Korean Job Discussion Forums

[RACETRAITOR]

Okay, here's the story. I work for a website where I correct students' writing. I also do phone lessons.

A few months ago, I started teaching a girl named Subin ten-minute phone lessons each day. She's about 15 and a bright student. She sends me her short stories and she has a strong fiction-writing voice.

At the beginning of the month, because I was doing such a good job, they registered her 13-year-old sister Sujin. This girl is a little below her sister's level, but she's a very eager student who talks and talks and keeps going. Her writing is alright too.

So their 16-year-old cousin signed up recently. This girl can barely understand me, and her most common answer is "HUH??!!!" (I don't know how Koreans would spell it). Her writing is nearly unintelligible.

I mentioned to Subin, who's one year younger, that her sister has trouble understanding me, speaking English, and writing.

She said, "Yeah but she's good at English. She's not good at listening, or speaking, or writing, but she gets high scores on tests."

Brilliant! One girl who is fluent in English and a talented writer, and one girl who's on the fast track to the same level, are outranked by a girl who doesn't know how to respond to "How was your day?"

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Fresh Prince]

That's really unfortunate. Her family probably spent a lot of money on her education and all she got for her hard work was the ability to pass tests.

I don't know if this applies to Korea but other parts of Asia there are special schools that train their students to master test taking skills for specific tests. MIT had an article (which I can't find) that mentioned how difficult it was for their admissions department to do their job because so many of their foreign applicants were scoring ridiculously high on the GRE and when they came to study, their English was barely understandable. If the students have a large enough vocabulary then they can probably do well on multiple choice sections on a test.

[Mashimaro]

yeah I once met a girl famed for her exceptionally high TOEIC score, yet struggled to hold even a simple conversation in English. After meeting her, she really seemed to have little interest in learning to converse in English, I guess like many others TOEIC was just their ticket to some office job.

[billybrobby]

You ever see the opposite? Once I was talking to this Korean and her English was very very natural and she never misheard anything I said. Then later she wrote me an email and it was f-cking unintelligble.

[RACETRAITOR]

[Hater Depot]