Why are Chinese people picky about the type of language you speak but not with English?

[Lu]

The problem this is hard the decide when you're at the level of an absolute beginner. For a beginner native or non-native isn't that important as long the teaching skills are good.

True, but then, not all native speakers get everything right about their native language either. An absolute beginner will always need some sort of assurance that a teacher is both knowledgeable about the subject and knowledgeable about teaching. Many non-native speaking teachers have some kind of certification to prove they have a decent level.

[grawrt]

I'm on Lu with this. I would rather have a qualified non-native speaker teach me Chinese over a native speaker. Native speakers just don't know how to teach. Although all of my Chinese teachers have been native speakers, I had one that honestly, had absolutely no teaching quality whatsoever. It was hard to learn anything from her. I remember her teaching a grammar point and introduced 跟 and 比 at the same time. So she went like this "okay class, this is the structure A bi B and A gen B." I ended up writing down "A跟比" . This was so hard to unlearn.... >__>

 

Also, I'm currently meeting with a language exchange partner, and sometimes I feel bad I cant help him better because I'm not a teacher. I still think I'm probably a better teacher than ordinary native speakers but sometimes its HARD. Today I was trying to teach him to say athletes like a normal person and not say "ath-uh-letes" I'm like, noo. no UH sound. get rid of it. Then I tried to compare the right way to say it and the wrong way to say it. Then I had him break down the word, first with ath then with letes, then I told him put it together. the uh was still put in the center. Then I tried having him write out the IPA. He wrote it down CORRECTLY, and I showed him, see--> no UH sound after the TH, then he started erasing TH and I'm like nooo.

 

SO yeah... I would vote non-native professional over common native speaker. Also because native speakers have a bad habit of having that "oh its good enough to understand" attitude. I actually had a few people tell me "oh your chinese is good enough". Like they expect me to just go "oh okay, I'll stop studying now". There are seriously low expectations for foreigners.

[陳德聰]

@anonymoose, it is not implicit agreement. I disagree with the premise and my statement was meant to be explicit disagreement. As for racism, it appears that we are operating on fundamentally different understandings of what that entails, but this is not the place I intend to discuss that with strangers.

[Shelley]

I have to agree with grawt.

 

If someone asked me to teach English I could teach what but not always why.

I don't know how to teach.

 

As i said im my post @ #18 I felt I had the best of both, a qualified bilingual teacher.

 

A non-native teacher will know what the possible problems could be and a good teacher will know how to teach these things well.

 

[Silent]

 

I'm on Lu with this. I would rather have a qualified non-native speaker teach me Chinese over a native speaker.

This is comparing apples and oranges. Sure a qualified teacher non-native speaker is better then a native non-qualified teacher. If you set higher standards for non-natives they obviously wil be better qualified. My statement is based on just native/non-native comparison without added qualifications. The average native will have better language skills compared to the non native, the non native is through experience likely to be better aware of the pitfalls. Teaching qualifications and experience of a native speaker is likely to compensate the benefits of a non native speaker as the experience of the non-native will fade. People learning a language/skill to a high level oftentimes forget, or at least have faded memories, of the difficulties they had as a beginner. Also everyone is different and thus experience different difficulties. 

 

 

Native speakers just don't know how to teach.

A blunt statement.

[SeaChele]

Hmm, this is a really interesting topic. Just throwing this out there, because I remember this came up in conversation once with one of my Chinese friends in China:

 

She indicated a preference for developing an American English accent over a British English accent just simply because she preferred the way the American English accent sounded ("less serious" was her phrasing, haha?) She also seemed to have the impression that maybe it would be easier to speak American English because she felt that the American English rules for what would seem appropriate while speaking, the 口语, was more relaxed than the British counterparts.