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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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 Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 10:45 am Post subject: Some English Teachers Hypocritical? |
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I would like your opinion. Do you think it is somewhat hypocritical (in most situations, not strange circumstances) that a person hired as a language teacher in Korea does not put forth any effort whatsoever in learning the Korean language?
What do you think of so called "professionals" who have years of experience teaching English but have never bothered learning beyond a few basic phrases of the country in which they reside? Are they practicing what they preach with regard to language learning? Would you want to take advice about language learning from someone who won't put the effort in to learn a language himself? What about the most important factors of language learning that are learned from experience--motivation, determination, long-range goal setting and planning? Those three things make or break whether someone learns a language, no matter what particular method they use.
This thread is not about the practical benefits of learning the language of the country in which you reside, because we've already visited that issue. There's no debate that learning the language can improve your quality of life outside of work. This is about the example the language teacher sets by putting in the effort to learn the local language, and the perspective he can gain from that effort. |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 10:49 am Post subject: Re: Some English Teachers Hypocritical? |
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| noraebang wrote: |
| I would like your opinion. Do you think it is somewhat hypocritical (in most situations, not strange circumstances) |
An example of a "strange circumstance" where I don't see any hypocrisy, might be a teacher who is in Korea for one or two years yet is studying Chinese on his own. He plans to go back to China to teach and live after his contract is finished, and he self-studies Chinese earnestly. |
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D.D.
Joined: 29 May 2008
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 11:25 am Post subject: |
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I lived in Korea two years and never once thought of learning their language which is basically a local language useless outside of Korea. On top of that I thought it was a strange langauge and I though many Koreans were angry rude people. Glad that I didnt waste my time learning a local dialect called Korean. Chinese is another issue as it appears to be a world language now. It's just by chance that I speak English as it's what I grew up with. English is still growing as the world language and is the best to learn.
Korean must be way down on the important list unless one wants to live in Korea. |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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| D.D. wrote: |
| I lived in Korea two years |
Did you learn another language other than Korean in Korea? Were you a language instructor? Or did you have prior experience learning a foreign language well before you came that you learned to adult-level proficiency, especially an Asian one?
In the area where I live, outside of Punjabi and Mandarin, Korean is the next most spoken language (probably tied with some others). In my area, I think in most instances (although not all) it would be more profitable to learn Korean than French because there are very few if any French speakers, if you do meet a French speaker, it is their second language, and if you meet a native French speaker, they speak English fluently. I met more native French speakers in Seoul than I ever did in Canada. The same with German, another popular to study language.
A lot of Koreans visit my area for either tourism or education, and it would be simple to start a profitable business out of one's home related to educational consulting with just a website, a phone, and fluency in Korean. The people that come here are from the wealthy upper class and have the money to burn on a real immersion experience for their children or themselves.
I would not say a language spoken by people who underwent a diaspora is ever useless. You basically have to make it useful. The same could be said for Punjabi--you could have a unique "in" with a wealthy and somewhat insular community through fluency in the language. You could go out and make business opportunities for yourself or you could sit back and wait for someone to knock on your door and begin speaking Korean (which will never happen). If that's what you mean by useless, then that's rather silly. One of the advantages of learning to do something that is not often learned is that you can carve out a niche for yourself protected from competition. |
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runthegauntlet
Joined: 02 Dec 2007
Location: the southlands.
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 12:21 pm Post subject: Re: Some English Teachers Hypocritical? |
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I didn't come to Korea to learn Korean, I came to teach English. I don't go to a Korean hagwon, I go to an English one where, again, I'm supposed to speak English. It's not as if a job is the most conducive environment for learning, but maybe that's just me.
After a full day of teaching English, there's not a whole lot left to go try to pick up a few bits of one of the most difficult languages in the world. And where I would I do that in the first place? It's not like there are lots of 'Korean for the waygookin' schools floating around that you can go enroll in, at least not in my city.
I don't see the hypocritical perspective at all. |
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ChilgokBlackHole
Joined: 21 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Korean is not particularly useful outside of Korea. There are some singular circumstances, but in general, speaking Korean is not a useful skill. I don't consider it hypocritical at all to not learn something irrelevant past the point where you need it. |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:28 pm Post subject: Re: Some English Teachers Hypocritical? |
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| runthegauntlet wrote: |
| I didn't come to Korea to learn Korean, I came to teach English. I don't go to a Korean hagwon, I go to an English one where, again, I'm supposed to speak English. It's not as if a job is the most conducive environment for learning, but maybe that's just me. |
And what does the first post say? It says to be an effective language teacher you ought to be learning Korean (or some other language).
| Quote: |
| I don't see the hypocritical perspective at all. |
I think the hypocritical part is that you are apparently a language instructor and expect your students to put effort into learning a language, when you have never put any effort into learning a language yourself (maybe that's your case, I don't know what languages you have learned). All you do is make excuses, like say it's too difficult to learn the Korean language IN KOREA where 100% of the people who surround you speak the language at all hours of the day. How demotivating.
