Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rapier]

Their mothers play them English tapes while they are still in the womb. They are packed off to English hagwon at the age of 3. They Study english for years and years. Their TV is full of programmes on how to speak English. Half the wording in their billboards and advertisements are in English. They labour away at TOEIC and the other advanced books and tapes; the accent on learning English throughout the whole society is very strong.
So why the *** can't Koreans speak a word of it? What are we all here for, when you can't do the simplest of transactions at the bank, or buy the book you want, because there are no tellers or sales people who speak even the most basic words? Whats the point of it all?

[dogbert]

Don't let the muntus get you down, brah.

[Dan]

think of all the koreans you've come across who speak english, and then think of all the people from back home you know that speak another language. i would say its pretty close to being equal, and greatly higher if you don't consider people of spanish origins.

[Zyzyfer]

All this English-mania is a pretty recent phenomenon, rapier. Today's workforce didn't do all this hakwon business, hell, they probably never even had a native speaker for a teacher.

[indiercj]

Do you really believe those who invest tons of money and time in your hagwon and TOEIC preparation just want their kid to be a bank clerk or book shop assistant? No offence to those workers but... I can't think of a single country where you can shop in english as a foreign language which was not at least once in their history colonized by english speaking empire. Even in those who were i don't think you can do that now.

[Trinny]

Zyzyfer is right. I didn't even learn alphabet, until grade 7. When I was in middle school, English class was 4 times a week and taught by Korean teachers. I didn't have an opportunity to talk to any English speaker, until I majored in English literature at a university.

Now compare this with the Core French program in Canada, which starts from grade 1, is 5 times a week and taught by native-French speakers. And parents are still complaining that their kids are not picking up any French.

[kimcheeking]

[logan2003]

Hmmm well my wife is Indian, and her English is like that of a native speaker. She was penalized in grade school if she spoke Hindi, or Urdu.

So maybe having been colonized by the British Empire helped.
Also many Africans also speak much better English because of colonization.

[crazylemongirl]

Dan,
I agree that english speakers are lazy when it comes to learning another language. But that said, I look at europe where most western europeans learn 2 languages (usually english and one more) and have a far better grasp of the language through their public schools than some of the kids who spend half their lives in hagwons here.

CLG

[gang ah jee]

[rapier]

"It takes a long time to understand nothing" (edward Wahlberg).
This is particularly true in korea. You can shower the kids with fancy, colourful textbooks, field trips, videos , the works and they remain forever blank- faced. I spent half an hour having a go at teaching some poor malnourished orphans in mozambique, with no materials, and they spoke back to me more English than some of my Korean classes have picked up in a year of intensive state- of - the art teaching.
Trinny you had no exposure to English speakers until Uni.
I was forced to learn French at school 2 hours a week for 2 years. I hated it, and never spoke to a real French person. But when I arrived alone in Nice, one time ,I could still speak enough to order food, find accomodation and public transport, etc.
All I can say is teachers, if your students aren't learning, - its probably them, not you.
Dogbert: Agg man even the munts are fluent at the age of 4, and theres no more honkies in the cesspit to show them how!

[weatherman]

I look at the lack of comunication in English as a symptom in the way that Koreans study. Not only English, but really any subject. There seems to be a real disconect between reality and the classroom. Korean students only study subjects, but never use what they study. Korean students study English, but they never make opportunities to use English, and this doesn't always entail a native speaker of English involved in the mix. There are hundreds of ways to use English, but most Korean students aren't that pro-active in their education.

[Cuatemoc]

A good language student is not afraid to make a mistake in front of their peers. They are willing to repeatedly embarass themselves in front of strangers. They go out of their way to create opportunities where they come across like a brain-damaged 5 year old. Does this describe any Koreans you know?
Compare them to the Dutch: small mercantile nations that need foreign trade to compensate for limited resouces. Both speak obscure languages that the rest of the world will never bother to learn. The difference? You can tell the Dutch guy in the crowd because he speaks English better than you do, is conversant in French and German, and next weekend he's going to pick up Flemmish for fun.
In their defense, cramming English into a brain wired for Korean is a lot harder than swapping out a couple of related European languages. Anybody know how Koreans do when learning Japanese (which I'm told has nearly identical grammer)? And like most of the gringos I know here, I live in a country and speak maybe a few hundred words of the language. How lame is that?

[gang ah jee]

For a native Korean speaker learning Japanese is cake, especially compared to English

[mokpochica]

I think there are lots of countries that were not colonized by the British where you can shop in English, but they are probably mostly in Europe. The necessity to speak English--and the realization of that necessity at a fairly young age--is key.

I think that what people have said, 1) that the English craze is a recent phenomenon, 2) That English is much harder for Korean speakers than say, Japanese (and going along with this, that English is much easier for most speakers of European languages than it is for Koreans), and 3) some people aren't really trained in English, either because of their occupation or their location in the country. I'm sure there are a lot more people in Seoul that speak English well than in many of the other provinces.

And of course students need to be motivated to learn a foreign language. Speaking from my own experience, I was much more motivated to learn Spanish than I have been to learn Korean. Part of this was because I could see myself using Spanish a lot in the future and also because Spanish has many similarities to English and therefore was interesting and easier for me to learn. I want to learn Korean, and work at it little by little, but it is much more time consuming and my progress seems much slower so it can be very frustrating.

If I were Korean I might just give up on English and study another language, like Japanese or Chinese. This is not an option for most kids though and I think it's really too bad that they don't have a choice as to which foreign language they will study.