Degrees

I have an engineering degree and I won't pretend that I can teach, I tried it out and found that I was a pretty crappy English teacher. I think a lot of this has to do with inexperience, but I do think that while it isn't necessary for every teacher, having a college degree can really benefit an English teacher. Sure, I learned a lot about engineering principles, blah blah blah from University, but the most important thing was that I learned how to learn and that experience can be applied to teaching. If that makes any sense... 

I'd have to agree that having a degree doesn't increase your skill as a teacher, but living "the college experience" can both help and hurt a teacher, depending on how he or she uses it.

Having run the gauntlet of essays, late-night readings and on he spot excuses for being late, I feel a college educated teacher may have a better sense of what's going on in the student's life (of course I taught university out here). Sometimes you can sense when a student thinks a lesson is relevant or not. I found myself more amiable to late homework during midterms and considerably less when they used an excuse I myself used only a few years ago. How many sick grandmothers do you have anyway?

On the other hand, you may have witnessed an, out-of-touch elitist who fell from the ivory towers of the University of California, trying to enforce five paragraph essay format on grad students who were up til now writing shorter essays in their native language. Chairs in circles for discussion time. How do you really feel about last night's reading? Did you see the symbolism of the ticking clock?

Why don't we just play a game?

I have since witnessed other UC refugees asking about TA's, student-teacher evaluations and when students have to choose their classes by. Choose their classes! Much is different here indeed. In conclusion, it's important to remember what aspects of college are useful to teaching in China and what are not.

And sorry, but a Chinese teacher just can't speak English the way we can.

If I ran a school, I'd NEVER let a foreigner teach grammar.  Chinese with oodles of training can teach that

Only rarely can even the best educated Chinese create a piece of faultless and stylistically correct prose, in the same way that it's rare for them to speak English that sounds native speaker like, even allowing for accent.
The Chinese "International" students I teach here in Australia are evidence of that. Ten years of English grammar with Chinese teachers have rendered them semi-literate. They are from a very expensive private school, btw.
However, I agree with your sentiment that most folk who teach EFL in China ain't qualified [ie, competent] none to teach no granma.

I have a degree, that aside a TESL, TESOL, or TEFL certificate should be required.  Taking and passing one of these courses is not a lot to ask someone who wants to teach in this country. I think the theory, application and practice teaching (at least in my TEFL course) will better equip anyone to teach English.

I'm new to the field so that is really all I can say. 

PS - I was happy when I found out my certificate will have a unique serial # assigned to me  that is verifiable via the TEFL website.

Never thought of that, Dr. E.  It does take one to know one, and my slacker days of college (as opposed to my slacker days in public school and the work force) served me well last year with the freshmen.

I'm with you, Limubai: I think those courses are tremendously helpful.  I saw a number of kids with a TEFL but no other teaching experience parachute into my first school and be giving competent classes within a week, all by applying what they learned in that 3 week course they took back home.

Gonzo, you kind of have me there.  I wasn't addressing advanced English: rare indeed is the Chinese scholar who writes in English at a university level.

Oh, ahem, excusez-moi. So, only Chinese can teach grammar? You are so wrong, Con 

 I think what Cheekygal is trying to say is that Russians can teach grammar too!

I'm sorry, but I disagree. I was taught grammar in three different languages and my head felt fine afterwards. Besides, being taught grammar in another language also teaches you to understand the grammatical rules and terms used in said language.

But it is easier to let the Chinese teacher take care of the grammar.

And cheaper.

Straight up hardcore grammar?  You need a big-ass education to teach that.

The grammar associated with "today's" lesson?  You need a grammar manual to background yourself, and then you need a sense of where the students are at in their own usage, and then you keep it simple: a structure you can write on the board, and a usage, the one you've practiced today.  Monkey's can do that.  Just don't let them think on their feet and make up rules they haven't researched.

Like: present continuous plus time stamp for future plans with some current reality.

"Date?  No, sorry--I'm washing my hair tonight."

Teacher:  What's Mary doing tonight?
Student:  She will wash her hair.
Teacher:  Yeah, she will--but what's she DOING tonight?
Student:  She's going to wash her hair?
Teacher:  Yeah, she's going to, but what's she DOING tonight?
Student:  Going to washing her hair?
Teacher:  No, what's she DOING tonight?
Student:  Why not "will"?
Teacher:  We're not doing "will" today.

There probably was a better way to do the exercise, but they had eight other -ings to get through and they were going to have used will if they weren't corrected.  I'll go out on a way simplistic limb and say none of us would have our grasp of grammar if we weren't in effect, but much less systematically, corrected in the same way.  (And then you do fluency exercises and smile if they use the introduced grammar.)

We don't need to know so much about grammar as we need to know about graduated levels of sophistication of usage.  You need a big ass education if you're going to do that properly, too, but you can pretend one lesson at a time if you remember the rule about not making up rules.

Straight up hardcore grammar?  You need a big-ass education to teach that.

I have a "big-ass education".....my Degree is in (Middle Grades) Education....and I refuse to teach Grammar.  I hate it.  It bores me.  It irritates me beyond belief.  I stink at it (meaning the teaching of Grammar). I have zero tolerance for instructing in it.

The major trouble, as I see it, is that correct usage comes easily - you might even say "naturally" - to me.  I've never had to struggle to master the forms, or to get the syntax correct.  ERGO, I find it really hard to relate to the difficulty that some students experience with (English) grammar.   Much better to have this concept taught by another person who can relate to the student.  By all means, leave the final touches to me.  Just do not ask me to teach the basics.  Please!

I have a "big-ass" education. I may make grammar mistakes at times myself (who doesn't? :-p) but I do know how to teach it because I was taught how to teach it 
If we are talking about China, then yes, it is better for Chinese teacher to do that because of the language barrier that a foreign teacher might face (especially beginner/elementary levels). But then again - a lot of Chinese teachers teach by some weird-arse book where some grammar rules are explained in a very incorrect way. I had to re-teach some students after long arguments how to apply this or that aspect correctly.
But if a foreign teacher has that "big-ass" education AND speaks the language... 

I am right in the middle of the grammar part of my own big ass education.  It's not that hard - it's just a matter of learning how to explain the 'rules', and learning the specialist language for stuff that you already kind of know.

I know a few Chinese teachers of English, and they can spout off grammar rules, can identify all the different clauses and phrases in a sentence right away etc etc.  But they still struggle to PRODUCE grammatically correct English at any given time.

Also, when learning Chinese, I like a balance of learning grammar just by listening and reading generally and then occasionally having an explicit explanation in English to confirm or correct my thoughts.  If any of you use Chinesepod, check out 'Qing Wen' for the juicy grammar stuff.

I had a 'big ass' education - including teaching quals for being an English/Humanities teacher - but at secondary level, so it didn't include grammar.  Did have linguistics in it though.  Much more interesting.

So I am more than grateful to allow the Chinese English teachers to take over that bit, and allow me to do the way more interesting, less 'drilling' stuff.  Teaching literature (which I love), writing  (creative and academic) etc.

My Oral classes I really enjoy as well - thinking skills as as well conversation.

Well, I have a big-ass education, and I never was taught grammar.  Yeah, that's right--never was.  I went through high school in 80's Australia.  They dumbed down a lot of explicit teaching.  If pressed to actually make a definition, I still will say a verb is a doing word, but these days I like it better if I can just point at one and say, that's a verb.

I suspect teaching grammar is easy.  It's just a bunch of rules and exceptions that aren't strong on the "Why is this so?" scale.  But like any teaching, it's massively difficult if you don't know where you are in their curriculum.