Korean Job Discussion Forums

bossaco · Joined: 13 Feb 2005 Location: jongro-gu

i had lived in the Philippines when my dad was stationed there... met a lot of good people i still consider friends... i thought that they're better educated and well-mannered than a lot of people i know here...

i don't understand korean's aversion towards the filipinos but i know that some schools in the US are hiring filipinos as teachers... and a lot of hospitals (esp in calif) are staffed with filipino nurses...

Derrek · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

iiicalypso · Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Location: is everything

I think that part of the reason Koreans go to study in the Philippines is that it is relatively inexpensive, but another part of the picture is the difficulty that they have getting to the United States. My GF went to Cebu last year after spending months trying to get a visa to come to the US. I think most people recognize that the best place to study would be America, but the paranoid policies the government promotes make it damn near impossible.

I visited her in Cebu last year, and as far as I could tell it was a bit of a joke. As most people recognize, the best way to learn a language is to use it in "real life". Unfortunately, most of the Korean students stayed holed up in the compound all the time, with occasional trips to the mall to buy clothes. The teachers I met were excellent (there were Americans, Canadians and Filippinos) but it was no different from going to a hagwon, since so few of the students left the hotel to interract with other people. There is even a Korean PC bang, with hangol keyboards and ramen.

I understand that there is a certain comfort level to staying with the familiar, but isn't the whole point of education to broaden yourself? The prevailing attitude was that the population of the Phils was poor and dirty and something to be avoided, and that this was just an excuse to get away from the parents and pretend to study. Sad.

bosintang · Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:00 am Post subject:

I teach one 12-yr old boy who was behind the other students in his class (not a high-level class). He missed the last few weeks of the last hagwon session and when he returned for the new session he was in a much higher-level class. At first I was annoyed by this, until I actually spoke to him. The difference in his spoken English was staggering, he went from practically beginner-level to coversational overnight! I asked him about this and he told me spent the last three weeks in the Phillipines studying English.

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004