Korean Job Discussion Forums

[batman]

It was an interesting story but a little over the top. The last line about English teachers being otherwise unemployable louts was nothing more than an overdone cliche. In all honesty how many people have you met teaching here who have never worked back home.
As has been mentioned the fault - if there is any - mostly lies with the directors, the students and with their parents.

One of the problems with the English industry in Korea is that any fool with money can open a hogwan. There is no moral, educational, or English standard applied to the directors here. In my time in Korea I have had too many job interviews where neither the head teacher nor the director spoke any English at all. I have also had interviews with directors who have never been outside of Korea (much less it seems their hometown). In all honesty I think those are the schools that are best to avoid.

The students themselves, sometimes, seem more concerned with having fun in the classroom than with learning. If the class is too serious or if the teacher spend too much time on grammar or on vocabulary the complaints start to build up with the director. At my last school one of my co-workers had both teaching certificate and an M.A. in English from her home state. The students tended to desert her class after a couple of weeks rather than flock to it as the author of the orignal article would imply they should do.

The parents are at fault for supporting any hogwan that provides anything less than quality education for their children. Too often, parents are willing to leave their children in hogwans regarless if anything is actually taught or not. I remember a conversation I had with a group of parents who said that they honestly did not expect their children to learn anything in class. Their reason for sending their kids to an afterschool program was that basically it just got them out of the house and out of the parents hair for a while.

The complaints made by the author of the article might be inspired in part by jealousy. When I was teaching adults I spent a lot of my private time with them. We would go to the movies, the gym, traveling, drinking, etc en masse. The students appreciated the attention I lavished on them and reciprocated in kind. All that my Korean co-workers ever saw were the sweaters, shoes, wallets, 5 kilo box of chocolates that my students would give to me and they hated it. They never considered the work or effort that I gave to my students. They only focused on the material goods that I received.

Korean English teachers may put in longer hours than Native teachers do but that, I believe, is mostly because what can take us seconds to write can take them minutes if not hours. At both of my last schools the Korean teachers had to put in hours at the school every Saturday even though no classes were held and they were up-to-date in their lesson plans. What a waste of time for them. On the other hand they have an easier time explaining things to their students. In comparison to their Korean counterparts, Native teachers in general have to be the greatest of diplomats in the classroom. While Korean teachers can yell, beat, throttle, teach grammar in the classroom we always have to smile, appear friendly and approachable, present our lesson plans in an interesting and amusing way and so forth. When students do not understand something in the Korean English class the teacher can always explain it in Korea. If a student does not understand something in my class (as I always enforce a complete ban on Korean in the classroom) I have to turn to a Thesaurus or resort to charades or draw on the board or...


I believe that a piece of paper is not all that it takes to be a good teacher. Some people can come to Korea with no prior experience and, with time, find their true calling. Sure some people come here, I guess as I have never actually met any, to escape from unemployment or a pending jail sentence back home but I think they are the great minority.

I have a lot of respect for the people who are willing to come here and dedicate their time and effort to the teaching of English in Korea. In many ways life here seems to be an up hill battle (as we can tell by the many, many stories written on this board and in the efl-law question forum). Although outside the aim of the story I think the author should have commented on the problems of the English industry as a whole: the immoral directors, the Korean teachers who can't speak English, the hogwans that are more interested in making money than in providing a quality language program for their students. Blaming the foreigner might be a traditional past-time here but in this case I think the blamegame should be applied to another target.

[ryleeys]

Gee... thanks Badmojo for the compliment.

And here I was thinking that I came here because I wanted to, not because I was forced to out of my complete idiocy and inability to get a job in America.

[Paddycakes]

Having working in Korean public schools for a while and having had many different Korean co-teachers, I think that the Korean who wrote those remarks in the first thread is simply guilty of doing what most of us do here: Applying our standards and world view to everyone else. I also think that for the Koreans there's probably a bit of an "us versus them mentality" that can be attributed to their ground think sense of nationalistic hurt and false pride. This is more pronouned than ours, for those of us who even have it all.

The teaching style of Korean's is quite different generally speaking from what most of us are used to; a lot of my public school teachers are quite "wooden" in the classroom, which is not what I'm used to. Very formalistic.

I also think that some of the resentment/criticism from Korean co-teachers stems from feeling threatened.

Not only can we native speakers speak real English (most Korean English teachers can't with the exception of a few), but there must also be the distinct feeling among them that we could take their jobs.

There was talk of the gov't hiring massive numbers of foreigners to work in Korean middle/high schools. Don't know if that will happen.

However, from the Korean teacher's perspective, that must make them feel a little insecure. If I was in their shoes, that's how I'd feel. As if being upstaged in the classroom isn't enough...

[Medic]

This article also appeared in the Korean Times. Can't someone take the main points from all the posts, and submit a reply. Not everyone reads Daves Esl cafe, and I think a lot of the Korean public would appreciate the comments in the posts.