Korean Job Discussion Forums

[changwonteacher]

While I was teaching at a JungChul hagwon, I was constantly astonished at how many mistakes there were in the books. Looking at the credits, I noticed that the books were written and proofread by Koreans. Native speaker teachers using these books can easily spot the mistakes, so why doesn't the company hire more native speakers of English - who actually have a decent grasp of the language being taught - to write the books?

[Ilsanman]

That problem is hardly unique to your school.

[idonojacs]

Korea:

"We don't need no stinking native Englishee speakers!"

[Biblethumper]

One school I worked at had eight foreign teachers, and yet not one of us was consulted when ...

... the school plastered scores of English slogans throughout the hallways, almost all of them either mis-spelled, grammatically mistaken or just plain strange (I wish I had kept the paper on which I had copied some down ... look at a slogans on a typical Morning Glory notebook and you will get the idea).

[Whistleblower]

This is something I found at a COEX English Language Expo.

[idonojacs]

I still can't stop laughing!

Besides the obvious, which is pretty astonishing by itself, the sign is right over a MENSA sign.

I've dealt with some of those Mensa folks, and talk about confused, conceited idiots! Come to think of it, living in Korea is like living in a country populated by only Mensa members.

But then look at the banner above, which is reversed in the picture: They spell English, "Inglish."

Sometimes I get the feeling the attitude is "This is Korea, this is our country, and we invented Englishee. But you Westerners can borrow it while you're here."

On the other hand, there are co-teachers and students who are good, very good, and sincerely interested. But others have taken their courses from their Korean teachers, and that is good enough for them, for the rest of their lives.

[midwest]

[quote="Whistleblower"]This is something I found at a COEX English Language Expo.
What a scream, that photo is killing me! I have a cold and don't want to laugh, but how crazy is that picture!

[midwest]

Yeah, I have seen these books, they are awful. I once filled in for a teacher who was at Jung Chul school, and her students would say, "I hate this book!" One English expression take up one whole page. It is ridiculous!

[VanIslander]

I met the native English teacher who was hired by Jungchul to edit their books and he told me he's indicated to the other editors a lot of mistakes he had "corrected" in the reading books and conversation books.

But the other staff at Jungchul ignored many of his changes and put more mistakes in!

I used the series myself for a few years and found the quality varied, that some levels had pretty good and useful material while others were overly simplistic and riddled with errors.

Give bonus points to students who spot the errors before you point them out. Think of the green and orange books as only part of your lesson, and don't even bother using Jungchul's classroom computerized lessons. A white board and the texts only 60% of each class is a recipe for success I've found.

Good luck whatever.

[Roch]

[just because]

The first 3 years i lived in Korea I worked at Jung Chuls.

Great bosses(which is most important) but the books were hilarious.

The worst thing was the bosses wouldn't let me use supplementary material so we just used the books. I did use other stuff for a while but the parents started complaining that they were wasting their money buying the Jung Chul textbook if i wasn't hardly using it(which is a fair point) so i could only use the book.

Some were OK but it wasn't the mistakes that got me so much but how dry and repetitive the books are. They completely sucked the fun out of learning.

[nomad-ish]