Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

Should you not care?

Just accept it and live with it?

Why get worked up over it?

After 6 months or a year at the hagwon, John, Sam, Bill, Lucy, etc... still suck so bad at English they say things like......

"Teacher, I'm not book."

"Me book no."

"I'm bathroom"

Me water please"

Cannot make a very basic sentence after 100 or more hours of classroom time with the native speaker.

Should we be frustrated?

Some other students are flying high of course. But a lot... forget it.

[own_king]

I would drill those basic sentences into their heads and ridicule their mistakes afterward (in a fun way, of course). They will get it eventually. Even if they get nothing else.

[Grotto]

I have some similar problems with students the continually either add an e or an uhhh to all their words

Peacheee....Marcheee

Isuhhh todayuhhh

Most students have learned the proper pronunciation but I have 2 middle school boys that refuse to speak properly....lost it one day and smacked one of them upside the head with a dictionary and told him that everytime he said eeee or uhhh I would hit him again..worked like a charm all of the sudden his pronunciation is much better he still makes the occasional mistake but now he catches it and corrects himself.

Not the best teaching method but hey it worked.

[Eazy_E]

I can't let that stuff slide. It grates on my nerves to hear "Teacher, I'm book no". Does it comment on my ineptitude as a teacher? I doubt it. These simple things need to be drilled into them, come hell or high water.

[mindmetoo]

One might also consider a certain shyness. The student doesn't want to rise above a Konglish level for fear of seeming like a brown noser in front of the other kids.

[Zed]

I drill it into them every day and yet the same mistakes are there everyday. Drives me @#$%^& nuts.

"What did you do today?" ---> "I'm study." "I'm play computer game." "I'm go to school."

5 minutes correcting this everyday but tomorrow I'll get the same answer. The odd student is able to correct himself after I repeat his mistake but most of them require teaching the same point every class.

[PatrickSiheung]

That's why I wish korean children never learned "I'm." It causes so many problems because they just don't realize that it means "I am." They're thinking "I" but they say "I'm" because it's what those stupid Korean teachers at their schools teach them.

All Korean kids should first learn
I am
I will
He is
She is
It is

Forget the short forms until they understand what they mean! I always made my kids say the words separately. Of course all the Korean teachers use the short versions and so kids start to think there is no "I"...only "I'm".
How confused would you be if at first you learned �� instead of ����. You'd never really know the base word is ��. If all you know is ��, then it would get difficult when what you really should say is ���� or something.

ugh... my head hurts.

[Zed]

Good point. I usually try to stress that but they need to unlearn I'm, at least briefly.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

They will still be saying the same things in 8 years time when they are in university. Forget about it.

[PatrickSiheung]

I'm afraid that's true. Especially since it will be impossible to change how every Korean teacher teaches their students how to speak English.

[Ilsanman]

More often than not, the English teaching in public schools does more harm than good, unless taught by a kyopo or a foreigner.

I have had kids ask me to speak in Konglish. They can't understand proper pronunciation.

[jajdude]

[keithinkorea]

I can relate to this a lot. How come a lot of the kids say 'Englishee' but they pronounce 'Konglish' correctly? It is very strange indeed.

Sometimes I even think that Koreans who teach Englsih believe that they have perfected English with all the extra sylabules they put in. Why is it that all my kids say 'pinishee' instead of 'finished' even though every time they say that deadful word I correct them.

There is so much Konglish in the Korean language that I wish they stopped it. 'Hi Seoul', 'New face everday' (wtf!), 'Nice changee', 'True furuendoo'. I wish sometimes that south Korea would take a leaf out of north Korea's book and eliminate all Konglish.

It is Konglish that is too blame, Konglish is warped and so many of the Korean English teachers are teaching Konglish and not English, some of them in my school even encourage the kids to write English words in Hangul! . It is no wonder so many kids here have trouble learning English, with the ridiculous way that some of the teachers (generally Koreans) attempt to teach it.

How many syllabules in 'Sprite'? Yes 1 not bleeding 5 but one lonely syllabul is all you need anymore is a waste of breath and makes you sound like a retard to boot.

[Zed]

[PatrickSiheung]

I remember the day I thought my class was ready to finally learn how to pronounce the TR sound. I used "truck" as an example. All kids pronounce it Ʈ��ũ, but I tried to explain that it's more like ����ũ. They laughed and laughed. They thought I was insane. T sounding like CH?? They couldn't get it. Why? Because of all those inept Korean teachers thinking they know our language better than we do.