iving and working in Thailand as an English teacher means that you get the opportunity to live in parts of the world that tourists never get to see. In fact, some of Thailand’s best sites are away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist trade. This is the real Thailand of sweeping tropical landscapes, gentle people and fascinating cultural idiosyncrasies.
But these are also the parts of Thailand where English isn’t widely spoken. The upside is, that’s why there are jobs for English teachers. The downside is, as a foreigner, you are going to need some Thai to survive: you’ll need to give taxi drivers directions to get you home, you’ll need to order that food you want, and you will sometimes want to bargain for a good price on that cool pair of jeans. Fortunately, the Thais are wonderfully helpful with learning their language, and absolutely love hearing foreigners trying to speak even a poor smattering of words. They will compliment you, tell you how brilliantly you speak Thai and just generally make you feel wonderful.
But make no mistake, Thai isn’t necessarily easy to learn, and if you are from one of the ‘big 5’ (Australia, England, Canada, New Zealand or the States) there is a good chance that you have only ever needed to speak English, except for those boring lessons at high school where you were forced to learn silly sentences in Spanish or French that translated into something like “The cat is under the chair”.
But how can we cope in the classroom if we can’t speak Thai? It’s very possible as an English teacher in Thailand that you will be in a classroom with students who know only the most basic English. How much Thai are we expected to know? What if the students can’t understand us? What if the students ask a question in Thai that we can’t understand? How much Thai do we actually need to know before we start teaching English in Thailand?
In reality, the students love it when their ‘farang’ teacher can speak Thai, because that means they don’t need to learn any English! For this reason many schools realize that when you join their teaching team, the less Thai you speak, the more English the students are likely to have to learn. In fact, there are some schools in Asia where getting caught speaking the students’ language in class could lead to instant dismissal! Now while this may sound extreme, there is some fundamental thinking behind this perspective.
One theory on language learning proposes that students learn a language best if they are ‘immersed’ in a community in which that language is spoken. It makes sense – if you want to learn French, it’s going to be easier to practice it if you are in France than if you are in San Francisco. But how can you ‘immerse’ students in English if they are studying in Thailand? It’s hard, but one way is to provide a teacher who can only speak English. That way, if the students want to say anything, it has to be in English. And if the teacher is going to say anything, it’s going to be in English, too. The outcome is that the students get a free trip to England every time they are in class. And it works; even when you ask students to open the window or turn on the air-conditioned, you are asking in English, and that’s exposure to the language they wouldn’t have had if you could speak Thai and could say these quick, non-lesson related words in their language.
In the 1950s, perhaps even up to the 1970s, it was thought that the fastest way to learn a language was to have it translated sentence by sentence, and drilled so you would understand what you were being taught. Perhaps you learned your French this way: “Le chat est sur la chaise.” Or is it “sous”? Can you see that there is a problem with the technique? Even though you know you are saying ‘the cat is under the chair’, it’s not a exciting or common thing to tell someone, so it’s not a sentence that’s going to stick very well. On the other hand, learning to tell someone that you are hungry, or you love them, or that you want them to turn right at the next street will stick if you know that you are going to need it, or have already needed it, or need it right now! From my travels, I can say “I am a teacher” in seven languages, because I’ve had to say it to so many people in the countries I’ve lived in. I can only really say that the cat is under the chair in English, though. Perhaps I’ll work on that sentence some day.
It’s clear, then, that learning a language because you want to, or have to, makes the learning process much easier than learning random phrases from someone who translates the sentences for you before you say it. It works, and we need to offer the same to our Thai students – make them want or need to say something to us (in English), and they will learn how to say it! But if they know you know how to speak Thai, that opportunity is lost!
So there it is. The fact is that as a teacher of English in Thailand, you don’t need to speak any Thai. But having said that, learning Thai will certainly make your stay in Thailand a lot more interesting - you’ll get to meet more people and break a lot of barriers with the locals. It’s also great to listen in on what students are saying to each other during class so you can find out what they are having trouble with. As long as you don’t let them know you know!