Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

I got pissed off in class the other day. Several of the kids, about grade 5, were constantly swearing in Korean just as part of their little conversation while ignoring me and my attempts to teach something. But when I heard them refer to me in some kind of disparaging way, and one kid said "...sekki" (�� ��... correct spelling?) I flipped. I realized later he said it so casually, I wasn't sure that I was right to feel so insulted. To him it seemed just natural I guess, and he looked at me bemused, wondering why I was so angry. Of course he could not understand what I said in my anger. He's quite low-level in English and could not understand "Why are you guys swearing all the time?" or something like that.

I wonder if it was just because he is only 10-11 years that he assumes I cannot catch a single of word of Korean? I've used words, written hangul on the board before that with that class. But some of these kids are so inattentive or else dense they must assume the foreign teacher could not possibly understand a single word.

I wonder why they swear so much anyway. The older guys in the PC rooms swear constantly. I've never heard anything like it in English except when someone is pissed off. They just do it so casually and normally for everything. Their computer game isn't going well, so they just swear incessantly. I guess these kids may have picked up on this. Maybe it seems fine to them to swear whenever they want? Somehow I doubt they use these trash language in the presence of Korean adults, parents or teachers. What would be a Korean teacher's (or a parent's)response to hearing this crap? And in the classroom? Or at home?

[Randall Flagg]

When swear all the time when I'm in the presence of my male friends. I have a little switch on the back of my head that turns it off when the ladies come around.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Keep them late and make them write 'I will not use rude language in class' ten times, and have a KT translate. If they do it again, make them write 15, then 20, and so on. In my one class they stopped after 15, though they might still try it when my back's turned and I can't pick out who it is.

[TJ]

[happeningthang]

I'm with you all the way on that one jajdude. Happened to me just today got one hell class that has the three worst boys in the whole school being lumped together to allow everyone else a chance at learning something.

Usually it's all ok since after choke slams and my very best "shining" face to let these kids know that you cannot;
a) spit in class
b) punch each other hard enough to break the other kids glasses
c) use pencils as darts and throw them at other students faces
d) throw tennis balls at exposed flourescent tubes etc, etc

we've settled into a status quo which consists of them ignoring me, and talking incesantly as long as they do their work. Of course talking always involves ssibar, kipsekki, didjinda directed at me which I take with good humor since I've taken this to mean that I can do the same to them - which I do in a way that gives me some 10yr old Korean kid street cred of not being a total *beep*.

It's no accident that these kids act up. One kid lost his dad to suicide earlier in the year, the other kid has a prostitute for a mum (who mind you sends him to a hagwon so I'm not judging, but I do know this kid doesn't like it), and the last one is Damien reborn - parents are nice, go to church, the rest of the family are fine - this kid is just pure evil - been kicked out of all the other hagwons in town, but my director is a tolerant, tolerant man.

Anyway after bending over backwards to be nice to these kids allow them some tolerable disrespect because compared to what they were this is just fine. Today, out of the blue, suddenly enough was enough. They were being little mofo's like always, which is usually not a problem because I actually kind of respect it. But after repeated warnings to shut up, in a progressively curter, and shriller tone I just grabbed one kid by the scruff of the neck, kicked his chair out from under him, and marched him to the door to push him out.

Personally I'm not second guessing that. He was being a cheeky bastid, and although he was asking "why", maybe because it's no different to what he does all the time, now it's up to him to figure out why. To my mind I've given him something to think about, and hopefully reasses his behaviour. In the short term at least *sigh*

I always thought that as a foreigner that I was exempted from the regimented respect that they need to show everywhere else. I let it go because really I want them to have a bit of power if just for their self respect, and because I don't want to be a hard ass. So they swear, so did I as a kid, they do it to me intitially because I didn't know what they were saying, and they still do now because I let them. But there's a difference in saying it in fun, and saying it to be a shite by pushing my buttons.

[Shutterfly]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly do all these sware words mean?

[happeningthang]

I might be getting these mixed up, but...

didjinda - dog baby (terrible I know)
ssibar - a SOB
babo - fool