Teaching Chinese in the US?

[Strawberries513]

I am doing a research project on teaching Chinese in the US. (By non-native chinese speakers). I was hoping there was someone here with that career I could get to answer some questions...

1. What is the job description?

2. How much experience/education is needed?

3. Are non-native speakers common as Mandarin teachers?

4. Is there a high demand for Mandarin teachers?

5. What are the job benifits like? (salary, etc)

6. How proficient in Mandarin must one be to teach it?

And just anything else you want to share.

I know this is alot, Im sorry. I hope someone will at least be able to answer a few. Thank you!!

[-葛亚辉-]

as long as we're discussing it, I'd like to add a question:

do you think non-native speakers should teach chinese?

personally, I think generally they shouldn't. There are some that have lived in China or Taiwan for a long time and speak very naturally with always correct grammar, tones, etc., but generally I feel like it's sort of dangerous to have non-native speakers teaching because they will teach their students whatever pronuciation/grammar/tone problems they have. that's just my feeling based on my exerience....I've been taking chinese for 2 years and I'd be very skeptical of trying to imitate the speech of any non-native speaker. Maybe I'm just being biased, but I've only really ever heard 1 or 2 non native chinese speakers who sound like native chinese speakers...maybe i'll find more this summer in china.

[Shadowdh]

Funnily enough I attended a conference and gave a speech on learning Chinese and the difficulties we face. Part of my speech included a comment on non native teachers... I personally believe that if they are fluent in Chinese and are a native speaker of the original language then they could be even better at explaining grammar than a native Chinese speaker... however for the purposes of listening and speaking I certainly agree that a native speaker is imperative... sorry for going o/t a little...

[<<恒心>>]

I'll add my two cents since I'm currently considering either an M.A. or Ph.D in TCFL.

In my personal experience, I've had brilliant native speakers for teachers. I've even had a brilliant non-native teacher (taught historical Chinese dialectology, history of the Chinese language and Classical Chinese.) But more than anything else, I've had absolutely terrible native-speaker teachers of Chinese.

So that experience alone convinces me that it's not in whether you're a native speaker or not, but whether or not you have any gifts as a teacher. Think about it this way: how many terrible native-speaker teachers of English have you had? Or even more interesting, how many terrible ESL teachers have you met (especially in China?) I rest my case.

Because of this, I think that non-native speakers must be involved in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, especially when it comes to developing curriculum, texts, dictionaries, etc. that are actually useful and offer clear explanations for foreigners. Considered this way, who better than a non-native teacher is there when it comes to assessing the specific needs of non-native students? I was in Beijing last week and was happy to see that textbooks are improving in quality (based on a lot of experience at Beida and Beiyu in teaching foreigners Chinese); when I started studying in '92, the textbooks were terrible and so was most of the teaching.

Qualification standards vary widely; in Minnesota where I live, the state has just completed a report on (desired) standards for curriculum and teaching of Chinese in the state. You may find that report and other useful information here:

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/Teacher_Support/Chinese_Language_Initiative/index.html

We'll see what happens from this point in the state. To answer some of your specific questions:

1. Check out the Chronicle of Higher Education and search the job postings for info on qualifications and other specific info.

2. Experience/education varies widely, but a B.A. in Chinese has to be considered minimal.

3. Non-native speakers are in the minority, but do exist. To put it mildly, they face scepticism at minimum and outright discrimination at maximum.

4. Demand is growing at a rapid pace.

5. Job benefits are the same as for similar teaching positions.

6. That's the big question, and it's in flux and under debate at present. There is a growing demand for any and all "qualified" teachers of Chinese. Defining what a "qualified" teacher is has been a big problem to the present. Waivers to the MN teaching license are commonplace.

Hope that helps!

[-葛亚辉-]

yes....to clarify my position a bit, i agree with Shadowdh...I don't think that non-native speakers are useless in terms of teaching Chinese, they may help explain concepts/grammar/etc. in a way that's more recognizable to westerners, I just think that relying solely on a non-native speaker to learn chinese would be a bad idea.

