Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Been There, Taught That]

One of the emphases of college instruction regarding teacher training--in the US, anyway--is teacher-student relationship building, because it is assumed that teaching will become a career, and students will interact with the same trained, state-certified instructors in some capacity for many years.

Along comes Korea, where *teachers* are often just opportunistic or adventurous people who have cleaned themselves up and taken advantage of a (most times) free ride to a foreign country. In most cases untrained in teaching and unprepared for any long-haul assignment, the time any particular FT spends in the life of any particular student averages, I suppose, no more than 12 months, and often less, according to needs/whims of fancy.

Koreans and foreigners know English to be a business and expect it to be run as such. Principles of business, not teaching, apply, such as: relationships are best kept short-term, shallow and profitable. It's easy to see why teaching and business do not naturally go hand in hand. Human contact-wise, they are at cross purposes.

So, I have to support the notion that if Korean English learners--all ages taken as a group--statistically seem to be slow-developing and behind where it might seem they should be after all these years of instruction, it has a lot to do with the fact that the body of teachers presented to them as primaries just isn't stable enough in their academic careers and isn't designed to be.

In other words, to come full circle, Korea's population of English learners, as a whole, is being taught by a transient staff, and students get---and in fact are conditioned to accept the fact of getting--little chance to form the lasting relationships college professors would tell you they really need to be motivated to do well. They often really do become attached to one or another foreign teacher, and then that personality is gone.

That can change, but someone has to start by finding out how. It's amazing to me how administrators of especially hagwons don't realize that a little more nurturing of their business, a little more effort put into running a place of learning according to the rules of places of learning--i.e., students and their needs come first--could place them in the real 'fast lane to big profits', to use an infomercial spin. FT's might even actually want to stay longer at a place where they felt fairly treated and integral, not simply the next card dealt from the bottom of the deck.

Without such fundamental change, English may always remain a well-touted but half-learned language profiting the teachers and admin in Korea and not the average English student.

[Fresh Prince]

In the Korean system, despite it's flaws, there is a high percentage of Korean children that can speak English at a level that is much higher than most foreigners in Korea can speak Korean. Just the other day, I was standing at a bus-stop trying to figure out which bus to take and a random Korean elementary student who was nearly fluent in English gave me directions.

I agree that the transient nature of foreign teachers in Korea isn't the most beneficial, but I'm not convinced that the American university system is more advanced in any way. If one were to test on average, a Korean and an American student of the same age and socio-economic status, I'm sure that the Korean student would be years ahead in nearly every subject, including: math, English grammar, history, etc.

I've never met an American kid that can speak a foreign langauge, unless they grew up with bilingual parents. In fact, most Americans that I've met are unable to speak a foreign language fluently other than Spanish or French. Additionally, and I'm not trying to bash America here, American public schools are infamous for their harassment lawsuits against teachers, gang activity, and lack of real preparation for entering a highly competitive globalized workforce.

[Sody]

[jellobean]

And the public schools are getting to be as bad as hagwons, especially the after school programs. A friend of mine got a great program going where the kids were really improving fast, but ended up moving on because of conflicts with the management company even though there were no conflicts with the school and the parents and students were extremely happy. Public schools have got to get rid of the management companies or they are as bad as hagwons. But until the corruption disappears (which may never happen in Korea) and principals stop trying to line their pockets at the expense of students learning nothing will really improve. Like good hagwons, good public school programs are becoming the exception as well these days.

[Tjames426]

The most important thing for children is stability and consistency.

Preparing the same lesson plan design for each class. The children know what to expect from the teacher. The children know how things will be done. A great deal of classroom problems are taken care of when the children understand the procedure.

After a while, the children will settle down, trust, and appreciate the competent foreign teacher.

Keeping the same competent foreign ESL teacher for 2 - 3 years would actually benefit most Hagwons.

You would have happy productive students
You would have student retention.
You would have familiarity with the foreign teacher to handle issues.
You would have consistency curriculum and lesson plan design.

>> Sadly, the reason this does not occur seems to be that the whiny baby
ESL teacher leaves or causes so many problems due to cross cultural
incompetence, they are let go.

[Cheonmunka]

[bosintang]

I think one year is ok, even shorter at a hagwon. After a few months, you're sick of your students and they're sick of you anyways. It's good for students to be exposed to more English speakers and different personalities.

I do agree that the turnover rate is too high, though.

[wylies99]

[wylies99]

[Unposter]

Koreans have poor speaking skills because they are not expected to speak.

Koreans score extremely high in their understanding of English grammar because that is what they are expected to learn.

Part of the reason why Koreans are not expected to speak is because Korean teachers of English do not feel confident to teach conversational English. That is one of the reasons why Koreans import Native-speakers to teach English - they want to be able to actually speak the language.

There are a number of high quality hakwons, at least in the Seoul area, that produce very proficient English users but usually only a relative few elite Koreans spend the money that is required to gain that proficiency.

The problem with the Korean English-education system is not the structure of the system as much as it is the goals and the ambivalence of the majority of Korean students and Korean teachers toward English-language education.

If someone in Korea has the basic natural ability and puts forth the effort there are few to no systematic barriers to learning English. The problems have more to do with motivation and being in a positive environment for learning things "foreign."

Koreans are beginning to understand these things and the movement to bring FTs out of the hakwons and into the public schools is a first step in rectifying this. They still have a ways to go. There are still many other issues including but not limited to the Korean college enterance exam, more national concensus on how much and what kind of English skills are necessary (the development of English and International Economic zones are part of pushing this along), concentrating resources more effectively including tracking highly proficient language users (other than Foreign Language High Schools), promoting educational programs to encourage greater cultural understanding, tolerance and open-mindedness.

It is easy to think we are English-language education in Korea. We are just one small slice. Korean education does not revolve around us and Koreans learn or not learn only to a limited extent because of us. There is a much larger picture out there.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I'd broaden it out to include KETs, too. Many Korean hagwon teachers last a year or less at their hagwon and in addition to that many Korean parents keep moving their kids around from English hagwon to English hagwon.

The OP makes a very good point, however, about Korean employers not doing the simple things necessary to retain experienced FTs. This is probably largely because so many of them don't want competency so much as a compliant, young white face.