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[Guy Courchesne]

I just picked up a tutoring class, 1 to 1, one with a 10 year old girl, working around high-intermediate level, the other a 16 year old whiz kid who has already aced the computer based TOEFL (not the IBT however). We'll be working on GMAT prep, but not the math component.

My questions...I haven't worked with Koreans before. Any tips on culture I should be aware of, speaking very generally? Typcial Korean-speaker errors when working in Engrish? I know how the Mexican mind works and that makes it fairly easy to teach here, but Koreans I'm unfamiliar with.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

[some waygug-in]

A very difficult question to answer without meeting the students.

Pronunciation problems: F - V are usually substituted by P or B.

Adding of a final ee or eugh sound at the end of words

Ex: Beach - beachy

bridge - bridgey English - Englishee


hand - handeugh

card - cardeugh

Confusion of L and R sounds.

Sometimes confusion of S and Sh sounds.


Difficulty hearing and pronouncing short vowel sounds in English

Your student is probably past this level though, I can't say.

Grammar problems:

Mixing up of he/she his/her your/my

Dropping the 3rd person "s" on simple present verbs.

ex: She walk to school everyday.

Generally just mixing up verb tenses.

ex: I'm have been studied English during 3 years.

Difficulties with sentence structure and word order.

ex: What do you want vegetables?

Failure to use the past tense, especially with go.


ex: Yesterday, I downtown go.


I could make a list about 20 pages long of all the problems students in Korea have with English, as I said earlier, it's hard to say without knowing the student.

One thing I've noticed is that Koreans tend to say things that sound quite rude to our ears and I don't think they intend to be rude, they just don't know how to say things more politely.

Oh yeah, I just remembered. Negative questions.

The way of answering negative questions is backwards from English, so it may lead to some confusion if you're not used to the student.

Ex: English - Didn't you do your homework? No, I didn't.
or
Yes, I did.

Korean - Didn't you do your homework? Yes. (I didn't do it)
or
No. (I did it)

If you are asking negative questions, it's best to have them give a long answer rather than just yes/no. Then you can be sure what they are answering.

More advanced students tend to have problems with articles, prepositions, and mixing up of adverbs with adjectives or noun forms of words.


Anyway, I hope this is some help.

[Guy Courchesne]

Lots of help, thank you.

[Celeste]

Depending on how much experience they have with foreign teachers, you may have a hard time getting them to make eye contact or to give you more than a one word answer. Rather than guess an answer they don't know, many Korean kids will look at their shoes withgreat intensity for prolonged periods of time. Teaching writing can be a real challenge, because it is not something that is stressed at school (or wasn't 5 years ago when I taught there). Trying to explain that just changing a few words for synonyms and then handing in a copied chunk of text is still plagiarism was a real problem when I taught high school there. Many of the teachers also didn't understand this at the time. The structure of Korean writing is very roundabout. No clear introduction, body, and conclusion. More like stumbling into a series of thesis statments and facts in no particular order and ending abruptly. (kind of like this little paragraph!)

[Guy Courchesne]

[Spinoza]

[Guy Courchesne]

Well, here's my report after the first class with both the girls. They might not fit your regular mold...

Both are incredibly bright. Both studying at quite the exclusive school in Mexico City. Both take classes in English, Korean, Spanish, French, and the elder daughter takes Japanese classes as well.

Anyway, there were zero obvious pronunciation erros, other than being not as fluid as a native speaker (but not too far off). The only consistent error that came up was with adding -s to uncountable nouns luggage, pollution, crime Something I think many non-English speakers would do.

The 10 year old girl is using Cambridge Passages, clearly below her level of proficiency. The 16 year old is now working on GMAT prep, which was sufficiently challenging. She had already done an SAT prep course, but didn't do so well she says.

So thank you for your input, all. But, I gotta raise the bar a bit. Any further suggestions on areas in which Koreans might typically struggle?

Hanyeo HI ke se yeo! and arigato!

[schwa]

They sound like they'll be fun to teach. Two suggestions:

Debate might be a challenging problem for them. Their culture teaches them to acquiesce to an elder's opinion. They might find it useful to learn how to politely interrupt or contradict a speaker or how to redirect a discussion.

Creative thinking -- not stressed in Korea. Exercises to help them stretch their imaginations might be helpful.