You know you're doing something right when ...

Gz sums it up very well but I'd like to add that intercultural competence runs both ways and that English majors need to have a grasp of how to bridge the gaps which exist between languages and culutres.  Having a qualified NET teaching some classes gives students the opportunity to experience some of the cultural differences which they normally only read about - which also produces the interesting question of whether NETs have a mandate to push Western education practices within a system which isn't set up to reward them or whether we serve students best by bowing to the system and the context in which we work (or perhaps "kowtowing" would be a better word).

I address this issue in class sometimes and the general feeling amongst my students is that they value a more diverse and skills based approach, are aware that it doesn't fit in with the TME4 and 8 but prefer to spend time on it anyway because they recognise its value and because they hate spending all their time looking at tests.  I consider that to be a pretty good mandate for throwing the old textbook (which we won't be using next year) out of the window for half my course and getting the students involved in other things. 

I certainly don't see the point in NET teachers for most CET students in most instiutions though.  There can be a case for Tourism majors having NET led classes or a wider range of students at the Project 211 univerisities (due to a mixture of ability and likely utility) but at a run of the mill college I don't think putting a monolingual teacher in a room with a bunch of accountants is going to achieve very much for either party.

There I go assuming that NETs are all monolingual.

To bring it back on topic though - I clearly believe that NETs have a specific utility and so I would therfore argue that fewer NETs but of better quality would be a very positive move in any CHC.

You've summarised "in a nutshell", as our students would insist on saying, the NN arguments very nicely gzwriter. Having worked with many NNETs, and now being their classmate in Australian post grad courses, the problem they face is the pressure from students and employers to get successful results in the Gao Kao, CET 4 or whatever, which have nothing to do with communicative language teaching. These young, sincere teachers find this incredibly frustrating. At least we NESTs are expected to do all sorts of weird things, like having realistic conversations!

Put those cretins in the back.  Girls up front...breasts at attention...ready for inspection.  It'a a mutually advantageous arrangement.

I've never been over there, but I keep reading these stories of getting banned just for arguing with someone. Hilarious!

A person who has gone through the well-defined process of learning the foreign language, as opposed to the native speaker of that foreign language who learned it by osmosis, if that person is also a native speaker of the language of the students, not to mention from that culture, *that* person is inherently more qualified to be helpful to students than the native speaker of the target language. The only rub is if the student and teacher come from a culture or education system that creates obstacles to teaching, such as one that is against self-reliance and against skill building, then those become impediments that are greater than the inherent advantages described above, although it's not perfectly clear how much the foreign teacher can overcome them either, but at least he's aware of them.

Anyway, I agree that generally the non-native speaker has significant advantages, especially over the untrained or partially trained native speaker, i.e. the typical foreign English teacher in China.

My hearts bleeds for ya. I've got mostly lovely girls, but always enough garlic chomping boys to spoil the ambiance.

I am also one of the boring ones, 4 years all in the same small boonie city. I like the boonies and when I leave (after one more year here) I am planning on finding another small boonie city just in another part of the country (thinking of going north, hate the summers here). I have no interest in moving to one of the major cities. I like visiting, but don;t want to live there.

And since I work at a uni I have 4 months off a year, so I spend at least 2 of those months every year traveling around China. Yep, it's an awesome place to travel, incredibly diverse, unique places and, since I make a chinese salary, affordable.

"Broken" is a captivating and heartbreaking exploration of love in all its many forms. The cast was really good with Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy and a really great newcomer Eloise Laurence. I think this young lass will become a real star. She is about 11 or 12 yrs old.

I saw a couple of segments on TV about these plastic weapons that folks will be able to make with very little effort and cost after consulting the internet. The Australian Police have advised that the same laws will apply to these as apply to any other firearm.  

i started a thread over at The Greasy Spoon last year based on this issue, which is a sub-topic in my MA. There are strong arguments and a lot of support for the NNEST case, but I was howled down by most, who saw me threatening their livelihood. What really came through though was cultural and even racial arrogance, as well as the insecurity of many who know they lack any knowledge or understanding of the job they've been hired for.
Anyway, that debate saw me banned.....again. But so was my main antagonist, an ill-informed long-term windbag called Lobster.