Korean Job Discussion Forums

Kyrei · Joined: 22 Jan 2003

As the title suggests, this assignment (actually more of a project) is for predominantly first-year university students. It will be their "mid-term exam" and be worth 35% of their overall grade.

If any of you have a few free moments, please throw down any ideas you have on this. The project is to do a comparison-contrast of two countries and will be done in workgroups of four students. The assignment has two parts: first an individual 250-word essay from each member of the group; and second a 10 - 15 minute group presentation of the information they have researched. (Yes, real research is expected Shocked

with research, referencing/citation, etc being taught as part of the course previous to the due date for this project.)

The two countries are to be compared-contrasted in this manner: each student will focus on a different aspect (or theme) of the comparison-contrast that they choose from a set list of themes. At this point the list is:

History

Geography

Arts & Culture

Language(s)

Politics

Economics

Society

If you have any suggestions to add (or remove) themes from this list them please let me know.

As for the countries in comparison-contrast, this is where the difficulty started for me - how to make good pairs of countries. I need to have at least 10 pairs for the groups in any given class to choose from and in some cases more, so I would ideally like to have a list of at least 15 different pairs of countries. I am not limiting the list in any way beyond 1) no pair can include Korea and; 2) no country appears more than once.

Here is a list of some of the countries I have thought of so far and here is where I really welcome suggestions. If you think of other countries that should be listed please let me know, or if you think one country would be better compared-contrasted with another, please do not hesitate to tell me. I am designing this project for next semester but I need to have the workbook for the class prepared by the end of July so I could use help ASAP on this.

Of course this is a wide list and I welcome suggestions to narrow it somewhat - without any accusations of racism please. Rolling Eyes

I appreciate (in advance) any help or suggestions you may offer. Please feel free to PM me with them, or post them here for others to comment on.

Kyrei

prosodic · Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Location: ��

This is the most interesting post I've seen in, well, in all the time that I've been a member of this board. Keep in mind that's just a few weeks.

First off, I notice that most of the proposed themes are inter-related. A good discussion of Arts & Culture, Politics, or Society could easily involve some discussion of the history shaping the topic. And how do you separate a discussion of Culture from a discussion of Society unless, of course, you mean culture in terms of high culture, which is what I suspect you mean.

I think I would start by removing History from the list of themes and making history a mandatory research component. So, for example, a discussion of the Geography of Germany could involve a discussion of how the country's boundaries changed as it went from a loose confederation of states to a more formal republic.

The other reason to remove History is that it will be the most difficult theme for students to narrow. You probably don't want them discussing the entire history of a country after all.

I would also be wary of Language(s) as a theme. A comparison-contrast of languages will be quite challenging for freshman students. I would imagine that most students will get stuck after pointing out that the official language of France is French and the official language of Italy is Italian (to take an example from your list of paired countries). Few if any freshman students will go on to say that they are both inflected romance languages that share the same basic character set with the exception of certain diacritical marks. I doubt if any of them will be able to get much further than that assuming they haven't already had some training in linguistics.

Regarding the pairs of countries, I notice that many of the pairs are geographically close to each other. This may result in the students doing more comparing than contrasting because the similarities will be more obvious than the differences. On the other hand, England-Spain is a pair that looks like it will focus the students more on contrast than comparison. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to have three lists: one lists of pairs with striking similarities, one list of pairs with striking differences, and one list of relatively balanced pairs. The different lists would not have to be labeled as such for the students.

Last comment. I would make sure not to include your country of origin in the list. The last thing you want is for them to worry about offending the teacher.

It sounds like a very interesting project. Please keep me informed of its final design and how well it works in class.

Kyrei · Joined: 22 Jan 2003

Thanks for your input! I just put as much on this list as I could without thinking it through too deeply so as to get the best replies possible. Your suggestion to remove "History" is a good one as is the "Language" one. You are quite correct in that history will play a part in all of the themes, to varying degrees. My students are from all majors and departments in the university so I wanted to make a wide variety of choices for them, but they are after all first-year students so they will not have much to draw on from past academic experience. At this point, I have five themes which is good because there is the occasional group made up of five members and that will allow the other groups (of four students) to opt out of one of the themes.

As for structuring the lists, I feel it is important to make sure that there is as little overlap as possible in the countries, in that a country doesn't appear twice as that will make the presentations that much mroe boring for students to sit through. As well, it has been my experience that to offer students too many choices is as bad, if not worse, than offering them too few. I shall think about breaking the list up more... any specific pairings you would suggest?

Kyrei

prosodic · Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Location: ��

Here's one pair that could be interesting:

Andorra--Vatican City

They are both nation-states with only one city. Both have unique political systems.

Of course, Vatican city would overlap with Italy in terms of climate and language, so there's one drawback.

A general suggestion:
one coastal country and one landlocked country. There would be very interesting differences in economic infrastructure and probably also culture.

Kyrei · Joined: 22 Jan 2003

Now that is a great idea - coastal VS land-locked. It would be interesting to see what students dig up on that. Thanks! Also, you have sparked an idea --> Singapore - Vatican (or Andorra).

Before I get too excited I have to remember that these are Korean university students, and freshmen for that matter, so research and conclusions won't be particularly deep or inciteful Rolling Eyes

Kyrei

matthews_world · Joined: 15 Feb 2003

Sounds like a good plan.

On the history note, just have the student pick one event in history. They can choose to be as broad or narrow as they like.

Very Happy

Kyrei · Joined: 22 Jan 2003

That is an interesting idea, but with such a broad range of histories and countries to choose from, how could one pick one event (broad or narrow) and then compare-contrast it with that of another country. I think there is some wiggle room in there for intrepid students but it would rely on them actually knowing something in common about both countries' histories before research began. Otherwise it would be a hit and miss thing and I know that the students wouldn't look deep enough.

Can you give me an example with (any) two countries to illustrate your idea?

Kyrei