The Philippines: The world's

budget English teacher

By Kate McGeownBBC News, Philippines
12 November 2012

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The Philippines is fast becoming the world's low-cost English language

teacher - with rapid increases in overseas students coming to learn English or
study in English-speaking universities.
There might be other countries that people think about as a classic place to learn
English, such as the UK, the US or Australia.
But there is one key reason that they are switching to the Philippines. It's much cheaper.
And in the competitive market for language students, it means the Philippines is
attracting people from countries such as Iran, Libya, Brazil and Russia.
"We have very competitive rates compared with other countries," says English teacher,
Jesy King, citing her school's fees of $500 (313) for a 60-hour class - about a third of
the price of an equivalent course in the US or Canada.
Another major advantage is the accent.
Filipinos speak with a clear American accent - partly because the Philippines was a US
colony for five decades, and partly because so many people here have spent time
working in call centres that cater to a US market.

Call centres

These centres train their staff to sound indistinguishable from Americans, so callers
never realise that the person they're speaking to is on the other side of the world.

Image
captionElizaveta is a Russian student taking courses taught in English in the Philippines
- she says fees are a quarter of courses in Australia or Canada
"I have a background in call centres, so I've learnt to adopt an American accent - it's
one of the pre-requisites when you join," says Jesy King.
Her school, the International Language Academy of Manila, attracts students from all
over the world.
The majority are from Asia - especially Japan, Taiwan and Korea - but in the past few
months she's also taught people from North Africa, South America and the Middle East.
Student numbers are growing rapidly. According to the Philippine Immigration Bureau,
more than 24,000 people have applied for a study permit this year - compared to fewer
than 8,000 just four years ago.
The government sees this sector as a golden opportunity for growth.

Increasing demand
"We're geared to accept more and more students," says Cristino Panlilio, the undersecretary for the Department of Trade and Industry. "I believe the country should come
up with more marketing for this."
And it's not just English language students who are coming to the Philippines - there's
also been a rapid increase in the number of foreigners applying for graduate and postgraduate courses in all kinds of fields.

speaking workers in Manila take on outsourced work at home

Image captionEnglish-

The main reasons that attract them are, again, the cost - and the fact that, in the
country's top universities, all classes are held in English.
In order to study at a university here, foreigners need a full student visa, and
immigration records show that three times as many foreigners applied for one in 2011
than they did just three years before.
Dr Alvin Culaba, the executive vice-president of De La Salle - one of the country's top
universities - is confident that the level of teaching in his institution can compete with
that found anywhere in the world.
"Our programmes are very comparable, or sometimes even better, than in the US and
Europe," he says.

Driving a bargain
De La Salle already has a lot of students from China and Japan, but there's recently
been an increase in Europeans.
Elizaveta Leghkaya, a Russian engineering student, is one of them.

GLOBAL ENGLISH

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In China, Disney has become a major provider of English teaching lessons

She looked at courses in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but the programme at De
La Salle was a quarter of the price of the others.
"Here it's much cheaper, and I'm really confident that the qualification I'll get is just the
same," she says.
She had found other benefits of studying in the Philippines too.
"It's a good experience, as it's a different style of life than I'd get in Europe. It's
interesting to learn the culture. I like to travel here, and go to the beaches and
museums."
But studying in the Philippines isn't for the faint-hearted.
Living here means coping with the bureaucracy and corruption, and if you're in Manila,
the heavy pollution.
And then there's the fact that many Filipinos speak a rather different language than the
rest of the English-speaking world.
The Philippines markets itself as being the third largest English-speaking nation - after
the US and the UK - a fact proudly displayed on the Department of Tourism website. And
in a way, that's true. Most people speak at least rudimentary English, and the welleducated speak it fluently.

Taglish speakers
But a lot of people speak Taglish - a mix of English and the local language Tagalog which is often difficult for foreigners to understand.
English signs often have the wrong spellings and the way English words are used is
sometimes uniquely Filipino, with confusing and occasionally unintentionally amusing
results.

Image captionIce
block to ice bloke: The local Tagalog language can be mixed with English to create some
unexpected outcomes
One of the national newspapers used the headline "Police Clueless" for a story about the
police officers not having any specific clues about a case.
For a foreign student trying to learn English, this will undoubtedly present some
challenges.
But for an increasing number of people, these are small obstacles compared with the
benefits of studying in the Philippines.
The spiralling cost of education in many parts of the world, coupled with the ease of
finding out about foreign courses on the internet, mean that more and more students
are deciding to study abroad.
And English-speaking nations like the Philippines are primed to cash in on this trend.

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