Korean Job Discussion Forums

[pkang0202]

The question I want to ask, is English making an impact?

I've only been here for a short while, so I don't know the English level of the students 5 or even 10 years ago before the NET program took off.

Are middle school aged students better at English than their counterparts 5 years ago? I choose middle school because 5 years ago, they would've been in Elementary school and exposed to English native teachers at an early age.

I asked a few Korean teachers and they say that, for the kids who can afford the extra English education, the levels are higher. The middle school students today are at, or above the level of high school students 10 years ago.

IMHO, I think English education is making an impact. Granted, its not a huge leap in English ability. However, I get the feeling that we are moving in the right direction.

[expat2001]

[schwa]

[mistermasan]

yes, we are seemingly always interviewing for new teachers. while it seems there may be some actual regression for english teachers the interviewees are sharp. it seems, based on such a small sample, that the tide is rising.

[sadsac]

No, on the whole Korean's English skills haven't improved markedly in the 7 years that we were in Korea teaching. I do agree that those who are serious about learning do so irrespective of how they go about it.

[Privateer]

I can definitely say the Koreans are better than the Chinese or Mongolian students I occasionally get (some of whom barely comprehend anything); but are on about the same level as the Japanese, and far below most students from South or Southeast Asia. Given the amount of money being poured into their English education compared to, say, the students from Mongolia, the result is not impressive.

Sometimes I think there's a limit to what you can expect from kids, however, since certain concepts seem just too abstract for them, and age brings a greater sophistication and imagination very helpful for understanding a lot of English vocabulary. They are pretty hopeless at recognising patterns in sentences, which means they continually assign the wrong meaning to the words they are reading - that is, where they bother to assign any meaning at all. Most kids are so far unable to rise beyond L1 influence they seem constitutionally unable to understand that English sentences require a verb - let alone conjugate it. A lot may be blamed on their lack of discipline, rather than lack of intelligence; although the frustrated teacher is often tempted to dismiss all students as clods.

I hear that it's not just in English that students disappoint, since Korean teachers also complain about their students' lack of grammar, and poor grasp of what constitutes good writing. If you can't produce a decent sentence in your own language what chance do you have in a foreign one? Naturally, this is partly a modern global trend in which kids don't read enough books and play too many computer games; but I also sometimes wonder if there isn't a Korean professor or school of Korean professors somewhere responsible for producing, in their over-laboured efforts to translate, that horrible attempted synthesis of Korean and English which leads to both the uglified English we see and the uglified Korean Koreans see and sometimes blame on the overweening influence of English.

I don't want to denigrate the large proportion of my students, however, who I admire for their perseverance in the difficult task of learning English, those who you can see genuinely want to learn.

[koldijk]

After being condescended to for over 4 years because I cannot understand most spoken Korean, I was shocked at the Vancouver consulate where the English of the staff was poor. They have their memorised phrases, their routines, and their paperwork (conveniently almost entirely in Korean.) They were angry that I dared to visit THEIR consulate in person. In other words, they were very ethnocentric, borderline racist, unapologetically rude and arrogant, in Vancouver (welcome to Korea!) They were generally p.o.’d because they prefer to do everything through the mail, where they can avoid contact with “foreigners.” This was in November 2007. The thrust of it is, like Japan, a lot of Koreans act like computers with English, once you go outside of a script or an area, which they have not memorised (Confucian culture!) they’re hopeless and they know it. Anyway, I was so na�ve to think that Koreans, working in Canada should try to be fluent in at least one of our official languages, after giving me such a hard time, for so long with their monolingual country. I should have started speaking in French, our culture, our country, our languages (sound familiar?)

The biggest problem at the moment are Korean teachers who encourage and enforce a doctrine of translation, not for the child’s education, to further their English, but so that the teachers can figure out what the heck is going on, some of the students have better English than the teachers! The older Korean teachers are holding the kids back, on purpose. When I see a Korean teacher and a kid, I often cannot understand what is going on, without a text.

My co-worker is convinced that I do not speak English because I am from Calgary. She also asked me "Does Canada even have an army?" She reads TIME magazine, which explains a lot.

Anyone with an American passport speaks English, as far as 99% of Koreans are concerned. Nothing against Aussies or South Africans, it is just what the Koreans think.

I predict more of the same, Koreans approach English as a mathematical puzzle with theory and limits. However, in 2008, I still find it too easy to crash my computer. So, just for fun, if you phrase something in a slightly "non textbook" manner, a lot of native Koreans will either attempt to correct your English, tell you your English is incorrect (unless you have a magical American passport) or repeat whatever you said and figure out another stock phrase... One of my coworkers at a previous Hagwon seriously thought it was possible to memorize English.

If you want to be able to learn another language, you have to free yourself of your culture.

Language is just a perspective, Koreans still feel too threatened by their history to understand that their perspective is just one of many.

Finally, the best students in the world? Finnish! Yet another triumph for socialism. We need to eliminate a profit motive for education...

[skdragon]

[cruisemonkey]

[Rumple]

I would say that English proficiency is steadily increasing, year by year.

I teach adults, many of whom are in the business world, and they say that ten years ago, being fluent in English was definitely a boost to your resume, but today it is expected. They say being fluent in English no longer makes you a cut above, because lots of people are.

That tells me that the general level of English proficiency is improving. The job market tells the story...

[fancypants]

[steveaziz]

no

[Hyeon Een]

[Rumple]

[Biblethumper]

Almost 100% of Koreans who speak English well either 1) lived abroad or 2) went to to a private English school during their kindergarten years.

Since Koreans decry the "goose" phenomenon which usually accompanies sending children abroad to learn English, the obvious solution is to send their children to a private English school at six or seven years old.