Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Seoul'n'Corea]

Ok, I had a rather interesting run in at a district meeting 2 weeks ago, where in the middle of a English meeting, a Korean teacher (older lady) decided she would tell everyone how she was better at English grammar that NETs were.
I and a few others were quite offended at this arrogant banter and decided to slam her by asking her to provide some evidence to support her opinion. Her first line of defence was that NETs can't spell.
. LOL! It was pointed out to her by a few NETs that Koreans have no clue about dialects or the differences between written and spoken English.
We made many examples and then asked the KET at the meeting some VERY pointed questions and gave her the hot seat.

It was made perfectly clear to us how self inflated the KET was when she explained to us that her NETs spelling of color was wrong. She didn't agree with the spelling of colour because it was simply wrong and should only be spelled color according to the book she used.

Quickly this notion was squashed when a copy of the Oxford dictionary was handed to the KET that showed both colour and color as correct spellings. Oops.
This is just an example of how out of touch some KETs are with English and thinking. OMG!

[Nemo]

I heard Koreans comment about being better than NETs at grammar before as well.

What were her other lines of defence?

[sugarkane59]

Being Devil's Advocate:

As a Brit I spell 'colour' like so (as well as a few other words differently to Americans). I will teach the British spellings, but will definitely bring to the students' attentions how these words are spelt Stateside - knowledge is power!

Anyway, in terms of the KET thinking that she's better at grammar, I kind of get her point (even though she was proven wrong in this instance). My reasoning behind this is that if you learn an additional language from scratch, you learn the grammar in a more laboured way. You do grammar drills and learn about the ins and outs of why grammar points are the way they are. If you learn the language as your native language, you don't go into the grammar with such a fine tooth comb... you just know when a sentence sounds/looks right. I've experienced this from learning Spanish and German from scratch for over 10 years. Maybe she'd had experiences with foreigners whose grammar wasn't that great. It happens. We're not perfect.

[tomato]

Koreans think we can't teach English grammar to children,
but they can teach Korean grammar to children.
Apparently they think we don't know what a noun or verb is,
whereas they know what a 명사 or 동사 is.

Then when I complain that Koreans think wegukin's are stupid,
they say I'm being too sensitive!

[PatrickGHBusan]

Considering the grasp (or rather lack of) grammar that is showcased here and in other places perhaps some Korean Teachers have a point....

[travelingfool]

I studied Spanish grammar quite extensively. I might have more knowledge of Spanish grammar than a native speaker, but they know what sounds right and how the language is actually spoken which is why I always defer to a native speaker.

It's a face saving ego thing. Many (not all) KETs hate the fact a stupid, inferior foreigner can actually do something better than them (such as communicate in English) so they pull the grammar card nonsense. I have had co teachers and students argue with me over grammar points that were in English books written by Koreans. They know better despite the fact I have been speaking English for 36 years!

[stevieg4ever]

Typical Korean arrogance now watch how you get attacked left, right and center (or should that be 'centre') on this board about your post and all its related points.

Having studied Korean for 4 years (TOPIK level 3) I find the spelling issue quite interesting as Korean is a phonetic langauge meaning that (except for a few rules of character juxtaposition) all words are spelt exactly as they sound. English is not a phonetic language. This means that Korean words are infinitely easier to spell viz-a-viz meaning that any speaker of Korean is inclined to find themselves adept in spelling. Now Koreans being Koreans then deduce from this that all spelling (irrespective of the language) is easy and that if you spell even one word incorrectly you are there to be ridiculed as such.

And by the way, it is the myth of all myths that all Koreans 'know' Korean grammar as well as they profess or more than westerners know about English grammar. It depends how you define 'know'. Almost all Koreans could identify that:

이 가방은 멋있지요 >>> is correct
이 가방는 멋있지요 >>> is not correct

And this is what they mean the majority of the time when they exclaim that 'Koreans know Korean grammar'. But this just follows a simple rule being:

은 comes after consonant ending words
는 comes after vowel ending words

It takes approximately 2 minutes to understand this if you have a basic grounding in Korean. But ask them to elucidate on the differences between the following sentences:

여기서 연주를 하지 묫 해요.
여기서 연주를 하면 안 돼요.
여기서 연주를 할수 없어요.

And any serious learner of Korean is likely to give you a better and more accurate description of why the above are any different and in what contexts they are used and are not used then a native Korean.

All said and done your teacher seems like a text book example of why English is such a mess in Korea.

[VanIslander]

the difference between knowing what and knowing how

the vast majority of Korean teachers cannot themselves use let alone teach how to USE grammar

learning rules without knowing how to apply them is useless

grammar itself should be part of a lesson but not an entire lesson in itself, and its relative importance ought to be undermined not hyped

but in the Korean world of test preparation in place of real learning, there's little room for actually helping students communicate in the language, to speak and write English

[proustme]

This discussion hits on prescriptive grammar versus descriptive grammar.

[bassexpander]

Of course they're better. They can explain it in Korean... and they do.... for the entire class... speaking no English outside of repetition drills!

In fact, they're so good at teaching grammar and speaking no English that it's why we are here.

Thank them. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have jobs. I'm not the least bit joking here.

[Xuanzang]

They`re better at teaching grammar for their inane tests but horrible at teaching it for real life applications. Let them be better than us. Resting on their grammar laurels means continuous employment for us. Very few of the grammar "experts" can effectively use what they teach in verbal communication.

[bassexpander]

[Hyeon Een]

[ChopChaeJoe]

But selecting one answer out of four is the whole purpose of learning English here, isn't it? That's why they are learning English, so whoever is better at teaching this is better at grammar, no? They aren't learning English to compose an English-language masterpiece. There will be no Korean Joseph Conrads.

[proustme]

They study rather than learn English. It's unfortunate.