A teacher with this kind of perspective will have a hard time understanding the most important struggles and facets of learning a language, such as long-term motivation, discipline, and planning. Since you can't even be bothered to lift a finger, you fail at all three elements of the most important factors for language learning. How can you teach these qualities to your students?
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| After a full day of teaching English, there's not a whole lot left to go try to pick up a few bits of one of the most difficult languages in the world. |
Korean isn't "hard" it's just a long process. How is memorizing a word "hard"? You're not doing physics and cracking codes, you're just memorizing, copying, and following rules. Anybody who immerses himself in any language long enough learns the language. It's just a matter of contact time.
And don't you realize your students do the same thing you are complaining is hard and impossible to do? If they're children, they go to public school all day then they go to your academy in the evening. If they're adults, they work full days in most cases. Do you have less self-discipline than your elementary school students? You are just so out of touch with your students lives and the reality of learning a language that I think it would be extremely hard to see their perspective from where you are standing (if you are not bothering to learn any languages).
Let me ask you a question, how much do you value advice (about anything) from people who haven't walked the walk?
Last edited by noraebang on Mon May 31, 2010 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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| ChilgokBlackHole wrote: |
| Korean is not particularly useful outside of Korea. There are some singular circumstances, but in general, speaking Korean is not a useful skill. I don't consider it hypocritical at all to not learn something irrelevant past the point where you need it. |
The thread is not really about learning Korean, but about monolingual (or even natively bilingual) language instructors who have never put the time and effort in to learning a second language as an adult, especially an Asian one.
Korean is natural to mention here since we're living in Korea and are surrounded by Koreans, which makes it easy to learn. But Korean isn't the only second language that one could learn.
I do, however, think that learning the Korean language compared to another second language would give you more insight as a teacher of Korean students. I assume most of you are teaching Koreans, when you teach English here in Korea. |
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wylies99
Joined: 13 May 2006
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Are they practicing what they preach with regard to language learning? |
Yes, if they are effective English teachers. That's their job. If by learning Korean it makes them better English teachers then, hey, that's great, but if it's just so they can ask "Where's the bathroom?" at Seoul Station, then how's that hardly a reason to call everyone "hypocrites." |
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ChilgokBlackHole
Joined: 21 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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| noraebang wrote: |
| ChilgokBlackHole wrote: |
| Korean is not particularly useful outside of Korea. There are some singular circumstances, but in general, speaking Korean is not a useful skill. I don't consider it hypocritical at all to not learn something irrelevant past the point where you need it. |
The thread is not really about learning Korean, but about monolingual (or even natively bilingual) language instructors who have never put the time and effort in to learning a second language as an adult, especially an Asian one. |
There are university degree programs that don't have a foreign language requirement? |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| that hardly a reason to call everyone "hypocrites." |
I am having a rough time understanding your last sentence, but nobody is calling everyone hypocrites. Look at the thread title again. I specifically put "some" to not accuse everyone. Also note the question mark. View the first post, what does the first paragraph look like? It's also posed as a question.
This is just a discussion. Yes, my personal inclination (which I haven't set in stone) is that it's somewhat hypocritical to ask something of your students that you can't/haven't done yourself, or even worse, haven't even bothered trying at all.
My second concern was that such a person will not be an optimal teacher, because he probably won't grasp the most important and essential aspects of second language learning: motivation, self-discipline, and long term planning and contact time.
Imagine a personal trainer who had you run on a treadmill while he stuffed his face with cake and smoked a cigarette. I think the English teaching equivalent might be the kinda guy who says "Boohoo I can't learn Korean, it's too hard so I won't even try" or, "How am I supposed to learn a second language? I teach English all day." |
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HalfJapanese
Joined: 02 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| ChilgokBlackHole wrote: |
There are university degree programs that don't have a foreign language requirement? |
Yes there are. The university I attend does not have a foreign language requirement for any majors.
To even make a foreign language class available for people to register, you need to start a petition, bring it to the administrators, find a instructor, etc.
Last edited by HalfJapanese on Mon May 31, 2010 2:21 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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noraebang
Joined: 05 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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| ChilgokBlackHole wrote: |
| There are university degree programs that don't have a foreign language requirement? |
Yes. But I should have specified "learning to at least a high school level of proficiency" or have a genuine interest in doing so while you are currently in the process of studying the actual language daily (or at least several hours per week). Most schools that have a foreign language entrance requirement mandate that you did something like take French 8 to French 11. People are not learning or doing anything really, in French 8 to French 11, or Spanish 8 to Spanish 11. What did they learn? They can't even stammer out a few words when they want to order orange juice in Tijuana.
