Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cdninkorea]

My fiancee, a Korean woman, works in the English department at a public middle school in Suwon. As the end of the term draws near, she's responsible for making some of the final tests. She wrote it up and had the native teacher at the school look it over for mistakes, then fixing them all and submitting the tests to her boss.

Now get this: the boss wants her to put some of the Konglish back in there. When she protested at the native speaker had looked it over and said it was perfect as is, she was told "English in Korea is different."

Hahaha oh boy! Nevermind that English isn't an official language in Korea, this idiot thinks Konglish is a legitimate dialect? And students who have studied abroad and know the correct answer will be penalized marks for it too? What insanity. I just had to share.

[Joe Boxer]

Korean TV commercials do the same thing. Remember the Daniel Henney commercial for some sh*tty Korean car, where he says "are you gentle?" ("gentle" meaning gentlemanly, apparently). Henney knew what he was saying wasn't right, but the thing is, the commercial was for the average Korean.

Same for the commercial with the Brad Pitt look-a-like, in which he takes off his sunglasses to reveal that he in fact isn't Brad Pitt, and says "I'm not real!" Lol, the actor obviously knew the line was stupid, but it didn't matter, because the ad was for Korean people who can't speak English well.

I think most K-pop and K-rap (Krap, lol) is like that, too. "If you wanna pretty, every wanna pretty". Uggh.

[moosehead]

I had a K head teacher insist on putting "English concert" on the programs that were made anytime we had an event, such as end of camp or a semester's end.

the first time, I thought there was going to be some kind of musical concert (of course) when she explained it would be just the usual skits, displays, etc., I said I was confused as to why she used the term "concert." she asked what should it be and I said, well, "program," "event," "performance," etc.

She insisted that it should be called a "concert" anyway and even had the audacity to state it was the same in the U.S. (which she had once visited but never mind the fact I'm an American and knew better). I couldn't believe she wouldn't change it.

I shared this with a Russian musican friend who has lived in K for many years and he was shocked someone would misinterpret "concert" in this manner.

Unfortunately, it's this kind of "we are always right" attitude that hampers Korea's progress in English overall.

[Steve_Rogers2008]

Given that it's like trying move a mountain to get some Koreans to drop their Konglish obsession, even in the face of an actual native speaker, I say start to use Ebonics with 'em.

When faced with such an incident, turn and say indignantly, "We's don't have to do nuthin' like thats." And storm away.


Nothing like matching idiosyncratic dialect against idiosyncratic dialect!

[moosehead]

and how will they even comprehend what you are doing? seriously?

[languistic]

[whatever]

Reminds me of the time the Korean teachers at my school thought it was totally normal to list a 5 year-old's talent at a talent show as 'Sexy Dance' despite the protests of no less than five native speakers...

[NYC_Gal]

Just explain that it's Konglish, and that you are the native speaker. Do you go around correcting her Korean?

[ontheway]

[Kaypea]

I keep feeling better and better about my school... This stuff is really annoying.

My main CT speaks near perfect English, and the other English teachers are smart and not flaky, so we use normal, standard English. The only weird thing we have going are some voice recordings we use where people say "solo" instead of single, ie: "are you married?" "No, I'm solo." It drives me nuts, but it's really, like... a little bit whatever. When it comes up, I remind the kids of the Beyonce song about single ladies. God bless American pop.

[b-class rambler]

I totally share the irritation expressed by others above about this and this is one reason why I usually don't like teaching Korean adults. Many's the time when I've felt like saying to people "look, why are you bothering to ask me if you won't trust my answer?"


I don't think there's an easy solution, however. Fire all the Korean English teachers? Granted, there are quite a few who are crap, but plenty more are doing a decent job than was probably the case 10-20 years ago. And I actually find the irritating 'I know English better' attitude much less prevalent in the Korean English teachers I meet than in, for example, businessmen.

Hire only foreign teachers? Not the answer either. Who would explain difficult concepts to low level students who need to have it clarified in their own language? And just like many Korean English teachers are not useless, a significant number of foreign teachers employed are not really any good at teaching English as a foreign language to Koreans (nor perhaps to anyone at all for that matter). Not their fault they were employed, I should stress. In fact, this point is one of the keys to this IMO. If anything, I think Korea has employed way too many foreign teachers that don't really have much of a clue what to do. The resulting unfortunate but inevitable tarring with the same brush of capable foreign teachers has probably contributed to their valid input not being taken seriously enough.

Something that strikes me as another likely reason is the fact that Korean (at least the Korean that's spoken in SK) just uses so, so much imported English - imported into a language that's structurally so different and can't really assimilate it without messing it up. Although it's a suggestion usually associated only with extreme nationalism, I wonder if advocating a purer Korean (or more likely Chinese hanja in many cases) approach to their own language might actually help with attitudes to English. At the moment, I think the amount of English (or to be more precise, what they think is English) in their own language can lead to a lot of the misplaced overconfidence that we're complaining about. Not suggesting that's THE answer though. As I said before, I don't think there's any one simple solution.

[Kaypea]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[NYC_Gal]

[oldfatfarang]

Let's not forget that timeless Konglish classic: "Let's Post Office."