Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ddeubel]

YataBoy ,

[Stephen Jones]

If the professor had restricted his argument to stating that the early learning of English is a waste of time and money, he would have been quite correct.

[Privateer]

[Juregen]

The thing is it is difficult to explain but i will try. Let us just call it the BS theory .

A lot of people do not know a lot of things, but when other people think that you know a lot of things, you feel good about yourself.

I have experienced people who have a certain academic career, to socialize a lot with people who are less educated. I always asked myself the question, "Why would one do that?'. Because I have difficulties talking to people who have no education but claim to know it all. One day I realized that we all have a need to feel accepted and respected by our friends/social entourage.

Mediocre people will tend to hang around less then mediocre people to enhance this feeling. Less then mediocre want to have smarter people in their social group to feel more important then they actually are.

Just imagine this in your head. Imagine how these people live off each other to feel good about themselves, and here comes the sharing of "Knowledge".

The Mediocre people will use their limited Knowledge to have an impact on their surroundings (and there is probably a lot of errors in it). So by giving out false theories that sound correct (Racism, bigotery, nationalisme, just imagine all those things that exist because people just do not know) the lesser then mediocre people think that what was said is true, and the echo effect will multiply to all those people.

Thus i concluded that a lack of knowledge in a certain field will increase the mistakes in the less then educated masses of the world, just because they want to look and feel good about themselves.

I am sure some people have a nice word for this but I experienced these things as an individual, and i call it BS. Among my earliest social group i had, i was the only one able to finish a Masters, few have Bachelors, but most just finished high school. The biggest BS'ers where those with limited training who envelope themselves with people who did not study at all. And these people believed their own lies and their entourage believed them. try having a discussion with these people, i actually enjoy talking to these people and try to make them see the error of their ways, i have never ever succeeded.

I also realised that people who are confident in what they know and more specificaly, know what they do not know, are better people to be with. You can have very good converations with people like that, and actually both parties learn that the way. the BS is cut away and you have people who actually learn from each other.

It did not take me too long to get rid of these "Friends"


so to conclude

General limited knowledge in the public of for example English, enhances the "boasting effect" of it, the even less capable people will copy the faulty behaviour in order to be "in da group" and mistakes get spread around like wildfire just so everyone can be cool and feel good about themselves. A lot of it has to do with peer pressure, and in Korea, as a class conscious nation, everyone wants to be part of the better one.

And since language is an organic thing, these mistakes will be absorbed into the language, considered to be normal and a rule has been established.

[ontheway]

The most telling part of the article comes at the end. The writer wrote the article in Korean. It was translated by the newspaper staff.

This guy can't write his own editorial in English. He had to write in Korean and have it translated. He's afraid that students who study English at an early age will be so much better at English than he is BEFORE THEY FINISH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, that he'll look like the complete boob that he is.


English is the future, like computers and the internet. The moms understand this and are investing accordingly. The public schools and universities are useless because they have so many Koreans posing as English teachers with no ability, bad attitudes, like the writer of the editorial, and a desire to preserve their jobs above all else.

Tongue operations are a scam. Koreans can learn English without them. They actually hurt a person's ability to speak because they deform or destroy the natural neural connections that allow a person to control his tongue and speech.

The best time to begin learning a second language depends on the abilities and living situation of each individual: do you have relatives or other live-ins (nannies etc.) who expose the child to more than one language, does the child regularly live for extended times in more than one language community, country etc., is there a truly high quality bilingual program available? If one wants to be truly bilingual, it is best to start early. But "early" could be as late as 8 years old for some and from birth for others.

[andrew]

*****

[Cheonmunka]

My son is a nationalistic little guy, but nothing like his younger sister. I often hear variations of her "Dae-Han Minkuk - Cha cha, cha cha cha."

I wouldn't take away her love of Korea. She has superb family members here who deserve a superb, strong country.
However for me, governments and industries get too involved in either programming, or enhancing nationalism into people.
That, I do not like. It seems to occur frequently here, (I heard that Dok-Do was purposely inflated) but it also occurs in the West.
Take for example here on Dave's, when recently we were posting sensitive (true) material (but basically harmless as it was historical), that showed the US in a poorer light than what is genrally thought, the whole thread got deleted. That's censorship. That's social doctoring. In the end altering people's perceptions and thought patterns.

[Smee]

The "con" article reeks of sour grapes. I don't make an effort to take EFL advice from a professor of Konglish Studies. People who profess to study a language for 8, 10, 15 years ought to demonstrage a basic proficiency in it.

As I posted in the other thread about this, Korea needs to first clearly define its priorities. Now it's like chasing a moving target. Do they want to study grammar books and TOEFL vocabulary guides? Do they want to improve fluency and pronunciation? Do they want to say things like "Come on guy, make it love?" So far, nothing's worked.