Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mrgiles]

ol. true and i agree! for some reason i find women workers in clothes shops the rudest. or maybe i just assume they are. maybe it's just their way, every day, yea-eah yeah.

seriously? erm i dunno what to say. i have myself a book and tape i try to spend at least half an hour every day studying. i've never taken formal classes in the language, but i try to speak it as much as i can, and i have watched an appalling amount of korean tv. appalling for a number of reasons. i cry when the leading man in the drama goes to the 포장마차 to pick up his drunk girlfriend who he has been fighting with and piggy backs her home. and sometimes it's not because of how hackneyed and poorly acted the scene is...

oh miriam ferguson is amazing!!! and what a handsome woman...

[mrgiles]

oh i've gone a fair bit offtopic. tut tut.

syun, cd i ask u if u are "allowed" to speak korean at ur school outside of class? at my old hagwon there was a girl that was amazingly, totally bilingual. she grew up in korea, but moved to canada when she was in high school i think. she had a hard time, even though her english accent was much "better" (or at least favourable) than mine (from a korean p.o.v). she feigned complete ignorance of korean in her classes, and hid the fact of her fluency at the hagwon outside of class. even though her english was perfect, our boss never let her teach anything other than the basic classes. she had a hard time.

there seems to be an idea in some places that any sort of fluency in korean is seen as a marker of poor proficiency in english. i'm trying to think if this is the same in australia. i guess in rural areas especially it is; but then again not looking white is also a similar marker in country austraya.

time spent speaking korean takes away from time spent perfecting english??

i'm starting to get a bit annoyed about my situation at work, too. i didn't mind not being able to speak korean before, but it's starting to irk me a bit. one of the teachers' brother just died, and all the other teachers either went to the funeral service, or gave the griever money. i didn't know about it until somebody asked me why we were eating ricecake (떡) at lunch. that sorta made me feel a bit shitty. i also don't know how to act with teachers that can't speak any english. i feel rude speaking to them in a language they can't - and don't have to - understand, but i think i'm being even ruder by just sort of nodding to them in an embarrassed manner or avoiding them. maybe i need to talk to the principal?

[Been There, Taught That]

In all my time in Korean middle school/elementary hakgwon classrooms, I found that the more Korean I allowed myself to reveal, the better I had to be at classroom management--a skill every FT at every level of K-speak ability should realize is necessary anyway. So, in that regard, I'd tell the teacher who speaks only a few words of Korean that it's better to forget he or she knows them at all inside the classroom.

This applies, I think, most aggressively to hakgwons. FT Korean know-how is still enough of a novelty that most students, especially in a group situation, will perk up immediately upon experiencing the phenomenon and, well, take advantage of the opportunity to steer the focus back to the FT's L2 ability.

At the other extreme, I have never experienced that strictly monolingual classrooms a la Jeremy Harmer can proceed at any more than a snail's pace; I think that the FT has to be the epitome of patience and dedication to use that approach in any level below high intermediate and, as well, classroom management is your best tool in that situation. Disinterest is the enemy a teacher can create.

Speaking Korean in the classroom doesn't facilitate discipline when it is simply a novelty; save it, in that case, for your personal time and by all means work hard to improve, because it is so valuable in your personal time. At a certain level, it becomes valuable to your teaching time as well: the ability to speak believably gets you a measure of respect in your classes--I'm projecting beyond the private institute level, now--and, of course, is a great help in getting your message across and moving on that much more quickly.

So speaking Korean is ultimately about the ability to control what the situations created by the use of it. 'Society' is a lot more genial and relaxed about dealing with neophyte learners than the world of the English-desperate hakgwon is.

[tomato]

�Welcome to the annual awards ceremony of the Miriam Ferguson Society. The Miriam Ferguson Society, as most you know, is dedicated to protecting this great nation of ours from the hated KSL invadors. We are very proud of the diligent work which our members put forth this year, and we feel that they deserve our warmest appreciation.

"So now, without further ado, let the ceremony begin. Our first award will be the Business Disservice Award. Our nominees include waitress 이영애 for pretending not to understand a foreigner who ordered 김밥, to store clerk 송승헌 for making a foreigner repeat 얼마입니까 5 times, and our winner is bank teller 김희선 for handing a cell phone to Mithridates. Let's give these hard-working members a big hand.