And I don't think that native english speakers are really required to teach english speakers chinese...I've never had a chinese teacher that wasn't Chinese or Taiwanese by birth, and I've never really had trouble understanding things becuase they can't explain it properly in english. These are all chinese or taiwanese ex pats whove lived here for at least a couple years though.

[<<恒心>>]

To be honest, I have a lot of mixed emotions about the whole question. You may be lucky to have had only qualified teachers... I remember that my first year Chinese teacher was a nice woman, but I got her last class before she retired, and she wasn't really up to it anymore. She had a TA handle the class, and he clearly wasn't qualified. Niether was my second-year teacher. So it wasn't until I did my third year (done at Nankai U.) that I finally got a decent teacher, but even then she was an unexperienced recent graduate...

At present, I would have problems accepting a teaching position in Chinese, especially if I was the only teacher involved...but that might not be true in the future. I can imagine, though, that there might be situations where (conceiveably) a school district might have funding for only one position, so the choice would be either a) suck it up and do the best I could or B) the students get no Chinese at all. As a professional educator, how could I ethically put my own ego needs before those of deserving students?

Philosophically, I'm a huge proponent of total immersion, but that's an expensive ideal that's just not available to everybody. So realistically, I have to be prepared to face less than ideal situations. There might be situations where the best I could do would be to simply open the door to Chinese for students and prepare them to go beyond what I myself can teach them. But that's what a good teacher should do anyway, so... I can conceive of getting to the point where I could comfortably teach the students basics and maybe more importantly, how to study Chinese successfully.

[koreth]

As a student, I'd much rather have a fully fluent non-native speaker than a native speaker as a teacher most of the time, though unless the non-native speaker is 大山, I'd want a native speaker around for pronunciation too.

I can't count the number of times I've had native speakers -- including teachers -- answer my questions with something like, "I don't know why, it just sounds wrong if you say it that way." Or be unable to explain the difference between two similar words that mean the same thing in English but are used differently in Chinese. To take one simple example, I asked six or seven native speakers before I got a satisfactory explanation of the difference between 而且 and 并且.

A native speaker who has spent a lot of time studying the language, or who is highly literate, might not have those problems. (I did eventually find one with the answer.) But it seems to me that once you get past a very basic level, you're much better off with a teacher who had to learn the same things you're learning rather than just picking them all up intuitively from his or her environment without thinking about them. Native speakers tend to use more or less correct grammar and phrasing, but they aren't necessarily doing it consciously.

[-葛亚辉-]

seems like what it comes down to or not is really that you need a good teacher. Native speakers aren't naturally good teachers; my feeling is just that a native speaker who is a good teacher is better than a non-native speaker. Also, there's no guarantee that non-native speakers will be good teachers just becuase they learned them themselves in class--some people are good teachers, others aren't. It's a skill.

That said, it's becoming clear to me that I may have been lucky thusfar, becuase all of my Chinese teachers have been very good.

*returns to studying for 口试*

[heifeng]

1. What is the job description? depends on the job

2. How much experience/education is needed? depends on the level you are teaching, are you talking about HS, private school, public school, adult education, community college, university, corporate training, government instruction???

3. Are non-native speakers common as Mandarin teachers? they can be. (I think that in countries w/o a ton of people form China this is especially the case. My friend from uzbekistan probably would only have a HSK 5 equivalent, but she use to be a teacher back home)

4. Is there a high demand for Mandarin teachers? (my opinion on this is that although there is the whole 汉风 phenomenon, there are still not a ton of students studying Chinese yet. If educational institutions have students that want to study PLUS actual funding to hire such a teacher, then potentially, yes there is some demand.)

5. What are the job benifits like? (salary, etc) depends on where you teach and who you teach

6. How proficient in Mandarin must one be to teach it? All the non-native teachers I had at my university were amazing period. I would have prefered to just take their classes in some cases because they were very intense and had high expectations for all of their students.

