Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

What do you think?

I figure if you can do fractions, you can find England on the world map.

[tfunk]

The yellow daffodils crave winters short bite.

Ask an abstract question - get an abstract answer.

I don't see how geography is that abstract.

[huffdaddy]

I taught my 6-year-olds (Korean age) to identify all of the continents, find 5 or 6 countries, and identify the poles.

Then again, I also had 3rd graders last year who didn't know which Korea they lived in, much less discern China from Japan.

So yes, it can be taught. But apparently it isn't.

[krats1976]

Basic geography is absolutely not too abstract.

Now, if you get into more advanced geography (5 themes, including fun stuff like economic interdependence)... maybe.

I teach it to students in grades 7 & 8 and they usually do OK with it.

[Tiger Beer]

[yingwenlaoshi]

I have a world, Korean, and North American maps in my classroom. I like to point out how big Canada is on the old Mercator comparred to Korea.

The A-zhee-ah for Asia thing bugs me. Thing is, their pronunciation of many places is better in Korean than English. Like "Paris". They say "Paree". That's how the French say it. And "Roma".

Actually, Koreans kind of sound French and Italian with the duh for the and the lookah for look.

I'm actually reading one book called, "The Old School Bus" or something. Tommy and Jenny find an old bus and go on a trip around the world. They meet one lonely lion in Africa, 2 kind cows in England, 3 polite polar bears in Alaska, 4 funny elephants in India, 5 cute koalas in Australia, and 6 sad bees in China. The maps does wonders for this one.

Good book. Jack and Jill series, I think.

[yingwenlaoshi]

Then when we're reading Helen Keller, I can point out to them where Alabama is and start talking like them: "Hi y'all! I'm from Alahbahmah!" Kind of hard to distinguish and do New Yorkers and Bostonians though. "Caffee" and "Cahfee".

Then there's that Minnesotta accent from "Fargo". That's strange.

[jajdude]

It just seems that most kids know little geography. I doubt I did either. I'm not sure why it isn't taught much in elementary school. I don't think it's so abstract, but for some kids, even in grades 4-6, if you show them a world map, they have no idea where anything is, except maybe their own and a few neighbors and large countries. I get a kick out of it sometimes. Recently I played a "topics" game and I got "Seoul" and "New York" as countries. That wasn't language confusion, that was concept confusion. Teaching English is also teaching about the outside world, but a lot of elementary kids don't know where a lot of important countries are. I taught some kids in Taiwan. They were useless at it. A grade six girl in Taiwan had no idea where China was. The concepts just seemed way over their head, I suppose because they had learned so little about the world. Maybe it's not a big deal, but if they are same as adults, yuck! Kids can get really enthused when they take interest in something. I think geography can go over well with elementary kids if presented in a way they can relate. The map is just a picture that shows where places are, and these places never move. That doesn't seem so abstract to me.

[happeningthang]

I don't remember being subjected to a concentrated effort, or concern for learning geography as a kid. If anything there was a world map, and some pictures of animals plastered overtop. I remember learning Lion=Africa, but that's about it. All the knowledge of geography I have, I essentially taught myself.

I know of one friend in Australia, who was admittedly a migrant kid, but still going through primary school in the country, who even now, as an adult, doesn't know the capital cities of the country (there's only eight). It doesn't impact on her day to day life, so she never bothered to pick it up.

I don't think it's a matter of being too abstract (this is next to this, how abstract is that?) but more a matter of priorities. Maybe Korean teachers are more concerned with math and English, thinking geography is just general knowledge students will pick up sooner or later.

[Svetlana]

When I was in school we had geography as a daily lesson. Teacher would give map quizzes, where we received blank maps of a part of the world and had to fill in the country names. Everyone in the class could name every country by the end of the year.

[jajdude]

That's cool. I'm not expecting much, but it would be nice if kids knew France is in Europe, Indonesia is around the equator, Singapore is in Asia, and New York is not a country. I've also taught middle/high school students who had never heard of some not utterly obscure places, like Portugal or Sri Lanka. That seems a bit off to me. I guess they never read newspapers?

Again though, I must qualify my remarks, as I forget now if I knew a damn thing about geography as a teenager either. I'm sure I didn't know much and still don't know a great deal. It's just that sometimes you got to teach these things and you get surprised how unaware kids are.

Ah, kids, what a world they must live in, where picture cards of space creatures are the center of their lives!