Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Guri Guy]

Well I suppose I am wrong. Hee hee. I thought you were trying to spell "sorry". I'll admit I'm wrong there.

[steroidmaximus]

People that doubt a 6th grade Korean kid is capable of writing something of that calibre simply demonstrate their own stereotypes towards Koreans in general. I guess those people just assume that grade 6 kids are too stupid and too poor at English to do it.

Most of my students have lived abroad for a year or 2 and can communicate in English often better than many native speakers of the same age. I read novels with them; currently I have:

a grade 5 kid reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (abridged)
a grade 6 kid reading The Count of Monte Cristo
a grade 6 kid reading To Kill a Mockingbird
a grade 7 kid reading Animal Farm
a grade 8 kid reading American Gods (we're also reading excerpts of Durkheim and Feuerbach for context and comprehension)
a grade 8 kid reading Things Fall Apart
a grade 9 kid reading We
a grade 11 kid reading The Ugly American

To name but a few. I could list them all but I'm sure I'd be wasting my time.

Take a good hard look at what some of the institutes in Gangnam are teaching the kids for reading, and you see some of the same titles as well as Brave New World, 1984, A Farewell to Arms etc etc et al. These kids are of course not the majority, but they do exist and their numbers are growing. We're talking the future movers and shakers in Korea, and to disparage their abilities speaks volumes of your own prejudices.

[jajdude]

I believe the above poster is correct. Some of these kids are smart and good at English.

On the other hand I have had a few grade six kids who couldn't tell Africa from Europe from South America on an unlabelled world map.

A little off the subject, but I also had a few grade 6 kids in Taiwan at beginner level of English who knew where Taiwan was, and knew the word "China," but when asked to point it out on an English language map were looking around Australia and India for a bit. That was a shock.

Also off, I just like to tell this story: Once I had a class with three elementary boys. We had a scrabble board. I would take out some tiles that could spell a word and just hand them to a student. I took out the tiles A,E,G,M and asked one to spell "game." He spelled "GEAM." The next one spelled "GEMA." The third one spelled "GAEM."

That was rough.

I guess it goes to show we have a wide range here, as elsewhere.

[The Bobster]