The reason is because they did 2-3 cramming sessions per semester to earn their B+ and that's it. I don't consider actually studying a total of 12 times over 4 years "learning a language." At least that's not enough contact time to learn the lessons I talked about (long term motivation related to language learning, self-discipline, long-term planning). Most of those classes take place completely in English anyway. Having a credit on a high school report card doesn't mean much. I discovered Michel Thomas teaches everything I learned in French 8 to 11 on about 8-10 hours of CDs. That means I spent 4 semesters learning 8-10 hours of information, minus his explanations in English. Needless to say, I don't think 8-10 hours of genuine contact with a language is enough to draw any conclusions or learn important lessons about language learning. A language is like a mountain, and university foreign language requirements are like your first few steps up a hill.
Edit: By "high school proficiency" I mean being able to read and understand the same media as an average native speaker in high school. Being able to read Harry Potter or watch your target language equivalent of "High School Musical" would be good examples. |
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Shapur
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
I would like your opinion. Do you think it is somewhat hypocritical (in most situations, not strange circumstances) that a person hired as a language teacher in Korea does not put forth any effort whatsoever in learning the Korean language?
What do you think of so called "professionals" who have years of experience teaching English but have never bothered learning beyond a few basic phrases of the country in which they reside? Are they practicing what they preach with regard to language learning? Would you want to take advice about language learning from someone who won't put the effort in to learn a language himself? What about the most important factors of language learning that are learned from experience--motivation, determination, long-range goal setting and planning? Those three things make or break whether someone learns a language, no matter what particular method they use.
This thread is not about the practical benefits of learning the language of the country in which you reside, because we've already visited that issue. There's no debate that learning the language can improve your quality of life outside of work. This is about the example the language teacher sets by putting in the effort to learn the local language, and the perspective he can gain from that effort. |
You raise a really interesting point.
I agree with you to the extent that just trying to learn any second language can only aid someone in their teaching. Obviously you can pick up all sorts of techniques and ideas while learning which you can adapt for your own teaching. I think the largest benefit for me as a teacher was the way in which my long and arduous struggle with the Korean language increased my empathy for my students as they struggled to learn English. It definitely helped me become a better teacher^^
However using the word "hypocritical" is probably a little strong. I agree that learning a second language is probably one of the better ways to achieve the above, but teaching techniques, empathy for learners, goal setting etc can be learnt in other ways too so I don't think learning a second language is necessarily a prerequisite to being a good/professional teacher at all.
Do I find it paradoxical that somebody teaching a language wouldn't make some effort to learn another language? Yes^^ BUT I don't think it would necessarily make that person a less effective teacher.
However, to be an effective teacher of English in Korea I think you absolutely do need to have knowledge of how Korean language impacts a Korean student's English in terms of grammatical structure, pronunciation, confusion between certain words etc. I think they're called language transference issues or something like that.
A professional English teacher doesn't need to speak Korean, but does need to understand how the student's Korean first language is effecting their English. You can see this borne out in the international departments of Universities in English speaking countries where Korean students are taught very successfully by highly qualified instructors who don't speak a word of Korean. Nobody would call them unprofessional because they don't know Korean by the way^^.
Another point that you haven't raised yet is the relative ability of the students you teach. A teacher who is able to refer to the student's language of first reference has a distinct advantage with beginners, but it is not a necessity even at that level and becomes less and less relevant to effective teaching by the time a student reaches pre-intermediate level or above. (I am thinking of someone who can't read, write or speak English as a Pre-Beginner and obviously at that level knowing the learner's language of first reference -Korean- would be essential, but most of us don't deal with students at that level).
This whole debate about ESL instructors in Korea learning Korean seems inextricably linked with Korean nationalism-insecurity/expat insecurity issues so I hope it is clear that I am trying to talk about this in regard to education exclusively in this post. |
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Unposter
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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If you are truly worried about understanding language learning, everyone who has a college degree has had to learn a language. I know I've used some of the knowledge I've gained from language learning in high school and college in my own teaching. All English teachers in Korea are not without that insight (whether they use it or not is another matter and one which I doubt any research has been done).
The overwelming number of NSETs hired in Korea are hired for conversational practice or conversational modeling. They are not hired as primary language teachers. For such a job, actually having a college degree, makes one overqualified (See TALK Program).
In my personal experience, I have found almost all of my good students do not expect any Korean language understanding, get excited over even the most rudimentary understanding and learn English quite well.
I have had experienced a few students who have shown concern about their FTs Korean language ability. In my experience, they have had poor English skills and look for excuses in others for their lack of understanding. Actually, it is a lack of motivation. They tend to be very negative about education, especially English eduction, in general.
While I do think a positive experience with a FT could change some people's minds about studying the language, I think compared with the myriad other teachers and family that influence such students, the FT is going to have a very limited (if any) influence. In fact, considering the negative attitudes of such a student, it is highly likely the student would even dismiss a FT fluent in Korean, holding a Ph.D. in TESL and Applied Linguistics, as underlying the concern is really a desire not to learn English.
ESL/EFL in Korea is a very haphazard process for most FTs. Expecting certain levels of language and culutral understanding is probably expecting too much. There are many practical limitations to language learning in general and Korea probably has more than in most places. Most FTs try to do the best they can with the situations they are given. Personally, I would not expect much more. |
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