How can non native speakers get a teaching job in Vietnam

Hello edward151819, welcome to expat.com and thank you for your first post.

It is pretty difficult for non native speakers like me who knows the nitty gritty of the job to get a teaching position in Vietnam. I don't know why this disparity exist.

There had been, unfortunately, many instances of foreigners applying for and attaining teaching positions where their English skills were subpar.

There should be a level playing ground for all job seekers and if proven that I am a square peg in a square hole I should be given an opportunity.

The VN Ministry of Education and Training has recently implemented Decision 4159/QD-BGDDT to do just that (i.e. level the playing field), ensuring that applicants meet the ministry's requirements. Specific to applicants who are not native English speakers would be the requirement to hold "...(foreigners with) a college degree in English language or higher, foreigners with a college degree or higher and a foreign language proficiency certificate of level 5 or higher..."

Please this is just a harmless post, as I mean no disrespect.        -@edward151819

None taken.

Details of Decision 4159/QD-BGDDT can be found here, with links to external sources. (Link)

Note the 120 hours unpaid(!) "internship".

(if one were to include 15 minutes travel/prep time, this would be 160 hours)

Once again, welcome aboard expat.com. Hope to hear more from you again soon.

@edward151819

hi Edward,

as a native speaker I have to respond by saying that non-native speakers generally have a strong native accent when they speak English.

this makes it not only diifficult  for Vietnamese to understnd and then they speak with an accent that is very also difficult to understand.

I am used to hearing many different accents and i have a lot of difficulty understanding non native speakers especially from non - British colonies.

Vietnamese have much difficulty as it is pronouncing English taught by native speakers without learning non native speakers pronunciation of English. It doesnt matter how good your grammar and vocabulary is if you cant be understood. I an often asked what did he say,  when my students hear non native English speakers teaching English. French seems to be more easily taught by non native speakers.

Pronunciation is paramount for Vietnamese seeking employment with spoken English as a requirement.

to be clear, Edward - this is not racism or culturism - it is a fact. Record your voice, then listen to BBC news, or CNN in American accents and see if you can hear the difference? If you sound just like them, then there is some other reason for not getting work as an English teacher.

Asians need all the help they can get to learn correct pronunciation in English. English is a very difficult language to understand especially if students are going into law or medical fields, whete  linguistic mistakes are costly. I have English speaking vietnamese friends working below their abilities because they learnt English at school from Vietnamese teachers.

I attended a class being taught English by a non native speaker and i could barely understand him.

I was invited to address the class with the same sentences he was teaching, and the sudents could believe the difference. Many of the stidents quit his class afterwards as it was quite obvious how poor his pronunciation was.

Im sorry for that,  but students were paying good money for poor instruction.

@TaurusTiger... I went through your write up, you made some good points. I will not trade excellence for mediocrity. Most non native speakers have issues with pronunciation!!!. Just like you enumerated, tutors that are from ex- British colonies that   all their mode of language instructions from kindergarten to University were in English should be included as native speakers, please my take.

@Aidan in HCMC.. thanks for your kind words, and you judiciously took time to explicitly answer this disturbing issue.

I believe I would have an adventurous journey on this platform. I hope to meet like minds here.

    It is pretty difficult for non native speakers like me who knows the nitty gritty of the job to get a teaching position in Vietnam. I don't know why this disparity exist. There should be a level playing ground for all job seekers and if proven that I am a square peg in a square hole I should be given an opportunity. Please this is just a harmless post, as I mean no disrespect.        -@edward151819

You should have no problem getting an illegal job.

However, legitimate employers who are promising to train students for passing the ILETS Exam are well aware that the speakers used in the listening part of the test will only have the following native English accents:

North American English

British English

South African

New Zealand

Australian

Nobody can make an employer consider you for a job.

They will ultimately hire whomever makes the best business sense for them, even if a different candidate is equally qualified on paper.

Thanks for an explanation that i wasn't aware of.

I speak from experience rather than policies or rules.

I also have been turned down for employment because of my accent. My degree is in Broadcast Journalism, which is very accent biased.

My potential employers were honest enough to take me aside after my practicums, and say to me 'I didn't say this but your accent is not within our company guidelines'  despite being clear and distinct, it was unconventional. I did a number of guest commentaries which were well received, but unpaid. I hosted a Current Affairs program on Cable TV, but again unpaid because of my accent.

Ive lived and worked in primarily British countries and have been married to 3 women of different nationalities, and absorbing some of their accents.

Most people would agree that my accent is decidedly 'British' but distinctly indistinct.

Have Chinese friends whom are 2nd generation English speakers and never set foot in China.

One of them can't speak a word of Chinese, yet they both have distinct Chinese accents.

It doesnt matter that they both attended kindergarten and their formal education was in North American English, they have Asian accents.

It's just the way it is. Most of us are unaware that We have accents - we think that everyone else does, which is great and educational but has drawbacks as we discover when we live outside our culture…

   Have Chinese friends whom are 2nd generation English speakers and never set foot in China. One of them can't speak a word of Chinese, yet they both have distinct Chinese accents.It doesnt matter that they both attended kindergarten and their formal education was in North American English, they have Asian accents.    -@TaurusTiger

The above is certainly true from the perspective of Hawaii where the majority of the population has some type of Asian origin.  In fact books have been published on this linguistic phenomenon.   However, I would never consider any such persons ineligible to be English teachers if they were college graduates.

