Korean Job Discussion Forums

NohopeSeriously · Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 1:38 am Post subject:

NETs in public schools aren't the only people with issues. What about the thousands of Korean contract teachers?

Well, you know. The Korean public school system operates through a gigantic ponzi scheme-like fraud. Confused

PatrickGHBusan · Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 3:38 am Post subject:

Tamada · Joined: 02 Nov 2008

PatrickGHBusan · Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 4:30 am Post subject:

Some do sure.

Some (more all the time) speak good to great English.

Hence the need (still for now) for assistant teachers (thats you by the way) to supplement the program and offer specific help (pronounciation and conversation).

Good luck out there Tamada.

Oh and I DID say OVER TIME not NOW.

Cheers

koreatimes · Joined: 07 Jun 2011

silkhighway · Joined: 24 Oct 2010 Location: Canada

You guys are assuming the end product of public schooling is -- and should be -- fluency in English. That's never been realistic. Korean teachers may do a mediocre job, but attitude and installing life-long learning in their students is everything. If they fail at that, there's nothing NETs can provide.

Steelrails · Joined: 12 Mar 2009 Location: Earth, Solar System

Whoever made this thread not fit my browser, I hate you.

Bruce W Sims · Joined: 08 Mar 2011 Location: Illinois; USA

No, personally, I am "assuming" that the product of schooling is Education. What is missing here is agreement about what the nature of that Education ought be and how it ought be brought about.

I think the project begins with understanding/determining why people have been teaching English for years in Korea and the product is so woefully deficient.

A primary tenet of Behavioral Psychology is that people tend to maintain or increase behaviors which are found to be reinforced.

Question One: What is the behavior that we are concerned with? Bad instruction? Bad management? Skewed delivery of services?

Question Two: What is the reinforcer that keeps this faulted system going?
I submit that it is the 21st Century incarnation of corrupt middle-administrative positions that have dogged Korean society for centuries. FWIW.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

JD_Tiberius · Joined: 16 Nov 2009 Location: Korea

The big problem Korea has is the social stigma attached to speaking any language other than Korean to Koreans

You might get two Koreans, who speak brilliant English. They marry, but they never try to practice their English each each other because its not considered socially acceptable for them to speak any language other than Korean(The Japanese are to blame for this). Nor do they try to teach their son or daughter any of their fantastic English. In a few years with little to no contact with foreigners, their English degrades to the point they feel they can't speak it anymore.

Now compare that with people from other countries. I know of some white New Zealanders who will talk to each other in Japanese just because they can. Koreans don't do this with their L2 language, socially they can't because of their history.

That is precisely why any English language programme that does not include foreign teachers is bound to fail. They need us in the system to essentially keep tabs on the Korean English teachers. Without us, the system they have been working so hard to attain for years, collapses like a deck of cards.