Korean Job Discussion Forums

[travelingfool]

I just got off the phone with with the customer service departments of two different companies. Both customer service reps' English language skills were pretty bad. Basically steam was coming out of my ears out of frustration. The first rep was completely useless. She basically told me I was out of luck, not because I was really out of luck, but because she lacked the advanced language skills needed to address the issue I needed to have resolved.

I keep hearing about how teachers from the Philippines and India are coming to take our jobs, are much more skillful and more qualified teachers, and will work for peanuts, all with a smile.

I don't care what anyone says. There is no substitute for being completely and totally immersed in a language from your first day on this planet. In the case of non native teachers, I highly doubt English was the first language at home. I have studied Spanish quite a bit and am now at a level where I would never even consider being taught by someone who isn't a native speaker. They simply don't have a good enough grasp of the culture, idioms, slang, etc. If I were to study Mandarin or even Korean, perhaps in the early stages I could be taught be a non native speaker.

Why do Koreans, Chinese, etc often say that their grammar skills are far superior to ours? If that is the case, wouldn't their speaking and writing skills be a little better? Wouldn't customer service reps be able to answer basic questions?

[Otherside]

When they say that their grammar skills are superior to ours (in a large part I agree), they really mean that they are far more aware of the grammatical rules. Korean/Chinese/etc teachers are often better at explaining why we do xyz in English.

If you don't believe me, ask a bunch of non-teaching friends from home to explain the "present perfect tense" or something similar... The average Korean university student (including the ones with terrible English) will have a better awareness of the rule than the average native speaker. That being said, understanding the rules and putting them into practice are two different things.

TravellingFool, I agree with you - an advanced student would most likely not be interested in studying from a "non-native" speaker, yet there are a ton of jobs here which are really at the beginner level. MY biggest query with the opening of the floodgates so to speak is how will they monitor the quality of English? Will prospective teachers be interviewed? A written test? Or anyone with a degree, soon to be "anyone who spent a semester in college and now dropped out..." Personally, if its adequatly "policed" I have little problem with teachers from India/the Phillipines etc coming in, but if their standards are as a lax as for the current 7 countries, then all hell's gonna break loose.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[bogey666]

[mnhnhyouh]

[Grab the Chickens Levi]

Soon the Phillipino or Indian teachers will be in the class doing the same job for half the price and the Koreans will realise that nothing much is any different as the kids still don't take English seriously or care about it and for the MAJORITY of them it makes no difference if you have an American, an Indian or a cardboard cut out of an american with an English cassette in a cassette player taped behind it playing in the classroom...

I feel slightly guilty for saying that for the few students out of the 1000 I teach who are great students, can have full conversations with me at elementary school age and have amazing english ability. (Sorry guys.) But I believe that with any decent teacher these kids would excell anyway.

All that is keeping us here in our overpayed, cushy jobs is Korean parent's OWN racist beliefs in pure blood etc and that only someone with 'that countries blood' can really speak the language...

All this may be about to change....

[bogey666]