Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Qinella]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I finally found a use for all those annoying little hand mirrors some of my students have to check every two minutes (even though they're not allowed to wear make-up).

"Everyone, take out your mirror. Now look at my mouth when I say V. Vvvvveeee. Da-ra hasayo."

"Bweeee"

"Not ��. I know that's what the book says but that's not it. Look at my mouth. Vvvvveeee. Now look at your mouth. Da-ra hasayo..."

It won't help much, though, when they get 80% of their instruction from Korean teachers who will never do more than use transliterations.

[Bee Positive]

[kermo]

[Privateer]

Is there such a thing as a hangeul 'extension set'? I believe Mithridates mentioned inventing something like that once. There ought to be one so you can have symbols for 'z' and final 's' and the rest. After all if you're going to transliterate you might as well do it right!

I suppose it would need careful thinking about because you'd need to strike a balance between accurate phoneticity and usefulness. Even hangeul isn't perfectly phonetic in the way that the IPA is, after all.

[blunder1983]

How do u reccomend I rectify the kids language, I stop the class when i hear it wrong and make them resay it. But it don't work.

Currently I've given up i see the kids 1 time a week the mispronouncing kteachers see the m 5 times a week, I cant compete with that!

[Privateer]

Incorporate regular pronunciation drills into your class.

[Qinella]

[mithridates]

Yeah, but it's pronounced the same as the rest of the Japanese syllabary except for a few bits like �ի����ի���and so on but it certainly doesn't help at all with writing words in other languages. The other problem is that both languages have one syllable for each character no matter what.

�� means 'friend', by the way.

[Wrench]

I have the same moronic crap at my school. They have a phonics handbook that has english to hangul pronounciation. Good god they will never learn R,L,P,F,V.

I gave up on correcting them. Whistle is Histle, quit is keet. Not to mention they NEVER get plurals right. I had Here she comes turn into Here shes come etc.. Eg I have 1 egg but I hate 10 egg, add the damn s.

[Qinella]

[Red]

[EFLtrainer]

[EFLtrainer]

Here are my thoughts on the issue:

Using hangul is foolish overall. However, some sounds are the same and I use it very sparingly for a quick fix (only with sounds that are exactly the same), but prefer to simply teach the English pronunciation as what it is: symbols that represent sounds. Let's learn them, shall we?

Using hangul generally leads to incorrect pronunciation, as has been pointed out. But even worse is that students appear to go through the hangulization process as a first step! It has become habitual for many of them because they weren't taught: Book. Look at this. It is a book. They were taught: chaek, boo kuh.

The most effective way I've found to discourage the use of hangul is to simply say the hangul version correctly and contrast it with the English. I'll ask them to do it first because they are also often saying the Korean version a little incorrectly to bend it into English! Point that out to them and see what happens! They get it immediately. I also like to, for example, playfully turn to them and ask, "What's a teachaw?" And write it on the board. They usually self-correct from there - which shows they know the correct pronunciation but are habituated to the other. I try to do this as part of voc/pronunciation practice.

Teaching pronunciation? First, I would not be stopping and correcting much, if at all. Do drills if you like (there is some research indicating this may not be very effective), but stopping in the middle of some part of your lesson isn't very effective. It disrupts the thought process, i.e., the connections you are making in the brain between the various language centers. I try to note the problem and teach on it later via drills, targeted content or whatever it is you want to do.

The idea of using the mirror is a good idea. And yes, rather than simply repeating ad nauseum, actually physically show the students how to make the sounds. Just yesterday I was teaching the final s and had my students put their hand to my throat so they could see clearly that it is unvoiced. Once you get them to stop voicing the s, you've got no "uh" to worry about. Nice-uh!

I'll use my hands to show the movement of the tongue, have them hold pencils in their mouths... all kinds of things. Getting physical really helps.

Regarding the use of Korean in class: considering that simply having good input seems to be the single most important part of learning a language - at least in terms of speech and if, indeed, it can be said any *one* element is THE element - why does it follow that not speaking English is a good idea???? What are these people thinking?

[Qinella]