Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Len8]

Listened to someone's comparing a Chinese person's ability to speak English with a Koreans ability to speak English.

The Chinese person came out way ahead of the Korean person. The Chinese debunk the word order theory as being similar to English. They deny it vehemently saying a lot of their grammar has no resemblance to English whatsoever.

Someone said that the Chinese embrace western culture whereas the Koreans look down on it. The Koreans take from the language the relevant material for maybe buisness or Toiec, or their job. There they stop, and have no desire to familiarise themselves with the rest of an English speaking person's culture. Could be a big hinderance to developing spoken English.

[Bibbitybop]

A large part of it has to with sentence structure: Subject, verb, object is common to Chinese and English, but not Korean.

You may have a point about cultural attitude toward the West...

[jajdude]

All you need to do is to look at the way we are regarded here. It's a small planet out in the galaxy. Millions and millions of people will die without ever having had a halfway decent conversation with a person outside their little world (yeah yeah not only Korea). They are a closed shop (I believe Michael Breen said that first).

[wo buxihuan hanguoren]

[JZer]

[mateomiguel]

When students start speaking English outside of class and drop all the neuroses that come along with being different and exceeding the expectations of their peers then they'll learn it.

[steroidmaximus]

I've come to the same conclusion: the reason Koreans don't learn English as well as other Asian countries is indeed due to their motivations for learning and the perceptions of the culture associated with English i.e. America. They learn purely to get more money at their job thanks to higher TOEIC, and they resent, fear, or look down upon most things foreign, including Native English teachers.

To use language theory speak, they have an instrumental, instead of an integrative, mindset towards learning English.

They should just accept that resistance is futile.

[newton kabiddles]

[Bibbitybop]

[mateomiguel]

But Koreans have been learning English grammar and sentence structure since they were old enough to hold a pencil. They know more about it than the average native speaker.

What they don't know is how to actually speak what's on their mind. That cannot come with academic theoretical study, because its not an intellectual pursuit. Its just a skill, like riding a bike, and the only way to learn it is to do it.

Which they don't.

So they don't learn.

[Bibbitybop]

[Kimchi Cha Cha]

There's more incentive to learn English in China.

China's growing at a phenomenal rate but the vast majority of people there are still dirt poor. English is a way out of poverty and Chinese people recognize this and embrace English as they know it's a ticket out of poverty. China's rising and the people in China are embracing the world, especially the West, as the West is helping bring prosperity to China and English is a vehicle to enable continued prosperity.

Also, Chinese people can be quite xenophobic themselves but are wise enough to know that if they want people to travel to their country and invest in it, therefore bringing more money to China, they have to curb any insecurities or racism. Korea still hasn't learn this lesson yet with xenophobia remaining largely unchecked. China seems very good at putting their emotions to the side when money's on the line, Korea has yet to fully learn that.

A lot of it also is due to China throughout most of its history, bar much of the 20th century, being an outward-looking, expanding empire based on trade, dialog, invasion, and conquering. Whereas, Korea, up until the last few decades, has been an insular, inward-looking nation, fending off outside invaders and wanting nothing to do with the outside world. China has a lot more history dealing with non-Chinese people, Korea is still learning the ropes and still see non-Koreans as different, unusual and possibly a threat.

These are the main reasons why I believe Chinese people pick up English at a faster rate than Koreans. Chinese people are more comfortable and confident in talking to non-Chinese people and that helps a lot in learning a language.

[Atavistic]

Frankly, how many people (in America at least) do their required two years of a foreign language in college to reach "fluency" and can't hold any sort of conversation when they're done? One of the things my friends who majored in foreign languages said is that they didn't realize how much they didn't know until they did their study abroad part. They were getting As and Bs the whole way through, but when it came time to live in that country, well...

You can study study study something till the cows come home but if you don't use it, you haven't learned it.

And I do think that in SOME WAYS learning English from Korean is harder than learning Korean from English.

The alphabets are different, very different, yes, so that goes both ways. But English has capitalization to figure out. And capitalization of weird things, like I and days of the weeks and months. Going from English to Korean, you just drop any knowledge of capitalization and you're set.

Punctuation? English uses way more punctuation that Korean, and in English, you've got to use it as least mostly correctly. (before people arguethat you could write like this and still be understood without any problem let me say that i think its especially important for nonnative speakers to punctuate as well as possible to be understood and it still bothers me to no end when native speakers write like this it makes me want to kill someone now). In Korean, much of it doesn't exist. Again, you can drop any knowledge of it, and you're set.

In English you need to use proper spacing between words. Koreans seem much more loosey-goosey with their word spacing.

Markers in Korean can often be dropped from speech and you'll still be understood AND considered to be speaking correctly, even if casually. If I say "two girl went mall" it's not correct.

Syllables in Korean are easy. Yes, you have shifting sounds, but the fact is, if a word is made up of five parts, it's five beats. Easy. Compare that to the English words I, it, car, bake, broom, thinks, thought, straight, and strengths. All one beat, ranging from one to nine letters.

I'm not saying that Korean is easy to learn for native-English speakers, but there are some ways that it's easier to forget what you know than to learn something new.

Add to that the different nature that the vocabulary words come from (coming mostly from Chinese vs being the language that sleeps around with other languages)...and the motivation factors already discussed and, well...

[cubanlord]

[twg]