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Wisco Kid
Joined: 07 Sep 2004
Location: Changwon
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 Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:09 am Post subject: |
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pronouncing the letter Z as if it were a J.
This is by far my biggest pet peeve. There's even an ad on TV now for a clothing store called "Hazzy's" The announcer pronunces it like "haj-jey"
Several times my director has walked into the room and told me to review the phonics sounds from "Aye" to "Jed". Ok, but what about the other two-thirds of the alphabet?
A close second is using "so-so" where it just makes no sense.
ex.: My personality is so-so. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:39 am Post subject: |
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I have a hard time getting my students to believe that 'you know' is actually more polite and frequently used than 'as you know'. I also spend a lot of time making sure that their answers to yes or no questions are the way they should be, and that they know the difference between go and come.
'Do you have a brother?'
'No I don't.'
'So you don't have a brother.'
'Yes.'
'Oh, you do have a brother!'
'No.'
'Right. So you have no brother.'
'.....yes....'
'What? You do have a brother!'
And so on until one of the kids nudges him and says 'just say no!' Otherwise I could go on forever. |
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matthewwoodford
Joined: 01 Oct 2003
Location: Location, location, location.
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:10 am Post subject: |
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| peppermint wrote: |
| The utter inability to differentiate verbs and nouns, so you hear things like "I am hamburger". A friend who's a Korean linguist explained that the only nouns in Korean are borrowed from other languages. |
You cannot be serious.   However, I completely agree with your point. 
I think the real reason is the distinction between verbs and nouns in Korean is much clearer. In English we frequently turn nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns, and the same participle can be used either as an adjective or as the main verb in certain tenses. Half the time these are eleven year olds we're teaching and their ability to analyze sentences just isn't that great, and the language presented to them isn't rigorously explained. Speaking for myself, at eleven I didn't think much about foreign languages at all but imagined they were just like English only with different words substituted (the naive lexical hypothesis).
Add to that the countless errors in both Korean and English textbooks due to lack of awareness. Like translating 'bank' as ���� when you're talking about the bank of a river (to take a simple example); or throwing in idioms easy and familiar to native speakers but guaranteed to do nothing but muddy the waters for Korean students, e.g. saying 'Why does England have such a mild damp climate?It has to do with the Gulf Stream'.
This thread isn't just about complaining about dumb students - although it is partly  - but it's teachers who genuinely want to do a good job but keep coming up against the same frustrations because of the huge difficulties inherent in TEFL. I know loads of people say this job is so easy but it doesn't seem that way to me most of the time... |
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simulated stereo
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Location: municipal flat block 18-A Linear North
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| "my think is"... |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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| matthewwoodford wrote: |
| peppermint wrote: |
| The utter inability to differentiate verbs and nouns, so you hear things like "I am hamburger". A friend who's a Korean linguist explained that the only nouns in Korean are borrowed from other languages. |
You cannot be serious. However, I completely agree with your point. |
Okay, the example my friend used was "saram". (sorry, can't type hangul here) We all know that means person. He said that most Koreans wont' even know this, but the actual origin is a conjugation of the verb to live so it's a lot closer to something like " the living" or "the being" with a sense of action to it. Mind you, this all traces back to before China had any influence on the language.
My Korean friends joke about taking language lessons from him soI'm inclined to take his word for it. |
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OiGirl
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: Hoke-y-gun
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| visviva wrote: |
| And a lot of Konglicisms are just signs that the learner hasn't learned very much yet, like "twelven" and "I am hamburger." |
Or, it could be a sign that they learned English with Let's Go 1 and during the song "What's the Matter?" the teacher held the picture card backwards...
(If you were studying at Songwon Elementary school in Gwangju in 1996, I apologize for this.) |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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| visviva wrote: |
Many of these annoying Konglicisms (woo hoo! Google-whack!) are a product of Half-Assed Language Teaching (HALT), the predominant method here among K and NS teachers alike. For myself, I try to teach using my whole ass, but it ain't easy.
Why do some learners use "in my opinion" all the time? Probably because they have not received proper instruction in using this and similar rhetorical softeners. Same for "Why don't you..." People who learned English from some other teacher might use "You must" all the time.
And a lot of Konglicisms are just signs that the learner hasn't learned very much yet, like "twelven" and "I am hamburger." One doesn't pick up English all at once, especially not in an EVFL context like Korea. |
Great post. It is hard to use the whole ass though.
I particularly like the mention of "EVFL" not just EFL> because in Korea English is still very foreign to most. |
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Harin
Joined: 03 May 2004
Location: Garden of Eden
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| Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:05 am Post subject: |
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My hagwon boss used to say:
"You must....."
"You have to...."
"I want you to...."
So bossy.... |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:20 am Post subject: |
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There are a few books out there that show the relationship between Korean and Japanese native words (so nothing with hanja). Some examples are:
Japanese umi (sea) comes from the old bekjae word for water, ��, which has now changed to ��. A long o in Japanese often means big, so oomi, big water, later became umi, which means sea. According to that person's book.
There are also a large number of Japanese words to do with water that have 'mi' in them...
But to say that a language originally had no nouns?? I assume nouns were the first things to be created in a language. |
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casey's moon
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: Daejeon
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:01 am Post subject: |
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"the meeting will start from now on."
oh my god...NO!!! |
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Yangkho
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Location: Honam
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:13 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
But to say that a language originally had no nouns?? I assume nouns were the first things to be created in a language.
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Ah, think back to the days when all who spoke were poets...things in the world were to be named.
That's why I like that Korean has so much onomatopoeia and what's that other one...mimesis? |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:31 am Post subject: |
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| matthewwoodford wrote: |
| [This thread isn't just about complaining about dumb students - although it is partly - but it's teachers who genuinely want to do a good job but keep coming up against the same frustrations because of the huge difficulties inherent in TEFL. I know loads of people say this job is so easy but it doesn't seem that way to me most of the time... |
It might also be because of teachers who genuinely want to do a good job but can't because they don't know how to teach. It might also be because teaching very quickly takes a back seat to the extracurricular activities of most "teachers" here. And then they wonder why their students seem so dumb. Well first of all it's not their native language. We probably make exact identical dumb mistakes when speaking their language. And secondly a lot of "teachers" here are not doing their job either because they don't know how, or don't care. |
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Cedar
Joined: 11 Mar 2003
Location: In front of my computer, again.
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| Some of the things you have mentioned are very amusing to me, but let me reassure you, if you've been teaching in Korea as long as I have, at a certain point, as long as people are trying to be polite and you perceive them as such, then you don't get annoyed anymore. |
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matthewwoodford
Joined: 01 Oct 2003
Location: Location, location, location.
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:28 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| matthewwoodford wrote: |
| [This thread isn't just about complaining about dumb students - although it is partly - but it's teachers who genuinely want to do a good job but keep coming up against the same frustrations because of the huge difficulties inherent in TEFL. I know loads of people say this job is so easy but it doesn't seem that way to me most of the time... |
It might also be because of teachers who genuinely want to do a good job but can't because they don't know how to teach. It might also be because teaching very quickly takes a back seat to the extracurricular activities of most "teachers" here. And then they wonder why their students seem so dumb. Well first of all it's not their native language. We probably make exact identical dumb mistakes when speaking their language. And secondly a lot of "teachers" here are not doing their job either because they don't know how, or don't care. |
Yeah, those are indeed some of the things falling under the header 'frustrations', apart from the extra-curricular activities bit. |
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Yangkho
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Location: Honam
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| Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Whoa...I just found out that here in Korea, the movie City Slickers 2 with Billy Crystal is called "�¹��� ����, �¸�� �����" . |
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