Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Enigma]

I've been in Korea now going on 4 years. Although I spent a lot of time studying the language for the first year or two, my motivation has declined and my Korean ability is deteriorating.

Most of my students are adults and so (understandably) almost all of them don't go by an English name in class. Many of the women's names aren't too bad (e.g. Sujin, Seoyun, etc.) but I have a lot of trouble trying to remember many of the men's names (e.g. Hyeon-seok, Seong-hyeon, etc.).

Returning from the weekend every Monday night, with many of the students I really have to think to recall their names. Because I teach adults and their attendance is much less consistent, I'll often have a student that I teach every night for a few months who then stops coming to class, only to appear again a few months later. It's usually extremely difficult for me to remember their name.

Although I'm not required to keep attendance, I do anyways and always write down their names in my notebook (in Hangeul) in order to help me remember them. But it doesn't seem to do me much good.
In general, I don't have any problems with English names, and when I taught in Japan I had no problem there either.

So I'm curious if any of you seem to struggle with these names as much as I do.

[bekinseki]

When I taught adults I gave them all name cards to put in front of them.

The best trick I have for remembering a Korean name is to associate them with other Koreans you know who have a similar name. Over time the names do start to feel like they're repeating.

[strange_brew]

I also have a hell of a time remembering Korean names. For me, it's just that they all seem so similar. In one class, I might have 10 Kims, 8 Lees, and 5 Parks. Then a lot of the other names can be quite similar to each other.

[sublunari]

Men's names are indeed rather difficult and usually ugly. I write them down on a card, in Hangul, check them over with each student, and then use the card to refer to everyone in the class, making frequent use of their names as I call on them and ask them questions (even though this may be a little impolite since people here hate their names). I can usually remember everyone's names within forty minutes, without the help of the card, although I'll forget everything as soon as the class packs up and leaves.

It sounds pretty similar to your method, but maybe you could try saying their names more often in class. Knowledge of Hanja can also help you make sense of the weirdness and attach meaning to some of the more bizarre names you run into (and even if you aren't right about the meaning your mind still has something else to latch on to); one student with the impossible name of Gwang-mok also kept asking me what his name was until I finally...never managed to remember it until now :\

[Underwaterbob]

Yep. So many names are just so similar it's impossible to get a couple hundred students' names straight. I suspect this is a large part of the reason that in Korea people are more often referred to by title than by name.