Korean Job Discussion Forums

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I'm not trying to sound like a snob, but I majored in Chinese in college and have been learning foreign languages since I was 5 and one thing in Korea just blows me away. Students have 99 crap books, pencil cases that make super cool noises when you mash them against things, cell phones, mp3 players, and magic the gathering cards... but no dictionaries?

At my schools, if you didn't bring a dictionary to your class it's just the same as saying HEY I DONT WANT TO LEARN ANYTHING. In China I got annoyed that my students didn't take notes... but here the dictionary thing just blows me away. Most kids say they don't even own one. Or they say OH TEACHER, CELL PHONE DICTIONARY. That worked until I realized that's a great way to covertly send text messages to the homies. Hey wait a sec, if you've been using that dictionary for 30 minutes why are you not writing anything?

At my last teacher's meeting I brought this up and my director acted like the idea had never even dawned on her before. WAIT, THERE IS A BOOK.. WHERE ... IF THEY DONT KNOW A WORD, THEY CAN FIND THE MEANING WRITTEN IN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE? THEY DONT HAVE TO SIT THERE LIKE A HOG STARING AT A WRISTWATCH FOR 50 MINUTES? WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN INFORMED OF THIS AMAZING INVENTION???

I brought dictionaries to class before and if my students don't understand something and I ask them to look it up, they sigh and gasp at an alarming rate ... as if I asked them to part the Red Sea or something.

So, fellow ESL dudes, WHAT GIVES?

P.S. I think dictionaries should be MANDATORY in class. It's like bringing a pencil or wearing pants. In my uni class in China I gave bonus points to students who brought their dictionary every day.

[sojourner1]

Nothing gives, their hard headed and rude, but you can still try to teach if it means something to you which it does to the OP and myself.

Yes, I have been requesting for many months that my elementary and middle school students get dictionaries. Only 2 out of 50 students have done so to my disappointment.

Now, I just use my own English/Korean dictionary, find a word, and walk around the class to have each student read it out loud in Korean after saying the English word. While this is time consuming, vocabulary is very important as you have nothing if they can't even understand the main idea of a lesson or a short story in class. I have learned the hard way that Koreans are not serious about the quality of education despite the big money they paying to over school.

[OiGirl]

The first thing most students at my university, undergraduate and graduate, take out of their schoolbag and arrange on their desk is their electronic dictionary. I feel kind of stupid for not having one.

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[ddeubel]

I suggest if there is real concern, set up and send your students post lesson to wordchamp. Great vocab resource for students and homework. You can find out more on my community about this. http://wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do;jsessionid=3F7240136AF6F6AFB0B5AFC7F7C46F27

I think it important to note that we should first always think: Comprehensible Input and if students need a dictionary, it should only be for support not "knowing" the content. Two. We as a teacher should always encourage students to try and communicate meaning by and through English. SO if possible, english-english dictionaries or by teacher explanation in English. So much is learned this way and by simply reciting English - Korean, you are definitely wasting time in class. This can be done by students outside class time or with a Korean teacher.

Further, let's always remember the foundation of vocab. It isn't anything but verbs. Students and teachers should concentrate on this. Without an adequate knowledge and competency of verbs - the nouns/adj etc... won't stick . It is the flypaper.

DD

[Young FRANKenstein]

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[Juregen]

For me there are three steps in learning a language.

1. A new word in context of a sentence of text
this is the one i prefer using
2. Giving extra examples of the word and trying to make them understand
This helps a lot when the first one doesn't go
3. Use a Dictionary
If nothing else works

[jajdude]

Pretty much all the kids at my place have electronic dictionaries, unlike other places I have worked. We always give homework that includes finding new words. Building vocab is essential.

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[mindmetoo]

I had a class where all we did was dictionary work. I just wanted to drill them on verbs. Kids can study english for half a decade and still think you can turn nouns into verb. "I computer game". After 5 forkin' years of english, they still think that's communication.

Anyway, they're going to learn verbs. Learn how to use them. And they're going to look them up in the dictionary. The theory is when you look a word up, you remember it. It also has all the nice Korean next to the english word explaining the word in the language they love and pray every night Korea will spread through the world by military force.

So, upshot. No textbook for this course. Just bring a dictionary. You've been studying the language for 5+ years. You MUST have one? Right? I know your lil backpack holds a lot of expensive textbooks your parents are all too happy to buy under the mistaken belief their kids actually look at them and putting a dictionary in there is some added weight. But hey. The dictionary is your textbook.

I let the head teacher know that's the requirement. It can be a paper dictionary, an electronic dictionary, or if they have a cell phone with a dictionary function that's fine too.

First class, maybe 2 out of 8 bring their dictionary. Arg. Next class about half manage. One genius eventually gets one but gets a Korean to English dictionary, never fully noticing he's given English verbs in every exercise and he has to look up the Korean. I don't even want to get into my struggles with trying to get them to bring a pencil to class. Even more amazing, some of the kids look at a dictionary like they've never even seen one before and have no clue how to use it. It's like giving them a JR train schedule all in Japanese and you're asking them to find a route from Osaka to Sapporo. Oh and even even more amazing, my exercise also then requires them to make some simple SVO sentences. There's nothing quite as jaw dropping amazing as a kid who has a dictionary before him, and still writes Korean nouns in his sentence. Gosh, wouldn't it be nice if you had this tool in front of you that can translate those Korean words into English words. Oh wait. You do. It's that dictionary. The one you just used to find out what "throw" means in Korean.

Yeah, it's utterly amazing that parents will throw away thousands of bucks on english education and never think to spend $20 on a simple dictionary that translates between the languages.

Another class, I give them homework to find nouns and verbs. What is beautiful? What is delicious? Things like that. Half the kids turn in lists of Korean words. THEY CAN'T EVEN USE AN ONLINE DICTIONARY.

[htrain]

I gave my older students an exercise translating from Korean to English. It was about two paragraphs of words they should already know.

Then I get homeworks turned in that look like this:

Flourescent bird at night does wings flap. To store with friends he go. To eating with family great fun is.

Wow, online translator .... maybe?