| Summary: | 碩士 === 南華大學 === 應用社會學系社會學碩士班 === 98 === Due to the predominance of the culture, foreign English teacher are able to receive high hourly pay. However, is their teaching quality actually high? Do they actually receive high hourly pay, as what the outsiders think, under the operation mechanism of agencies? These were the focuses of this study. Nevertheless, the ineffective management of agencies on foreign teachers and the reduced commissions resulted in the forced turnover rate of foreign teachers, which was not predicted in the beginning of this study.
The predominance of foreign English teachers was compared with that of Chinese English teachers to investigate why English spoken by foreign teachers had higher value. In addition, in terms of the importance of English, the reasons why cram school owners and the agencies of foreign teachers started the business as well as the management methods were studied. Moreover, the channels which cram schools and the agencies of foreign teachers employed to seek for foreign teachers were researched to analyze the quality of foreign teachers and the problems they encountered in Taiwan. Combining with literature analysis and the investigation on the transforming process of the English educational policy in Taiwan, the following conclusions were obtained:
1.Comparing with Chinese English teachers, foreign English teachers possess exceptionally gifted predominance in the English teaching market in Taiwan. However, the English capability of foreign English teachers was only a predominant condition attached to their cultures. When this predominant condition is bestowed value in a particular environment, they enjoy special treatment as a matter of course. In other words, under the internalized common consensus of a society, the society bestows status and special treatment upon foreign English teachers. Under the operation of English cultural hegemony, the general public approves the importance and value of English. Therefore, foreign teachers are provided high wages spontaneously.
Nevertheless, through the mechanism of agencies, the high wages of foreign teachers seem to be a false impression. After the commission for the agencies is deducted, the wages foreign teachers actually receive are not as high as the outsiders think.
Since the market is competitive, foreign teachers are difficult to find, and parents place importance on it, cram schools are usually willing to pay higher hourly wages to hire foreign teachers. The basic teaching hours per month for dispatched foreign teachers are 100 hours, and the wages are adjusted every six months. Furthermore, the hourly pay that agencies charge cram schools ranges from NT$600 to NT$1000, but the hourly pay that they actually give foreign teachers ranges from NT$600 to NT$800. The hourly commission for each teacher is estimated to be NT$200. As a matter of fact, the hourly pay that each foreign teacher receives depends on the teaching capability and teaching seniority. After paying the commission, the wages they actually receive do not seem to be absolutely higher than those of Chinese teachers. Sometimes, they are even similar.
2.Since the policy of English education have been changed, English cram schools do not worry their students will reduce. Instead, the need of the market of children''s English cram schools has increased. In terms of the 3.5 million school children between 3 and 12 years old in Taiwan, the business opportunities are worth at least 50 or 60 billions.
3.However, foreign teachers come to Taiwan to teach English generally because they would like to travel, make money, earn living expenses, and experience different cultures. Since it is not allowed to introduce a great quantity of foreign teachers, the sources of foreign teachers are inadequate, and cram schools thus can only accommodate themselves to foreign teachers.
Accent becomes the only strict standard of demand that cram schools have for foreign teachers. Nationality, education background, character, and stability do not seem to be so important. Hence, how to change the teaching attitude of foreign teachers and improve teaching quality becomes a crucial issue which should not be neglected. In addition, how to fulfill the aforementioned issue will be a difficulty that cram schools and foreign teachers have to jointly confront and think.
4.Hiring foreign teachers to teach English in the cram school is a trick for cram schools to recruit students. The external conditions of foreign teachers, namely white skin, blue eyes, and blond hair, indicate excellence and being better than other people, which are indeed more attractive and fresh to parents and students in the beginning. Furthermore, the representation of foreign cultures is indeed not replaceable by Chinese teachers. Consequently, the role that foreign teachers play in conveying cultures is indispensible. Moreover, in terms of the need of the market of English teaching, it is necessary to establish a natural whole-language learning environment through foreign teachers. All the aforementioned issues have proved that foreign teachers are necessary.
5.The operation models of agencies include lump sum and dispatch.
6.New coming foreign teachers has more space for commission, so agencies are more willing to hire them. Instead, the commission that agencies obtain from senior foreign teachers becomes relatively lower. Usually, the seniority of three years that a foreign teacher has reaches the so-called extreme edge for agencies, and senior foreign teachers are difficult to manage.
Therefore, agencies are not willing to continue the employment and will ask them to find their own employers or teach in other cram schools.
7.Cram schools hire foreign teachers for mainly being a trick or the appearance. In addition, cultural differences and communication obstacles between languages are the major factors in poor communication and interaction between cram schools and foreign teachers. In terms of employment, all of the cram schools considered that Chinese teachers were better than foreign teachers. The advantages that Chinese teachers had included being responsible and patient, teaching seriously, having better interaction with students, having better communication with parents, providing better support in every way, mastering the psychology of children better, being able to keep children, helping correct vocabulary and grammar, preparing lessons more attentively, and having higher quality.
8.Cram schools preferred hiring Canadian teachers if they valued the concept of race more since Canadians tended to be gentle. Moreover, teachers who could bear hardships and hard work the most tended to come from South Africa, but their accent could be a problem. If cram schools considered pronunciation and spelling more, they tended to hire original native speakers from U.S.A., Canada, and UK. However, American teachers with a beautiful accent were actually the most difficult to deal with since they tended to provide low support and be the least hard-working.
9.The management methods of cram schools could be generally divided into two types, respectively private brand and franchise.
10.At the moment, the most common method for cram schools to seek for foreign teachers is to place advertisement on websites or newspapers, find them through agencies or the introduction of other foreign teachers, and hire them jointly with other cram schools.
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