It seems here in Taiwan, there are two types of after school ESL programs that are offered in the typical (buxiban) cram schools. The traditional way of teaching English, using a classroom environment, while a native English teacher uses academic subject books to educate their student in English comprehension. All typical ESL subjects like: language arts / grammar, spelling, phonics, reading, vocabulary, and site words are taught. I call this type of program “Academic Teaching.”

The second type of program I’m seeing is Taiwan teachers teaching both the Chinese and English languages. They hire maybe two or three native English teachers, Caucasian preferred, to show up once a week in each classroom. Usually their given little material and expected to teach a fun exciting lesson, so the students can tell their parents that they have a foreign teacher at there school. The foreign teacher is expected to be exciting, fun, and play a lot of games, but not to worry so much about the English comprehension of the students. I call this type of program “Entertaining Teaching.”

While both exist, the academic taught students have a stronger grasp of the English language. Even though it’s not as much fun as an “Entertainment Teaching” environment.
Recently, I took a job at a buxiban which uses the “Entertaining Teaching” method. While teaching their 2nd grade class, I asked the students if they knew the vowels. To my surprise, no one answered. I prompted the first vowel “a”, then half the class started to say the ABCs. I stop them and continued with the other vowels: e, i, o, and u. Only 20% of the class caught on and the rest were lost. I had only three pages of material for a two-hour class and struggled to deliver any type of strong English lesson, because of the material and their lack of English comprehension.

My feeling is I’m an educator. If I can’t teach to my fullest potential, then I won’t be part of that teaching institution. It’s true that buxibans are profitable businesses, so they “cram” as many students into their system as possible. While other buxibans are still profitable businesses, but they truly care about the student’s English comprehension skills and focus on their individual weaknesses.