I did most of my actual hours at a high level middle school where a large number of foreign teachers were employed.   There were several centers that provided instructors including several who were not from English speaking countries.  One in fact was a half Viet young lady from France.  As you might imagine she attracted the attention of both middle school males and her fellow instructors, but I never heard anyone fault her for her accent.  .  In fact the only person ever let go there for his accent was a fellow that I was fairly close to who was a Glaswegian.  It was supposedly due to student complaints, but as I had querried some of his students who (whom?*) I knew well, I am convinced that was not the case but that it was due to a conflict with the "finder" who had initially placed him.   In fact he was rather difficult at least for this American to understand, and I had a grandfather from Birmingham in the UK.  I had to be facing him to follow.  He certainly was a lot more difficult to follow than any college educated Nigerian.  Of course more than one reader may make the case that Glasgow is foreign to England, at least historically.

*One of English grammar's more obscure points that I am sure anyone who speaks BBC English can inform us on (note another obscure point of grammar which was rather famously brushed aside by Churchill. )

To start, English is not a language, it's a lot of languages that use the same basic set of words plus local ones. "Englishes" is more accurate.

Glasgow English can't be understood by Patois speakers (and most other people on our little blue and green ball). As for Patois, what the merry bard's quill is that?

Yorkshire English still uses pronouns and possessives Shakespeare would have been familiar with, but make most speakers of modern Englishes scratch their heads when they hear them being used.

Takes Barnsley's pronouns, bung them into the west country, and you have a pretty good idea what Lizzy would have heard from Willy ....... and a massive potential cast cast of extras for a new Pirates of the Caribbean film

The upshot is, race and all other considerations are of little consequence against  the following - Is your English understandable, and do you understand it?

To teach English, especially the spoken word, you need an instinctive understanding of the language you can't get without living and breathing English your whole life.

Even Dr. Herbert Puchta and others with an amazing grasp of technical English fall down on that.

My many years of experience in tropical climes suggests the only real way to make your English understandable is to dump local accents in favour of the nearest facsimile you can manage to recieved pronunciation.

Now to grammar. Native speakers, except those who care, tend to have far weaker grammar than those who learn the language as non-native speakers. That commonly means local teachers are more suitable for the technical stuff, but native speakers can teach concepts, ideas, and practical uses of English locals have no idea exist.

Now to racism. I don't know how things are in your plot of land, but getting a job in Indonesia is a lot harder if your skin isn't white. The law here demands a passport from a select few countries, but the reality is you can often get a job with the wrong passport as long as you're white.

One last point. Do you have the ability to teach?

Great knowledge of any given subject doesn't mean you have the ability to impart it to others. That can change 'to be' into 'not to be'.

My many years of experience in tropical climes suggests the only real way to make your English understandable is to dump local accents in favour of the nearest facsimile you can manage to recieved pronunciation.
    -@Fred

There is plenty of controversy swirling just below the surface and while I agree with much of what you have said I can't agree on received pronunciation (remember the old "except after C" rule, Fred?).   This may be true in a lot of the tropics especially those places where the sun never used to set, but Vietnam may be an exception.   I am very confident that an unbiased survey of Vietnamese students , both adult and school age, would show a definite preference for North American English.   Even if one considers a sizeable number in Australia, America is where their overseas relatves live.   I would wager that there are more overseas Vietnamese in a few blocks of Westminster, CA than in all of Paris, let alone London.   Then of course, like it or not, there is the overwhelming effect of Hollywood.  I won't dwell on that.  As for the rest of the tropics, from Singapore to The Gambia, go with Received Pronunciation if you can.

One last point. Do you have the ability to teach?

Great knowledge of any given subject doesn't mean you have the ability to impart it to others. That can change 'to be' into 'not to be'.

Your last point is absolutely correct, Fred.   We had a teacher for a while at our center who owned an income tax service in Ontario, Canada and had intended to teach in Vietnam 3-6 months a year.   One of his adult evening classes actually mutinied and I think he quit just before they had to fire him.    This is why I would put my $$ on our Nigerian friend, as he seems to want to teach not because he feels entitled to

Dammed I and Es. Luckily I'm not God. I would just have proven myself fallible so the universe would have imploded.

As for US English  - A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there.

There goes a quick Fryed (Verbing is a hobby) reason British English is better than bastardised colonial versions.

The US version is great for ease and understanding 'movies', but quality films require quality pronunciation. More seriously, a pupil with an English accent is commonly seen as more skilled than those with Amercian twangs.

That can open doors.

As a note.

My spelling is lazy at best, and my grammar is worse.

For those reasons, I never attempt to teach any of that stuff.

Simply put, I'm totally unsuited for that job. The difference is, in defiance of misters Dunning and Kruger, I know my limitations.

However, I do fall victim to a lesser known bit of their musings - I always underestimate my real skills, so tend to undervalue them.