Yanks and Brits and Aussies...Oh My!

One aspect of the EFL industry I haven't said much about is that different spots on the globe prefer different varieties of English. In places that have strong historical or economic ties to Britain, such as Hong Kong, the preference naturally tends to be for British English. But in areas with stronger economic ties to the United States, American English has the upper hand.

On the whole, Taiwan falls into the latter category. I don't claim to be an expert on the Taiwanese economy, but from what I gather, Taiwanese firms do much more business with America than they do with Britain, by several orders of magnitude. Moreover, Taiwan's independence from the giant across the Strait of Taiwan depends on American support and goodwill. That it and of itself wouldn't be a reason for the Taiwanese to prefer molasses to treacle, or sidewalks to pavement (if they ever chose to put them in, that is). But to the extent that people learn English to engage in diplomacy, the Taiwanese are doing diplomacy with Washington, not London.

The preference for American English does not, however, seem to have any effect on who actually comes as a teacher to Taiwan. I suppose Taiwan has to recruit from every corner of the English-speaking world, and the teachers I have met so far have been a fairly even mix of Americans, Brits, and (somewhat surprisingly) South Africans. I have even met a couple of intrepid Aussies and New Zealanders. This latter fact is not surprising, since Australia and New Zealand are closer to Taiwan than America or Britain, and in fact are popular vacation destinations all over the Far East.

My school, Shane, has a mix of Brits and Americans on its staff, though the trainers I worked with in training were all Brits. Moreover, the school does play up Merrie Olde England in its advertising and promotions. Front office staff, such as secretaries and Chinese teachers, all wear a uniform of Union Jack scarves with a white blouse. In the Head Office, and in the school I got to see in Yangmei over the weekend, rooms were given the names of English cities: Oxford, Manchester, Canterbury. One wall in the head office features a mural of two little cartoonish-looking boys dressed as beefeaters, dutifully poring over their English homework.

Nonetheless, the textbooks I will be using are a mix of British and American. At the younger level, they're all British, which means that I'll have to be careful about spelling colour with the u, so as not to confuse my five-year-old students. I think kids that age are a little young to have to start dealing with all the nuances of British v. American usage, and I don't want to confuse them by spelling colour differently than it is spelled in the book, or getting them to understand that what is called a video in Hastings is called a VCR in Hastings-on-Hudson, where video denotes what is put in the VCR, not the machine itself.

As students get older, though, the textbooks have a definite American focus. The textbook for Junior High students, for instance, is called American Hotline. Students who complete American Hotline, and choose to continue with normal English classes instead of proficiency-test courses (English proficiency, I gather, is a prerequisite for getting into the better high schools in Taiwan), use a book called, I kid you not, American Wow! The very enthusiasm of that name calls to mind an America that is no more--some would say, an America that never was--full of boys in cardigans and girls in Mary Janes and knee socks, who all use expressions like Jeepers Creepers and worry about who will invite them to the next sock hop.

It is a joy, though, to get to meet people from all over the English-speaking world. And, unlike the citizens of the various member-states of La Francophonie, none of us really feel coerced into English. It is for all of us our mother tongue. My adventures last night helped me realize just how much we English teachers constitute a community out here.

A strange, crazy-quilt kind of community, but a community nonetheless.