overseas for for their education

That is, if they go to a good enough high school that they would qualify for entrance into Universities overseas.............many wouldn't, just the ones that went to the top notch high schools in Thailand

[Marc26]

3 hours ago, LoongFred said:

The PE in Calornia require working under a PE qualified engineer for 2 years after passing the engineer in training exam. The pass rate isn't high for US for students that studied in the US where they pretty much teach to the test. It is especially difficult for foreigners. In California the Thai community is large and diverse. I have met many but most are in business. I couldn't imagine the Thai  community in Vancouver was very large.

The Thai community is not that small in Vancouver, 10k compared to 33k in Los Angeles

 

But I assume you have not met all 33k in LA, just as I have not met all 10k Thais in Vancouver

But I have met 100's in 16 years..........and i can count on less than 2 full hands how many were able to get a job with their Thai degree

 

It's called sample size and over 16 years and 100's of people, that is sufficient enough size to come form an educated theory

[huhuarf]

On 3/11/2022 at 1:44 PM, LoongFred said:

It's like ESL teachers. Many lack university degrees and get temporary licenses. Those with degrees might be in different fields than education. Mostly it's native speakers (not all) who teach by having student repeat. That's OK for beginners I guess, but advanced students want to know why. Teachers who speak Thai do a better job, IMO. 

If you think what is being currently produced by the local faculties of education are in any way capable of producing good quality speakers of English you are sadly mistaken.  Now, of course much like America I also believe that many of your better achieving students don't go into education as a field, thus much is true.

Not that I do ESL but like many I did a bit before here.  The Thai teachers are well meaning but the methods are antiquated at best.  A lot of regurgitation of rules and almost no focus on communucation.  Granted, there are a lot of unqualified foreignes here too, but at least having one to interact with forces students to use English. I've seriously looked at a thai teachers teaching English and wouldn't have known it was an English class if I wasn't told so. 

Now, I'm all in for migrating the budget slowly away from foreigners in the public school if instead that money can be used for training up Thai English teachers.  I believe this is what Korea did in the last decade.  As I recall they try to have foreign teachers come in for elementary, but by high school generally it's only Korean English teachers.

[Soidog]

4 hours ago, huhuarf said:

I've seriously looked at a thai teachers teaching English and wouldn't have known it was an English class if I wasn't told so

I agree, I had a similar experience. I was invited to dinner at a friends house. When I got there he apologised but his wife wouldn’t be able to join us for about an hour. She is an English Teacher at one of the major schools in Udon Thani and was doing some home teaching of a group of 14 year olds. I could see and hear what was going on in the other room as I sipped my beer. Apart from the odd sentence or word in English, I would never have known it was an English class. I hear more English spoken in Thai TV adverts.
 

Far too much focus on sentence structure and grammar. No wonder the kids get bored and don’t bother trying to speak it. I will often be asked questions about English by friends kids. It’s nearly always some complex grammar question. I simply answer - I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The problem is it matters for the exam. Result is they know about Participles, Adverbs and Infinitives and yet can’t give you basic directions. A shame as most Thai kids I know are dedicated student.