Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ABC KID]

Please share your thoughts and attitudes on learning Korean...

[Ilsanman]

I study Korean, but no for those reasons.

It is certainly not a crime not to speak it. I just choose to study it. If others don't want to, power to them.

[nobbyken]

None of the reasons above.

I started learning in the UK, before marrying my Korean wife.

English is often called the international language, which is why most people learn English (just a thought).

This is quite a difficult country to live in, more difficult if you have no confidence to speak to any of the natives. If you learn to read hangul (can take you about 4 x 1-hour sessions), the land feels less alien and your outlook changes.

I went on a 10-week morning course, and the teachers had very little English, which left me feeling lost and isolated: the rest of the class was Chinese, but did have some English. I also study by book now.

My students faces light up if I say anything in Korean, and quickly gets there attention. Gives a a common bond: they are learning English and I am learning Korean.

Do you see your students excited and happy when they learn something new?
Same happens when your Korean language ability rises.
Just my thoughts

[LUCRETIA]

Well it depends doesn't it?

If you're only here for a year, I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting that you will never use the language again and just learn a little to get by.

There always seem to be some uppity old-timers who think it's awful that you don't study it formally, but, honestly, what for?

I don't intend staying here for that long.

[pest2]

[vox]

I love using Korean, and I'm passionate about learning it, but I don't love the great difficulty in finding a good Korean teacher who's accountable for his/her teaching. It's quite difficult, actually, to find a good teacher.

The approach of finding a verb and conjugation and attempting to fill in new variables to make new sentences was a frustrating one. I used to ride very hard the few teachers I'd had for all the context dependent stuff. I'm still not sure, but it seems that a lot more culture is needed to accompany the teaching of this language - for me - than was the case when I studied Portuguese, French or German.

But now I've made it far enough that I can self-study the forms off of movie subtitles and backtrack in reflection with English-speaking Koreans, and not worry so much about the usage.

Everybody knows that language acquisition is a series of plateaus and climbing to those plateaus. Perhaps I'm just happy because I'm leaving an old plateau. But I'd prefer that *I* taught the Korean I know to my friends than have them suffer my old Korean teachers.

Of course, I don't live in Seoul. That may be my whole problem right there.

[mindmetoo]

Learn hangul. Learn the basics to be polite and get your coffee and food and grocery store bag. If you seek better employment, non teaching jobs, settle down in Korea with a wife, for sure, learn Korean. If you're just here for a couple years, take it if you like the intellectual exercise. But for pragmatic reasons, I can't see it having on the job value back in North America (unless you want to try and get a future transfer back to Korea and earn expat wages).

[colonel sanders]

[Boodleheimer]

it's not only useless outside of Korea, but -at the risk of being unpopular- it's ugly-sounding. flame away, boys.

[laura-and-ryan]

[SuperHero]

[Intrepid]

Learned enough to get by in most conversations. When someone compliments me I say I'm like a first generation immigrant taxi driver in NYC (his English, my Korean)--I can debrouiller, but that's it. No incentive to learn any more, and too hard.

[Newbie]

I studied a lot when I was single and living the bachelor's life. When I met my wife 3 years ago I kinda gave up. Her English is good enough that I don't really need it. As it stands now, I have a very good vocabulary but my grammar is crap.

Knowing some words DEFINITELY helps my students. Not only for their learning, but they seem to relax so much after I throw out my first few words. It's like they finally understand that I am indeed a human being.

[atomic42]

In a word: Meh.

[Vicissitude]