Xinhua News Agency, Lanzhou, August 23 - Topic: step by step leading into a step by step into the pit? There is a lot of chaos behind the early teaching of English
Xinhua News Agency reporters Bai Liping and Faye Wong
With children in the family, no one can escape the temptation of early education. In the past two years, early childhood English training institutions have blossomed in major cities. Among them, the early childhood English courses, known as "international background", cost tens of thousands of yuan, and they are still sought after by some young parents. How do children receive early education English and what can they teach them? The reporter recently conducted an investigation into early childhood English training institutions.
There is no smallest, only smaller, teaching English early becomes a "new fashion"
"Early Education English Global Synchronization", "Infants and young children is the golden stage for receiving early education English" "We are the early education English honored and commended by the British Royal Family"... In many cities' business districts and main road sections, we often encounter early education English training institutions It is similar to the "brainwashing" type of sales, and is popular with some young parents.
The reporter visited and found that the age of the students recruited by early childhood English training institutions is constantly dropping. Many children under the age of two have begun to join the ranks of English training, and these English training courses are expensive, with a year’s tuition as low as several thousand yuan. It is tens of thousands.
The reporter came to Gansu Lanzhou Xia'en Early Education English Training Institute to learn about the relevant courses. The staff in charge of consultation, Ma Qianli, told the reporter: "The courses are divided into different stages according to the age of the baby. If it is a baby under 3 years old, there are a total of 50 lessons. The second class lasts 45 minutes. The cost of a school year is 13,000 yuan, and the price of one class is about 260 yuan. If one-to-one private lessons are more expensive."
Under the "Gao Da Shang" course, the content is hollowed out. During the visit, the reporter found that the textbook materials for early education of English were "various". Many organizations claimed that their textbooks were compiled by a well-known educational institution in Britain and the United States, but the content is mainly for children to learn to say hello and simple vocabulary practice, and set teaching games. Also similar.
As early as a few months before the baby, Liu Hui, a citizen of Taiyuan, Shanxi, took advantage of the activities of an English training institution for children and enrolled the child for two years. When the child was two years old, English training officially started. "The first year is a parent-child class. The content is very simple. I thought that in the second year the child would be able to learn more, but I did not expect to repeat the content of the previous year." Liu Hui felt that this was a pure waste of money. "The child is now Basically the words I can speak are taught at home."
Ma Libang, a Lanzhou parent, said: "The child was two and a half years old and applied for a small class of early childhood English. After two weeks and two weeks of crying, the teachers of the training institution are too young to talk about the effects of teaching the children?"
The qualifications of teachers are a mystery, and changing foreign teachers is like a "revolving lantern"
The reporter found that many early education English training institutions use foreign teachers as a gimmick, and foreign teachers from Europe, the United States and other countries with good image will be used as institutional signs to attract parents. However, these foreign teachers have different qualifications and are frequently changed. Parents have no way of knowing their deeper background.
According to regulations, foreign teachers employed by educational institutions in China must have a bachelor’s degree or above and two years of relevant work experience, or have an internationally recognized professional teacher qualification certificate, in addition to being in good health and no criminal record. Provincial-level human resources and social security departments have obtained the foreign expert certificate and the foreign personnel employment certificate issued by the provincial entry-exit administrative department before they are qualified to teach.
An insider from an early childhood English training institution in Lanzhou told reporters that there are very few foreign teachers in the market who actually hold work visas, most of them hold tourist visas and have never been teaching before. When introducing training institutions, they generally obscure the identity of foreign teachers. "We have a female foreign teacher who claims to be from the UK, but she has only studied in the UK. We are worried that parents have opinions and will generally obscure the specific background of the foreign teacher. Many parents can't listen to it and just see it as a foreign teacher."
The mystery of foreign teachers' qualifications is also reflected in the frequent replacement of foreign teachers. A parent in Taiyuan City reported that he first took the child to try it out. The lecture was given by a foreign teacher from Canada, but he soon left. After that, the foreign teachers changed to 4 places a year. The person in charge of the agency explained that the visa of the foreign teacher had expired.
"Some foreign teachers still wear a nose ring." Some parents reported, "Foreign teachers with poor image, children will be resistant and feel scared in class. They must be accompanied by their parents, saying that they can protect themselves." An industry insider in Lanzhou revealed , Early childhood English not only involves English training, but also involves early childhood content. Teachers from early childhood English training institutions should also hold kindergarten teacher qualification certificates, but most of these practitioners do not have any certificates, and it is difficult to ensure that teachers have professional professional qualities .
The early childhood English industry is in the "early childhood" period, and the regulatory gap should be filled as soon as possible
Relevant persons believe that the current early education English industry market is in a period of confusion, the corresponding teaching materials, teachers, etc. lack standards, and there is still a gap in supervision.
The reporter's investigation found that at present, most of the institutions involved in early education English training are registered in the industrial and commercial departments in the name of education training centers and education consulting companies. The industrial and commercial departments cannot make objective evaluations on the school-running standards, teacher access, supervision and evaluation of such institutions , And the education department does not have the right to approve and manage it, which has caused the industry to fall into a blank area of "no matter what".
Meng Juan, deputy director of the 12th Middle School of Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, said that international English teaching is conducive to the development of children's language learning and thinking perspectives, provided that foreign teachers need to have qualified qualifications and relevant educational background. If you hire some "unknown" foreign teachers as profit-making gimmicks for early childhood English training institutions, or even the unscientific and informal textbooks used, it is not conducive to your children's systematic English learning, and the teaching effect will be greatly reduced.
"The purpose of teaching English early is to allow children to grow up better. If you must teach your children before school, it should be self-care ability, learning and behavior habits, social adaptability, etc., to learn knowledge that conforms to the law of children's growth." Lanzhou University Said Wang Qian, associate professor of the Institute of Higher Education.
Wang Qian suggested that relevant departments should strengthen the construction of employment platforms for foreign experts, on the one hand, create convenient conditions for talents with professional skills to better meet the huge needs of foreign language training and other industries; on the other hand, the standardization of early education institutions cannot be separated from the law in the final analysis. Only by restricting, perfecting relevant laws and regulations as soon as possible, and strengthening the supervision of the early education English market, can the problem be solved gradually.