Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ohahakehte]

were you a linguistics major (or Masters student, or better yet PhD!) in university? have you found your background/interest in linguistics helpful for teaching english?

i wasnt a major in linguistics - sometimes i regret that i wasnt - but i took a number of linguistics courses in university and am still heavily interested in the field. mostly i find the thought of applying linguistics work to teaching at a hagwan a mockery of language science, except for phonetics and phonology which often comes in handy for teaching pronuncation

[VanIslander]

My master's degree thesis "Towards a Language of Controversy" looks at how the meaning of certain concepts and usages of words are perpetually contested. What does "free" mean? There are differing accounts with overlapping usages. In a sense you are not free if you are poor. And in a sense you are not free if you can't say what you want. And in a sense you are not free if you can't jump over buildings or live forever. My work looks at attempts to see the rationality (other than power politics) of CONTINUED arguments (and they do continue!) about the meaning of freedom (and other such contested concepts) in the face of the somewhat different meanings (without saying there must be a core meaning that's shared by the different usages, nor saying they should agree to disagree).

I have gained insights into the complexity of language use in trying to show (rather than explain) to my adult Korean students the meanings and uses of contested terms.

My background philosophy of language is mostly informed by the under-read-yet-over-cited works of Ludwig Wittgenstein (hence my tag quotation below my post). When I started working in a Korean hogwan I tried to teach the usage of words by means of definition, paraphrase and examples, CONTRARY to my philosophy of language. That's just not how language works however tempting the illusion. We don't learn the majority of our first language through denotative references of finger pointing. Nor do we usually prevent ourselves from making mistakes by back reference to rules we have learned. But how we learn a second language differs, and in a variety of ways. Can I rely on first-language acquisition techniques of useful application, feedback, extension and playfulness?

Teaching english is a gold mine!

I'm making some challenging and interesting observations I will process in either a MA TOESL or likely a PhD in Philosophy.

Living and working in Korea is (in its widest possible sense too) an educational experience. But if you don't take notes, or talk about it, or investigate further, it'll mostly dissipate like one's memory of a college lecture.

[mithridates]

I visualize languages as each cutting up reality in a certain way. Reality is reality, and exists by itself, but our thoughts are shaped by the language(s) we speak. I always see a vast map in front of me, with the various words from various languages covering a certain area. Some words cover more than others; some languages need two words to cover the space that one covers in another, but the one that needs two words is more precise.
And if you look really close you can see that the individual words are separated even further by the terminology that specialists in the field use. They are too fine for the average person to see, but if you train yourself properly they become visible as well. This area is generally the same country to country and so there are no further divisions beneath that except when a new word is coined to clairify things. Underneath all of that is reality itself, which is fluid.
At the same time some words die, and the spaces they cover are once again filled in by similar words that can take over their positions. Like mopping up a small area in a room filled with a slight film of water, the fluid nearby always moves in to fill the space one has cleaned out.

If only I could make that map...

[ohahakehte]

for all two of you that responded to this post (and others too), have you read Chomsky and His Critics edited by Louise M. Antony and Norbert Hornstein? they have it at Kyobo and im thinking of getting it. i havent been able to find any reviews of it online
heres a link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0631200215/qid=1074778979/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1705066-6600042?v=glance&s=books

[tokki]

Im not a linguist. I majored in biochem, but I took several linguistics courses in Uni and loved them. I speak two languages fluently, English being my 2nd language actually, and I have no problems getting by in Slovak or Czech. Korean is the 5th language Im trying to get up to a conversational level, but its damn tough.

[SuperHero]

I'm thinking about starting a linguistics & EFL blog in mid february.

[ohahakehte]

[SuperHero]

[ohahakehte]

[SuperHero]

[GRK]

Interesting topic - I hope more people reply.
My Ph.D is centred in the field of sociolinguistics, however as sometimes happens, the further one follows a specific path, the more questions arise. I am now delving into neurolinguistics and psychlinguistics in an attempt to answer some of the questions that I feel are not addressed within the field of applied linguistics (in general). I would be interested to read comments by other teachers with an interest in this (linguistics) - and related fields - of their thoughts and impressions of Korean (or other) L1 learners of English within the EFL environment.

[ohahakehte]

[GRK]

Fossilization is where I'm at right now, and it is because of my observations related to this matter that I have started to look into neurolinguistics. I may be chasing a rainbow, but I have a feeling that there is more than pure linguistic phenomena at work here. Maybe someone has produced a model in this field, but as yet I am unaware of it. I find it a little more difficult to chase up resources from Korea. Yes, hagwans are a bottomless source of potential - why else would one work there To get to the 'grassroots' stage of learning can be very informative when looking at adult language production. My previous research centred around the social role of language and its role as an instrument of social control, but I have digressed somewhat...

[hojucandy]

i am a veterinarian by training, with some training also in the alternative medicine field, but i have a long-standing addiction to languages and music.

never studied any linguistics as such but have read a bit.

in the 80's while trying to run a part-time veterinary and homeopathy practice in a small town near canberra in australia, i did part-time asian studies at ANU. i studied sanskrit, hindi, urdu, braj bhasha. took arabic classes at the local mosque too.

i lived most of the 90's in papua new guinea - a country that is particularly rich in languages (well over 700 of them). here i became fluent in melanesian "tok pisin" and a learnt a bit of several other languages. began to compile a bit of a grammar and dictionary of the engan language. one day will go back there and complete that project.

struggling with korean - my progress is fitful. i find learning the chinese roots very helpful in retaining vocabulary.

[ohahakehte]