Korean Job Discussion Forums

[T-J]

I was in the Job forum and rather than hijack that thread I thought I'd bring up the subject here.

Not to pick on the poster from the other thread, he was being nice enough offering advice for summer camp activities. However his first advice was,

[RuffledFeathers]

I do neither. I give my kids nicknames, such as 'Broken Arm' cause he had a broken arm at the beginning of the year. Or 'Buddha' cause he looks like Buddha....I also have "Perfume" because one day he smelled like womens' perfume.

[Goku]

[Perceptioncheck]

Yeah, I agree. I don't give my kids English nicknames because it all seems pretty meaningless to me. And if it's meaningless to me, chances are it'll be meaningless to them. If someone's finding it difficult to remember their Korean names, they can make a little bit of effort to memorize them or give the kids name tags with a romanized version of their Korean names. To chang-ee someones name because it's difficult to remember is selfish and pathetic, in my humble opinion.

[VanIslander]

It would be condescending to give middle school or high school kids English nicknames.

But grades 1,2,3 and 4 ? They LOVE it.

If you have an objection it's something you import. They know it's not a name, it's a nickname. There's lots of academic literature on second language identity and the role of nicknames.

And, I don't GIVE them English nicknames. They CHOOSE them. I ask for a letter (they shout them out - they love that) and I write a list of names on the board ("K!" one student shouts, "Kevin" I write, "P!" another student shouts, "Peter" I write. After adecent sized list is created the new student repeats after me and the names s/he doesn't pronounce perfectly get erased from the list, and any names which I sense are seen as funny by the other students (this is how I found out about "Jill" a long time ago) are erased also, leaving a shortlist of two or three or four for the student to choose from.

I have 87 students with English nicknames, all elementary school aged, all of whom I know quite well and have taught for between eight months and two and a half years. My classroom is Canada. I tell them that. They have an english alter ego, one where the social rules are different, are westernized, in my classroom (English-only zone, no translation method in my classroom!).

I got a new grade 6 student last week and he was visably disappointed he wasn't going to get an English nickname. Why not? Because in two weeks the grade sixers at the hagwon are going on the middle school curriculum and I'll see them just one day a week, as first year middle schoolers, and I don't use English nicknames with them (I teach one middle school class a day at the end of my teaching day, each middle school class just once a week). Some of the middle school students I have taught since grade 5 and several of them have insisted I keep calling them by their English nicknames, have said "Please".

[VanIslander]

[samcheokguy]

113 kids. All look the same. Names? Forget it.

[VanIslander]

My first three and a half years teaching English here was at a hagwon on Geoje Island where there's a billion dollar shipyard industry thriving that filled up my two daily evening adult classes, one of them exclusively with shipyard workers, engineers and inspectors who work daily alongside (over 2000) European counterparts and customers.

The first thing they DEMANDED was that everyone get English nicknames. Why? I asked back in 2002. Because the best English speaking Koreans in their company already had English nicknames (probably spent time overseas) and the Europeans remembered their names quicker, spoke to them more often.

In international business, having a name that's easy to pronounce and remember is important.

I told them okay, but I said they'd have to give me a Korean name (they did, though they didn't use it much).

[aboxofchocolates]

My first hagwon gave the students English names. At first I hated it because it reminded me of missionary schools in North America that would rename the native kids they kidnapped and abused. I asked one of the (more jaded) fifth graders why she thought they had to have English names, and she said �to give us one more thing to learn.�

I just got used to it, so when I went to my next after school job I asked the kids in their first class if they had/wanted English names. Only one or two opted to use their Korean names, until I got a new batch of grade ones. I offered to give them English names, and there was a small revolution. Little first graders started drawing Korean flags in their notebooks and saying they were Korean people, not American people . I quickly retracted my offer and never mentioned it again. Occasionally one will tell me they have an English name, but I don�t want to rock the boat.

[VanIslander]

[Straphanger]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Using English names is completely pointless because no one else in the school knows whom you're talking about. 'Excuse me, Mr Lee, could you translate to Mrs Park that Madonna, a student in her homeroom, was five minutes late to English class but claimed she had a valid reason...'

[VanIslander]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[ciccone_youth]

My elementary school kids love their English names (that they picked)!

Sometimes they don't have one, so I name them after some of my friends back home. They seem to enjoy it.