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jammo
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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 Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:21 am Post subject: Students purposefully lowering their level of english |
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Have you experienced this?
I have spoken to a few of my students outside class / during extracurricular activities and their English sounded great but in the classroom environment they tend to lower their level to (i suspect) fit in with the grammar and pronunciation of their peers. |
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drydell
Joined: 01 Oct 2009
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| Modesty is valued. It's considered boastful to show off advanced English ability in front of others.. Have you really not come across this before? |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 9:08 am Post subject: |
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It may be that the student feels more stressed or nervous in class,
after all there are others watching and listening.
Sometimes students do it on purpose because they don't want to show
classmates that they actually care about learning English.
Depending on the age group, it may be considered un-cool to be good at
English.
There are various reasons why this might happen. |
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jammo
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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| drydell wrote: |
| Have you really not come across this before? |
Yes, I have come across this before |
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jammo
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| some waygug-in wrote: |
Sometimes students do it on purpose because they don't want to show
classmates that they actually care about learning English.
Depending on the age group, it may be considered un-cool to be good at
English.
There are various reasons why this might happen. |
Interesting topic. I wonder if there were some fluent students in my language classes at school that just pretended not to be able to speak or understand french.
Slightly concerned of a domino effect if the other students are using the hangul system-bound pronunciation.
Last edited by jammo on Wed Oct 31, 2012 9:46 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Swampfox10mm
Joined: 24 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| drydell wrote: |
| Modesty is valued. It's considered boastful to show off advanced English ability in front of others.. Have you really not come across this before? |
At the university level, I have observed students punting on the level test so that they can end up in a lower level to get an easy "A." At the end of the day, their GPA is all the employers tend to view (or so they think). I try to tell them that the better jobs will test their actual abilities, but what do I know?
We had a level test a few years ago in which barely 50% of the students even bothered to show for the "required" test. When the students were asked candidly as to why they did not show, the above reason was given.
"Modesty" does not fit every situation. Sometimes students are just lazy-asses. |
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jammo
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 1:27 am Post subject: |
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| Swampfox10mm wrote: |
| drydell wrote: |
| Modesty is valued. It's considered boastful to show off advanced English ability in front of others.. Have you really not come across this before? |
At the university level, I have observed students punting on the level test so that they can end up in a lower level to get an easy "A." At the end of the day, their GPA is all the employers tend to view (or so they think). I try to tell them that the better jobs will test their actual abilities, but what do I know?
We had a level test a few years ago in which barely 50% of the students even bothered to show for the "required" test. When the students were asked candidly as to why they did not show, the above reason was given.
"Modesty" does not fit every situation. Sometimes students are just lazy-asses. |
Very interesting stuff there!
At what stage is this 'level test'? and what is it for? |
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Seoulman69
Joined: 14 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 5:20 am Post subject: |
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Deliberately lowering their English ability does happen. I know a girl who has lived in Canada for two years and America for a couple of months but when she is in English class she uses Konglish pronunciation. She is a middle school student and standing out at that age, even if it is for something positive like speaking English well, is not a good thing.
I tell her to continue lowering her English if she feels the need to but she should never forget how to speak English properly. |
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jammo
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| Could this be a new form of English emerging/developing that we are witnessing? |
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12ax7
Joined: 07 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:40 am Post subject: |
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| It's called language anxiety in L2 motivation research, but here it can be done with a twist: the students worry about being ridiculed for their ability to converse in English, not their inability to do so. You see, part of the ideology of English here is one of resistance (i.e. resistance to English). There is a perceived incongruity between English and Korean, and therefore the Korean identity...which presents a paradox as English is also seen as necessary. |
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Swampfox10mm
Joined: 24 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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12ax7, the level is university Freshman English. We teach three levels (초급,중급,고급).
The course is required of all Freshmen, so they want the "easy A" for a higher GPA.
The department now recognizes that many students do not care to take "Advanced" classes, so we have been advised not to use "Advanced" in any of our course titles. That is a more recent development.
We are a low to mid-level university in Seoul. |
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