"Our next award is the Intrusiveness Award. Our nominees include 신하균 for translating 감사합니다 for a foreigner, 장진영 for lurking in libraries and pestering any foreigner who reads Korean material, and our winner is 차태현 for harassing a foreigner and a Korean who were conversing in Korean in a Seoul restaurant.

"I understand that the foreigner and the Korean have been enjoying a friendship for 7 years without a word ever being spoken in English, but 차태현 pretended not to know that. So he went over to their table and kept repeating 'Can I help you' until both individuals got up and walked out.

"Let's have a round of applause.

"Our next award is the Stereotype Award. Our nominees are information desk attendee 이미숙 for directing every foreigner to the restroom, to taxi driver 차승원 for driving every foreigner to the bus terminal, and our winner is train ticket agent 송윤아 for writing every foreigner a ticket to Seoul. Again, let's show our appreciation.

"Next on our list is the Condescension Award. Our nominees include music teacher 문소리 for explaining the term Dal capo al fine to a foreigner with a degree in music, bakery chef 박상면 for telling a foreigner that 샌드위치 means 'sandwich,' and our winner is travel agent 이미연 for showing an American where 미국 is on the map.

"Last but not least is the Sabotage Award. Our nominees are KSL teacher 하지원 for spending 90% of the class time speaking English, to novice computer hacker 박해일 for intercepting e-mail to and from KSL students and translating it all into English, and our winner is longtime computer hacker 정재영 for snafuing the Galbijim website. We are told that the Website was down for 48 hours thanks to 정재영's brave and noble effort.

"That concludes our awards ceremony, but before we leave, let's give all of these fine people another round of applause."

[tomato]

Bet you didn't know that:

▶ The average Asian has a cranial capacity of 1364 cc, compared with 1347 for the average Caucasian. (Rushton, J. Philippe, Race, Evolution and Behavior)

▶ The average Asian has 13,767 cortical neurons, compared with 13,606 for the average Caucasian. (Rushton, J. Philippe, Race, Evolution and Behavior)

▶ The average Asian has an IQ of 105 compared with 100 for the average Caucasian. (Rushton, J. Philippe, Race, Evolution and Behavior)

▶ In the United States, Asian-American students consistently score the highest on the SAT scores. (WGBH Educational Foundation, 2007)

▶ Whereas 50% of the European population is proficient in a second language, the percentage for Great Britain is only 30%. (European Union, 2005 survey)

▶ In the United States, only 9% of the population can speak a second language. (US Senate resolution, 2005)

And that's who we have climbing our banks and annyeong-haseyo-ing us--feeble little mongrels who can't even measure up with other feeble little mongrels!

We can't stop them by ourselves.
We need your help.
While we are covering all the major train stations and bus stations, these vile and decrepit creatures are infesting the back alleys, the small towns, and the countryside, where they are free to kamsahamnida the local Korean people all they want to.
We're doing the best we can, but we need more help.

To find out how you can help:

■ click on http://www.miriamferguson.org
■ write to [email protected]
■ call 555-1212

JOIN NOW!

[postfundie]

[mrgiles]

sigh

why do these sorts of threads always end up turning into *beep* size comparisons?

[mrgiles]

what? u can't say *beep* here?

a tad bit prudish!

i pen1s isn't particularly rude is it?

[postfundie]

who 's comparing????

[mrgiles]

hmmm...possibly noone?!? lol

i think i wrote that last post cos when i read the one u posted before it, i had the compulsion to write back about how very serious i am and how much i use korean etc before i realised that i was just being silly.

but now i've gone and done it anyway. damn!!

i wonder...can i write vagina? *beep*? genitalia?

[mrgiles]

o now that's interesting! it seems like it's mainly male genital organs that get censored. can clitoris make it through i wonder?

[mrgiles]

vagina and clitoris but not pen1s and test1cles?? how peculiar!

[tomato]

[jessie-b]

Wow Tomato. I am overcome. Good work.

[tomato]