English in Guayaquil, Ecuador

One of the challenges in teaching the Air Traffic Controllers here in Ecuador is the problems they have with the Ecuadorian education system. Specifically, their English instruction uniformly sucks. It’s worse here in Guayaquil. In Quito there is a lot of tourism, so a lot of native language speakers hang around for a few months to finance their wanderings by giving English classes. They at least are there to remedy the grossest problems in Ecuador’s English teaching. Guayaquil, however, is not the Ecuador tourist hotspot Quito is, so there are very few native English speakers here to remedy the worst of the English problems.

The problem is, most schools here use older textbooks that teach 1950s style British English. Hell, even the British don’t speak like that anymore! My Ecuadorian students always come with me with written compositions talking about smoking jackets! It’s fortunate I know what a smoking jacket is… or was.