Korean Job Discussion Forums

formerflautist · Joined: 30 May 2006

The absolute worst thing happened when I got to college. Because I had three years of Spanish in high school I didn't have to take anymore foreign language classes for my major. I just had to take a Spanish culture class. No big deal, right? Sure except for the fact that the book was in Spanish. Luckily the instructor didn't teach in Spanish. And we watched a lot of movies. But I still had to attempt to get through that book. It was horrible. I should have studied harder in high school.

Zark · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:23 pm Post subject:

Terrible German teacher in HS - gave up after one semester. Mostly we terrrorized the nerd that sat in front of us (I am sorry . . .).

Great Spanish teacher at a quicky class at a junior college. She never spoke a word of English - ever - and had us all speaking Spanish fearlessly by the end of the course! (though most of us had had some background in Spanish before the course - we were only 80km from the border with Mexico - and it was a heavily Hispanic part of America [Tucson]).

andrew · Joined: 30 Jan 2003

*****

Hobophobic · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:39 pm Post subject:

2 of my grade 10 - 11 French Immersion Language Arts teachers...one was an Ex-minister who made us learn proverbs and songs, the other drank vodka starting at the 1015am break and was useless for afternoon classes...

...we drove both of them mad...

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

My first Spanish teacher was great. She spoke almost no English, and when she did it was tough to understand. So, classes were mostly in Spanish. She had every object in the room covered with labels in Spanish to help us learn common vocabulary. I learned a lot in that class. So, when I got to my second year of Spanish (9th grade), where I had a teacher who conducted class mostly in English and couldn't control the classroom, I learned almost nothing. That class was full of jocks, cheerleaders, band nerds, and headbangers. Each of those groups were known to be disruptive, so it was chaotic. No learning.

In my first year of college, I took a semester of Spanish. Had no desire to learn Spanish. Most of it was review. Didn't care. Got an A. Found out in my last semester that I needed another Spanish credit to graduate. Ugh. So I joined a community college course near my apartment. The professor probably spoke Spanish. Sometimes he'd say a few lines to impress us. He was a nice guy, but he was in the process of closing on a new house, and his daughter getting married, so he really didn't give a flip about class. For homework, we'd copy the answers straight from the back of the book. For other assignments, everyone would just copy each other's work. He didn't care. Everyone got A's. No one learned squat.

I_Am_Wrong · Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: whatever

High School only?

My high school Russian teacher was of Russian acenstry and she had spent quite some time in Russia.

The classes sucked though. Half of us had been in russian immersion since kindergarten and the other half started in grade 7 or grade 9. She used the same material for all of us and ONLY DID GRAMMAR. My conversation skills went from excellent to decent.

Most of the french teachers at my school were Quebecois.

periwinkle · Joined: 08 Feb 2003

laogaiguk · Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Location: somewhere in Korea

periwinkle · Joined: 08 Feb 2003

laogaiguk · Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Location: somewhere in Korea

crystal · Joined: 04 May 2006

I took french for a year and the teacher was old and boring so I dropped it as soon as I could. The first German teacher I had was fantastic, she was all enthusiastic about her subject and made class interesting and fun. The second one was quite good too and kept me interested. In uni I had some native speakers and some non-native speakers. They were a mix of good and bad, some were boring as anything, others were really into their teaching and that made their classes better. I studied in Germany for a year at uni and my language teacher there was terrible, she was slow and sleepy and class was terrible.

Neil · Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Location: Tokyo

Did two years of French, the teacher was quality. Quite fit as well (well, about mid 30s but had aged well, you know what it's like when you're 15). The reason I don't speak much French is partly because of the curriculum (it was all reading and no focus on comunicating in French....sounds a bit like TOEIC)....but it's mainly because I was lazy. I remember once we did a day trip to Calais where we found everyone would just speak to us in English....most used the trip as an excuse to stock up on cheap ciggarettes and buy some knifes that were banned in the UK.

Did 1 year of German....the teacher was kind and spoke German well, she was young and less jaded than most other teachers and had some cool ideas for study. But being striaght out of teachers training college meant she had no classroom management skills and the kids ran rings around her. I suprised myself with how easy I found German....I wish I'd stuck with it. One day when I go home I'll give it another bash. I reckon after the hassles of studying Korean it'll be a nice treat to study a language more similar to my native tounge.