Korean Job Discussion Forums

[CentralCali]

Who else got this manual delivered to them? On the one hand, it's great that the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development and the National Institute of International Education Development are working on getting information about teaching professionally to the Guest English Teachers (the new name for us--apparently we can't be considered anything other than guests anymore). On the other hand, it would be nice if the thing had been proofread so that it doesn't have atrocious grammatical errors, confusing spelling errors, off-topic comments, and whole sections completely unrelated to teaching.

When my supervising co-teacher handed the 183 page book to me yesterday, I glanced through it and noticed the aforementioned shortcomings. Then I said to myself, "Maybe next time, the Ministry will get some native English--oops, Guest English Teachers to write this stuff. I next looked at the names of the authors. It's a good thing I was already sitting down. A lot of the book was written by native English speakers. It's sad to see that their fluency is no better than the native Korean authors who wrote their portions of the book in English.

Here's some unrequested advice.

For the Korean authors:

• Ask a native English speaker who has good writing skills to review your stuff.
  
• Don't assume that what you think foreigners care about is really what foreigners care about.
  
• Use some originality. It seems that the whole country here is conducting an experiment: "How many times does it take by asking a foreigner 'Can you eat kimchi' to have the foreigner go berserk?"
  
• Put the sections about Korean cuisine, etc., in another book or change the title of this one.

For the native English authors:

• Don't slap your submission together. Write it, look at it, then rewrite it.
  
• If your grammar and spelling skills are AWOL, find a native English speaker whose skills are present for duty to review your work.
  
• Make it interesting to read for another native English speaker. Don't write your section just to get it past your Korean coworkers or supervisors.

For the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Devlopment and the National Institute for International Education Development:

• Follow at least some publishing standards. Hire someone who is either a native speaker or actually fluent in English to proofread the book before publication.
  
• Consider the target audience of the publication.

As I said above, it's a good thing that the government's actually trying to do something. Sadly, though, the usual level of prior planning has shown through in bright sparkles. Maybe next year's manual will be a bit more professional.

[nomad-ish]

have they made copies of the book in korean (if they're not comfortable with reading a whole book in english) for the korean co-teachers?

[CentralCali]

You're joking, aren't you? There's no way that's going to happen. The onus is on the GETs to make the system work. If the Korean teacher is incompetent in English or has bad classroom management skills, that's just too bad for the GET.

[nomad-ish]

[CentralCali]

I, also, friend. I, also.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[KYC]

Have you seen the GEPIK textbooks? (teacher's manuals). It's riddled with grammatical erros. Some of the stuff they want us to teach the students don't even make sense.