Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mr. Pink]

[thaitom]

In Thailand they prefer British-English.

[thaitom]

I just explained it's a matter of accent, depending on where you live
( west coast,east coast, ect...), that they can say it either way, it's not that important. Now they understand.

[SeoulMan6]

I think American vs British English is the most overrated aspect of EFL! Have you ever used a CD that had different dialects? Can your students even tell that there is a difference?! Rarely. I doubt most Koreans could find differences between a Glaswegian and a Texan!

Granted, some vocabulary can be confusing, but most differences are insignificant to all but advanced learners. As if a Korean going to London would somehow be unitelligable because their teacher in Korea was from the U.S.? A Korean living abroad would soon pick up "flat" and "f_g" over "apartment" and "cigarette".

p.s. I didn't know Dave's had a controls for language - it "beeped" out the British word for cigarette!!!

[keithinkorea]

[jacl]

[keithinkorea]

There is a clue in how English should be pronounced. Where does the language come from? A 'warder' is someone who works in a prison.

My Korean is weak, but when I speak it do with standard Seoul satori. I don't try and speak like a resident of Jeju or Cholla province.

The international standard of English is British English. North Americans can't even agree on spelling.

[SeoulMan6]

[IwalkAlone]

The origins of a language mean what exactly? The preferences of your students surely has more weight than some brit tooting his horn off about the superiority of british english because it hatched the language. I favor american english, my students favor it too. Even my employer shows how he favors it (I make an extra 100,000 W). I enjoy listening to different accents of the same language, especially australian and british. I even mock them from time to time.

But really now, can people honestly believe british accent is more desired than north american? And then defend that belief because english originated in England? Human life somehow originated in the fertile crescent in present day Iraq (according to historians)....not too powerful a nation nowadays based on that theory.

[Privateer]

Oh god, not this old chestnut again.

keithinkorea give it up for god's sake. It's everyone's gut instinct to say a someone else's variety of English is 'wrong', but there's no rationality behind it. Both British and American English have consistent underlying sets of rules, which differ in important but mutually intelligible respects.

It doesn't matter if you say 'war/t/er' or 'wa/d/er'! It's Konglish that's the enemy! There's no logic behind it, only the pathology of misunderstanding and mistranslation. We should call a truce and team up on Konglish instead.

[TJ]

[the_beaver]

[ajuma]

Our students really need to know that there is more than one way to pronounce words. They may study in America (Texas, California, New Jersey or Boston!), England, Canada or New Zealand. They may travel and have to communicate in English with someone else whose native language is not English. Teaching them that one pronunciation is right and the rest of the world is wrong isn't preparing them for the real world, now is it? And when you leave your school, will they replace the teacher from the same linguistic area that you are from? Probably not!

[waggo]

[quote="VanIslander"]
73 % of all native English speakers are American and Canadian.

A 'guestimate of use' has nothing to do with native speaker populations does it?

If you take into account the majority of Europe plus India,The entire Middle East and Africa...a guestimate of use would be more like 10% American English 90% British 'derived pron' English.

However Ill give you its an important 10% (apart from Canada).

[denverdeath]