Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Saxiif]

I have one student who's been at the hagwon for a couple months, he doesn't know all that much but he's a good student who tries to use english as much as possible (ie continual "teacher, I have a question" etc.) and he's got the best accent of the kids in his class, with a lot less konglish-style syllable-adding.

Now I got yanked into the office yesterday because a mother had come in to complain. It turns out that his public school english teacher had been telling him that his accent when he talked english was really bad. Now this teacher is an old guy that some of the other students mock for pronouncing notebook nohtubooku etc. etc. So apparently this guy's accent when he talks english is so horrific that a complaint got home to this kid's family because he had the nerve to pronounce english words RIGHT

My brain's still reeling from this one. But at least it seems that the generation of kids that we're teaching now will at the very least know the difference between what English and Konglish sound like, which is at least something to make me feel better about being an overpaid babysitter

[VanIslander]

The flip side of that coin:

I have one student who's been at the hagwon for a couple of years; she knows much but she's a problem child who tries to use English as little as possible. She constantly adds the extra syllable to mirror Korean sounds, like 'washe' and 'walka'. What's worse is that she's a popular student and when I started asking students to say "finished" when they were done their exercises, well, she would be smart enough to be one of the first done and would say "finishid" after which most of my other students would abandon their previous "finisht" for her version. I've tried many times to help her say the word but she says her other English teachers (native Koreans) think she speaks English well. At times like this I feel like an overpaid babysitter.

[rawiri]

I try not to get too worried about getting the pronunciation exact, to me so long as i can understand generally what the kids are saying then sweet as.

An overpaid babysitter is EXACTLY what we are, that just comes with the territory (reffering solely to hagwons here).

Give the poor little buggers a break, there in school for god knows how long every day so as long as there accent is passable then i have no problems.

[bourquetheman]

I understand they're in school a long time and a lot of them go to numerous hogwans aside from the English one. However I truly believe that the habits they form now will either make or break their English speaking ability later on. You know how they say "old habits die hard"? Well if little Min-ji is pronouncing finished as "finishid" now, (and other common mistakes) she's only going to get worse and by the time she is a teenager it's going to be very difficult to break her of the habit.
It's so important to start at an early age, that's why I've done tongue twisters and other fun ways of doing pronounciation drills. I've told some of my higher level classes that if I was learning Korean, would I trust my friend who's studied Korean or a native Korean? I would definitely listen to how my native Korean friend pronounced the words.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the Korean schoolteachers here as a lot of them do a heck of a job, and that only makes my job easier. However you get some teachers like the mentioned in the previous post who just make my job that much harder and aside from that, it's hurting the kids progress. That's my two cents............

[TECO]

Mutual intelligibility is what counts.

Most of these people we're teaching English to will most likely be speaking English to other non-native English speakers as opposed to native English speakers.

Preparing these folks for English as an international language is more realistic.

Accent and pronunciation won't matter as long as it is understandable or intelligible.

About 1.5 Billion non-native English speakers use English to speak with other foreign non-native speakers.

Most will not ever need to worry about the Standard English or American accent or pronunciation we are led to believe are correct.

You might want to convey this thought to the parents and your boss.

[some waygug-in]

I disagree that accent and pronunciation are not important. But I also realize the difficuty, if not outright impossibility of trying to teach proper pronunciation in a hagwan setting. The fact that they may not see many native English speakers on a daily basis, is not entirely relevant. English is growing in importance in Korea and their need for proper understanding and pronunciation is only going to be greater in the years to come.

Many Korean teachers have very good pronunciation and are quite adept at getting the kids to at least try. (we are not so lucky)

One small Idea that seems to help is trying to make a pronunciation exercise into something fun. Like a tongue twister or some kind of game where correct pronunciation is rewarded with points, and bad pronunciation is ignored. Don't be too dogmatic about it, if you are rigid and pushy, you can pretty well guarantee that they will refuse to do it.
(kind of like us teachers response to a pushy arrogant manager )

One way to do this is by using the standard Jeopardy game and having a category of pronunciation as part of the game. When a team chooses this category, you write a word on the board (one that the students commonly mis-pronounce) and they have to try and say it correctly.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to someone.
Cheers

[mj roach]

Pronunciation might be even more important when Koreans speak English with non-native English speakers.

[Son Deureo!]

[jajdude]

Intentionally mispronouncing words? Doesn't that reveal some psychology? After a while here in Korea teaching English we become quite good at understanding poor English. Hell we're often happy to hear anything that seems like English! And then we meet Koreans who can speak adequately enough to have a somewhat normal conversation as long as we don't get too native with slang/idiom. So we think their English is fine, even though before leaving our home countries most of us would have had a hard time communicating with that level of English. And then the person's peers also think his English is good, being supportive or whatever. But when someone I thought was pretty much fluent told me about the visit to the USA, I realized she was not fluent. People over there often had trouble understanding her. So I guess a Korean can have relatively good English skills for a Korean living in Korea, and even seem like a good speaker to a foreigner suffering English withdrawal half the time. But often their English is not as great as it seems. How frustrating! Perhaps only travel would break the illusion of fluency.

"1.5 billion non-native speakers use English." (occasionally at least) Yikes, could it really be that many?

[Daami]

"R" sounds? No problem, just make it sound like you're barking like a dog!

"...mung...mungmung...mung!!!"

LMAO!! Sorry... couldn't help it