In my experience when I attended college, professors gave the lectures and teaching assistants gave the discussions. The professors had extremely extensive backgrounds in Chinese language, literature, liguistics, etc. Sometimes the TA's were actual linguistic students from China, sometimes they were just Chinese students from some other random departments trying to get some income through teaching. In the whole native vs non-native debate, in REALITY, when you learn a language in college they don't spend a ton of time correcting students pronunciation past the first 2 years (it's not like high school when everything is super slow paced), and that is why you are SUPPOSE to go to the language lab. I found that the non-native professors where actually stricter in terms of pronunciation and the tones.

If you really want to look at the education of some great university level Chinese professors, you can check out their CV's here

[xianu]

I will echo Haifeng's answers to the questions about non-native mandarin teachers, at least int he US. Also want to add that, having just been on the job market (with PhD, looking for university level positions), as a native English speaker, I believe I faced descrimination, but, you know it is hard to tell these things. Mostly the problem is that currently everyone is looking for people to start or help expand pre-existing and small programs in Chinese at both university and K-12 levels. At the university, it all depends on the kind of job they want done. Some JUST want language teachers with tons of experience - well - everyone wants people with experience. Others want people who will be able to do general classes and teach in other disciplines besides purely modern language (like literature, history, women's studies, philosophy, econ, etc.). That said, I did find a job where I get to start the language program, and design the entire curriculum from beginning language, to the advanced content courses, as well as teacher education courses, study abroad, and a whole boat-load of other kinds of "service" type duties. I have also been in contact with a number of HS and middle schools who have been trying to locate "qualified" teachers for new programs. I have already heard of at least 12 schools looking for teachers (usually part-time to begin the programs). Although that doesn't sound like a lot, it really is, when you consider that these are all brand new positions/lines. The problem arises with how to find the qualified teachers. My state, Colorado, doesn't yet have teacher certification in Chinese, and so getting a "qualified" teacher has been difficult. They currently have (more or less) 2 choices: native speakers with no American teaching experience, or certified teachers with little Chinese language background. This is a great time to get into the teaching chinese in the K-12 if you have even a little of both backgrounds.

The issue of native vs. non-native speakers is a big topic among teachers of Chinese (or at least it was in my school as a grad student): As a non-native, I naturally will support non-native Chinese speakers, but I also believe that students need exposure to both kinds of teachers simply for the reasons everyone has already stated. As a non-native, I KNOW what it is like to memorize a seemingly endless array of characters, to deal with sentence structures that seem funky to me as a native English speaker (like the prepositions dui and gei, the 3 de's, the double le's, etc), and I can also give the right nuance to a vocabulary item that appears in a book. Often times the TBs have a hard time explaining a word with a single definition, and give an English equivalent that only really works under THAT circumstance. Having wrestled with understanding all these things, I can explain them more readily. Also, I tend to understand what students are trying to say based on the kinds of words they put together (often from realizing they took a TB or dictionary translation, but did not chase it down and make sure it was the correct use of that word)

Inexperienced Native speakers tend to speak less Chinese in the classroom, and have lower expectations from their students than the non-natives, in all aspects (speaking, listening, reading and writing), and tend to have more difficulty explaining grammar or vocab nuances in class. However, on the flip side, students tend to expect them to understand less English, and so will try to speak more Chinese to them. Native teachers tend to be really great at getting students to mimic phrases, and drill patterns/vocab, so that these things get internalized. Again, good for the student. Experienced and thoughtful native speakers, though, can move students beyond these mechanical drills to more communicative activities. Some are very diligent at correcting pronunciation, and others, with plenty of experience working with american students, can also interpret garbled sentences (written or spoken), and help students work them out correctly.

I guess, in the end, a good teacher does not depend on the native language, though fluency is important. Among what counts is the ability to identify the difficultlies individual students experience (because ehritage learners usually have different difficulties) and figure out ways to help the students cope. Also important is to provide students with many opportunities to listen (yes language labs and the books' CDs are VERY important), speak, write, and practice what they have learned.

That's my long-winded 2-cents!