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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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 Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:39 am Post subject: Must See Newbie TV |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwjt7zRiWOw
Australian Docco on the English teaching craziness in Korea. Things you always heard about, but maybe haven't seen. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:42 am Post subject: |
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Good documentary.
It wasn't mentioned, but the tongue surgery costs W100,000 (at least that is what my friend had to pay for his son's surgery).
But 'hag-won'? |
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The_Eyeball_Kid
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Pah. What a load of bollocks. |
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Natalia
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting. (And disturbing.)
I'm not in Korea anymore, and it's funny how strange it all seems now. When you're living there, you probably don't find this documentary half as crazy as you do when you're back in the West.
Annoying, agreed.
But if you didn't live in Korea you wouldn't know either....
| The_Eyeball_Kid wrote: |
| Pah. What a load of bollocks. |
Care to elaborate? |
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normalcyispasse
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Location: Yeosu until the end of February WOOOOOOOO
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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| A YouTube Commenter wrote: |
Education is very VERY important in South Korea. Just knowing vocab and speaking okay isn't enough because the job market is saturated with over qualified applicants. This is a similar trend in Japan, India and China. You have to be special. |
And once again, the YouTube comments completely miss the mark. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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| I like how they have an entire TV show centering around the phrase "It's My First Time Taking a Plane." I want to make a TV show that just consists of everyone saying the same phrase over and over again, every show. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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K-parents pay $1,000 (AUS$?) per MONTH to send their 5-yr-olds to English kindie?
100s of kids x $1,000 x 12 mo. = I'm in the wrong fxkking business!  |
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halfmanhalfbiscuit
Joined: 13 Oct 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
K-parents pay $1,000 (AUS$?) per MONTH to send their 5-yr-olds to English kindie?
100s of kids x $1,000 x 12 mo. = I'm in the wrong fxkking business! |
Is it cheaper for them than daycare?
At least I don't hear so much of 2 year old's learning English like in Japan and Taiwan.That's potty. |
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eamo
Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:21 am Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
K-parents pay $1,000 (AUS$?) per MONTH to send their 5-yr-olds to English kindie?
100s of kids x $1,000 x 12 mo. = I'm in the wrong fxkking business! |
The 'boutique' Gangnam kindy hagwons do indeed charge 900,000-1,000,000 per kid, per month. I worked at one until about 18 months ago. But they wouldn't have hundreds of kids. Maybe 70-100. Their overheads are high...... Gangnam rent...... A spoiled foreign teacher and a K-teacher for every class..... Shuttle buses..... Lunch costs......huge amount of time is spent ass-licking with parents.......any material, teaching aid or toy that the teacher asks for they get.
The biggest probelm? Dealing with insane Gangnam parents who are often allowed to dictate to the Wonjeongnim and even the teachers.
One parent while I was there asked that pencils not be kept in the classroom because they're sharp and they could hurt her son. Her request was complied with. The teachers had to keep pencils in a cupboard outside the classroom when they weren't in use. Madness.
Good to see that at least somebody Korean has realized that the tounge-cutting thing (which I see as criminal) must be horseradish because Koreans growing up in the States pronounce English just fine. |
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Are they the lemmings
Joined: 15 Feb 2007
Location: Not here anymore. JongnoGuru was the only thing that kept me here.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| halfmanhalfbiscuit wrote: |
| 2 year old's learning English like in Japan and Taiwan.That's potty. |
Potty training, surely? Boom-boom! Thangyu, folks. You're a wonderful audience. 
Seriously, tho', re. sending toddlers to English lessons here in Japan: it's not so much about having them learn English as such. Rather the attitude is, "If I'm going to drop my kid off somewhere while I get my hair done, it might as well be somewhere vaguely educational. And, if little Yuta gets used to being with gaijin, that might help him be more open-minded when he grows up, so all the better". |
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sojourner1
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Location: Where meggi swim and 2 wheeled tractors go sput put chug alugg pug pug
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:48 am Post subject: |
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Gangnam is not the only place where you find $1000 US per month kindy hagwons, it's common in places far from Seoul. Not only do the hagwons specialize in $1000 a month kindy, but they also double as elementary English class mills during the afternoon.
As for tong cutting, that's crazy as many Asians who grew up in America learn and speak English just fine. It's a matter of living environment on what people learn and do. If Korea is serious about English, it needs to incorporate more English into everyday life such as in restaurants, shopping centers, and public places. I see a little effort, but it's barely enough where you might see the name of a place in English, but everything else has not been translated yet and few seem to speak even a minimal amount of English. This surprised me about Korea, guess English learning is only a developing thing that is clearly not developed yet. |
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Scotticus
Joined: 18 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:59 am Post subject: |
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| sojourner1 wrote: |
| If Korea is serious about English, it needs to incorporate more English into everyday life such as in restaurants, shopping centers, and public places. |
Nah, the problem isn't getting MORE English into Korea, it's getting Koreans to pronounce it halfway correctly. Konglish allows Koreans to never have to pronounce a word correctly, unless it conforms to the Korean phonemic system. Thus why 95% of the Koreans I know speak with an accent that most Westerners would find incomprehensible. I'm always floored when I run into a kid/adult Korean who has taken the time to learn how to speak English without that god-damned accent. |
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