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egrog1717
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
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 Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 1:33 am Post subject: Resistance is Futile... |
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All you can do is shake your head and laugh... Because hiring foreign teachers is breaking the bank, but millions spent on developing robots to replace us will solve everything!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/science/11robotside.html?_r=1
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Enter Engkey, a teacher with exacting standards and a silken voice. She is just a little penguin-shaped robot, but both symbolically and practically, she stands for progress, achievement and national pride. What she does not stand for, however, is bad pronunciation.
�Not good this time!� Engkey admonished a sixth grader as he stooped awkwardly over her.
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^---- Guess they forgot to hire an NSET to teach the robot English...
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| �They all loved robots. They get shy before a foreign native speaker, afraid to make mistakes,� Ms. Kim said. �But they find robots much easier to talk to.� |
^---- Didn't you know? International business is being taken over by robots, so don't worry about haiving students becoming used to hanging out with foreigners...
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| �Engkey has a long way to go if it wants to avoid becoming an expensive yet ignored heap of scrap metal at the corner of the classroom,� said Ban Jae-chun, an education professor at Chungnam National University. |
^---- Sounds kinda like half the crap my school buys me anyway without asking me before hand whether or not we'll actually make use of it in the classroom...
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| For now, though, Engkey�s limits quickly become apparent. Hahn Yesle, who participated in the recent demonstration, said: �Engkey is fun. But she is not human. Repeating the same dialogue is what she does. I wish she would become more expressive and responsive, like a human teacher.� |
^---- Hrrrm.... Kinda sounds like what I do with some of my co-teachers who don't understand the CO of co-teaching...
(Was a bad week at school... My handler is an idiot... Needed to vent at something  ) |
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air76
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 1:52 am Post subject: |
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I'm sure that they've got some real quality English speakers working on those scripts as well....maybe they'll hire the Russian actors from "Surprise!" to train Engkey.
I can't wait for the mothers to pour into the hagwon screaming, wondering why their kids are being taught by the short and fat white and blue Engkey instead of the taller, thinner, yellow and green Engkey.
There is another invention that can be used to practice scripts that costs well below $30,000....it's called a book. |
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air76
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 1:54 am Post subject: Re: Resistance is Futile... |
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| egrog1717 wrote: |
| My handler is an idiot... |
Is this really what they call the person who helps the NET? (I have never worked with a co-teacher before) It sounds more like the word we use to describe someone who can control Boris, the silver back gorilla at the zoo. |
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creeper1
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:19 am Post subject: Limited |
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Those posters on here saying that they forgot to get a native speaker to programme are of really limited mental capacity. Of course they would have got someone with a crystal clear and nice accent to speak the phrases into this robot. After all they are spending a lot of money on this thing.
As a policy measure though they would be better off getting the current K teachers better at English. After all I thought that was their plan? Aren't PS teachers supposed to be shown the door in 2012? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:23 am Post subject: |
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I bet they can't make one as pretty and intelligent as my Alice!
http://bit.ly/cInbAJ
Just updated the programming and changed questions. Also, told her to be a little less polite.....
DD
http://eflclassroom.com[/url] |
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air76
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:39 am Post subject: Re: Limited |
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| creeper1 wrote: |
| Those posters on here saying that they forgot to get a native speaker to programme are of really limited mental capacity. Of course they would have got someone with a crystal clear and nice accent to speak the phrases into this robot. After all they are spending a lot of money on this thing. |
This is either great satire or you really haven't been paying that great of attention in your time in Korea.
Yes, they probably did, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that they didn't...and it is VERY possible, almost probable, that the scripts were written by some ajoshi and any native speaker hired to do the reading had zero input with regards to correcting these dialogs to sound more natural.
| New York Times wrote: |
| �Not good this time!� Engkey admonished a sixth grader as he stooped awkwardly over her. |
Not good this time! Yeah, that's a phrase I use all the time in my classes. |
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KoreanAmbition
Joined: 03 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:40 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel,
You've posted many other useful things on this site in the past.
But unfortunately, this time... I'm less than "not impressed at all".  |
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egrog1717
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:47 am Post subject: Re: Limited |
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| air76 wrote: |
| creeper1 wrote: |
| Those posters on here saying that they forgot to get a native speaker to programme are of really limited mental capacity. Of course they would have got someone with a crystal clear and nice accent to speak the phrases into this robot. After all they are spending a lot of money on this thing. |
This is either great satire or you really haven't been paying that great of attention in your time in Korea.
Yes, they probably did, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that they didn't...and it is VERY possible, almost probable, that the scripts were written by some ajoshi and any native speaker hired to do the reading had zero input with regards to correcting these dialogs to sound more natural.
| New York Times wrote: |
| �Not good this time!� Engkey admonished a sixth grader as he stooped awkwardly over her. |
Not good this time! Yeah, that's a phrase I use all the time in my classes. |
Thank you for posting exactly what was running through my mind as I read that poster's comment... lol
At least they didn't teach the damn thing "Don't take off your shoes, we don't take off our shoes in the house"... |
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egrog1717
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 2:56 am Post subject: Re: Resistance is Futile... |
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| air76 wrote: |
| egrog1717 wrote: |
| My handler is an idiot... |
Is this really what they call the person who helps the NET? (I have never worked with a co-teacher before) It sounds more like the word we use to describe someone who can control Boris, the silver back gorilla at the zoo. |
If I had some respect for the woman I might call her my head co-teacher... She's often woefully unprepared for class (comes late, doesn't have all of her materials ready, isn't sure how to use the materials she brings, etc)... She has no sense of classroom management (tries to give instructions when 2/3rds of the class are still talking after walking in the room)... Forgets to tell me about scheduling changes until 20 minutes after they happen... And generally has no common sense...
Such useful questions from her about our Summer camp:
"Do you think we can limit the students numbers that come to camp?"
--> She's in charge of planning it... Why is she asking ME this?
"When you teach painting class, will you teach colours?"
--> No, I'm going to teach the kids to paint with numbers instead of by number... Okay kids! Colour all of the shapes with the number three, four!
As a test I decided that we should have a movie day for the last day of our camp... Only I called it a "Cultural Movie Day" on my lesson plan outline that I gave to her... When she asked me what cultural movie we would watch, I said Toy Story 2 so that we could teach the students about the culture of toys... Her response was to tell me that she thought that was a really good idea... lol |
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