(28 of 50) MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT) & TAIWAN: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT

About Fake/Not-Real Teachers of IELTS/English: Introduction III

Go back and read the previous post – all about how easy it is for anyone to make lots of money ‘teaching’ IELTS in Taiwan. You are probably thinking that this situation can’t happen here – but it can, and it does! One person – probably the worst of all – did exactly as I described in the previous post. He operated for years. I had one student who gave this fake over $200,000 NT over a six-month period, in red enveloped in coffee shops. When we questioned this student, he admitted to us that he had learnt nothing. He also said that the teacher promised it would be one-to-one teaching, but there were always about five other students in the ‘coffee-shop class’. Presumably they were all giving envelopes stuffed with money. Ah, naive, gullible, and … dare I say it … hmmm, let’s be polite … ‘not so smart’ people!

While shaking our heads in disbelief, our immediately question to this student was,

“Why did you keep paying this person so much money?”

The answer:

“Because he kept promising I could get IELTS 7 if I continued.”

Here are some more Q & As.

Question

“Did he ever speak English? Ever?”

Answer:

“No, he just spoke Chinese all the time.”

Question

“How much do you earn a month?”

Answer:

“$35,000 NT.”

Let’s just think about that. The student had  …

• paid over $200,000 NT,
• which is over six months of his salary,
• and used six months of his time going to coffee shops,
• and HAD LEARNT NOTHING!

Finally, a fake teacher – a person who on the inside resembles the picture at the top of this page –  a horrible human being who should be in prison – got all that money for doing almost nothing! When I think about this, I almost want to cry. 

Well, if I had to give a ‘happy’ point, this student (upon our advice) immediately stopped going to this ‘famous’ teacher and the ‘coffee shop classes’. Furthermore, the ‘teacher’ was eventually exposed by some students on PTT. A few months later after this event, a brave student decided to tell the truth. She put a warning about what happened when she went to his ‘classes’ (and the description was truly bizarre – this ‘teacher’ is obviously a sick individual, and possibly dangerous). A few other students of this ‘teacher’ followed with their descriptions. The ‘teacher’ fought back, with attacking sneering posts on PTT (pretending to be coming from other ‘students’), but eventually the weight of all the opposition proved too much. Why don’t you go onto PTT now and try to find this posts?

But the key question is: is this fake teacher the only one? The answer is … of course not. There’s simply too much money to be made. Use false credentials, blatantly lie about qualifications and the IELTS results of your students, and make large amounts of money. Do you want to know the specific names of the people doing this? And remember, that’s YOUR money. YOU are giving it to them.

So now, you are probably thinking, ‘But my teacher isn’t doing anything like this!”

But are you sure about this?

Are you REALLY sure about this?

Have you even thought about this?

Have you intelligently assessed your teacher to make sure?

If you are honest, the answers are probably NO, NO, NO, NO. If you are honest, you just think you’re sure, right? And you think this simply because everyone says [blah blah blah]. Because you read on the social media [blah blah blah]. And that teacher says s(he) is a [blah blah blah], and has done [blah blah blah], and their blog says [blah blah blah].

My first response is to say that all the ‘blah blah blah’ is just words on the social media and self promotion. That ‘blah blah blah’ is exactly what the evil teacher I have just described did. None of that ‘blah blah blah’ is actually proven to you. And you have never asked for proof, have you? 

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Before looking at the questions which you should be asking yourself, I’d like to examine why would such a thing would even happen? Why is it allowed to happen? Why does it happen in Taiwan, and not in Australia?

I’ll answer these questions in the next post.

Now, check that you know the meaning of the underlined vocabulary (also repeated below).

• presumably (adv)
• to be naive (adj)
• to be gullible (adj)
• credentials (n)
• to be blatant (adj)
• self-promotion (n)

If you want to find out more about me, go to aisielts.com .