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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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KoreanAmbition
Joined: 03 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:02 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.
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? |
Limited mental capacity? Come on, you've gotta be kidding.
You mean like the public bathroom signs that say "man". Because, ummm, it's only for ONE PERSON right? Because the 10 urinals are just so you can have a variety of choices of where to go?
You mean like the automated English information "tour guide" that describes every upcoming stop on the shuttles that ran around my previous university? The ones that put "the" in front of a street name? Geez, way to ingrain errors into the speech of students.
If you think native speakers were involved with checking those things you're sadly mistaken. If it was a native speaker, they hired someone who didn't give a rat's ass about the quality. That's possibly more likely. 1) they hired someone super cheap because all westerners are identical when it comes to English... 2) they hired a Korean that went overseas and got some PhD so that makes him/her equivalent to a native speaker... 3) some bigwig wanted to feel special so he hand-picked someone for the job trying to get in good with that person, and of course, just told them to make it "look" good, but don't really take it too seriously... 4) etc etc.
Did they fully outsource the product to a group that consisted of NO Koreans? Why do I say no Koreans should be involved? Why would Koreans be required to build the perfect English-speaking grammar robot? Why? So that they can "modify" the real English to make it "Konglish" so that children can understand it better?
It's a sad sad day when instead of telling kids to grow a sack and speak to someone with a different skin colour, you build a friggin robot to help them speak. But the "love stick", now that's okay. No need to worry about kids being scared of their homeroom teacher, but we'd better build robots if the English teacher seems menacing. I'm guessing the students are a lot more afraid of getting a nice "love stick" beating for some tiny trivial mistake than they are about big scary threatening white people.
As if this society isn't robotic enough as it is... now they're going to have robots as teachers. What a complete joke. And the BEST part is the following quote:
"she stands for progress, achievement and national pride." Yeah, everything that white people are NOT. Just another way to keep everything Korean.
Hmm, come to think about it... having robots teach the students might just be some secret way to train the students ahead of time for what to expect when they reach university.  |
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air76
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:09 am Post subject: Re: Resistance is Futile... |
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| egrog1717 wrote: |
| --> 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! |
This literally made me laugh out loud....I know that I paid my dues to get here, with a dong chim up my rump and a certain amount of playing Kindy monkey at the hagwon along the way.....but I am so glad that I teach at a university. There are challenges and frustrations there too, but this public school stuff sounds like a complete and utter farce.....a friend of mine told me that he had a falling out with his co-teacher and that she has done things as petty as HIDING his books before class!!! hahahahaha |
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air76
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:15 am Post subject: Re: Limited |
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| KoreanAmbition wrote: |
| Limited mental capacity? Come on, you've gotta be kidding. |
I am hoping that it was sarcasm...or perhaps he/she is one of the actors from Surprise! and he/she took offense.
I figured out why they write MAN on the bathroom door a few months ago...it's because on the glass doors it reads "NAM" on the other side...sure, the N is backwards, but that way it looks more Korean.
Once they replace the NETs with Engkey, they can hire these Rockem Sockem Robots to save money on beating the hell out of kids who can't memorize 1,000,000 words fast enough:
http://uthpstr.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/rockem-sockem-robots-game.jpg |
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NYC_Gal
Joined: 08 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:26 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.
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? |
...and neither write nor correct them, just like the textbook.
Native speaker: "Um... This is wrong. It should be ___."
Mr. Kim: "No. It is correct. We had a foreigner check it. Read it or no pay." |
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egrog1717
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:16 am Post subject: Re: Resistance is Futile... |
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| air76 wrote: |
| egrog1717 wrote: |
| --> 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! |
This literally made me laugh out loud....I know that I paid my dues to get here, with a dong chim up my rump and a certain amount of playing Kindy monkey at the hagwon along the way.....but I am so glad that I teach at a university. There are challenges and frustrations there too, but this public school stuff sounds like a complete and utter farce.....a friend of mine told me that he had a falling out with his co-teacher and that she has done things as petty as HIDING his books before class!!! hahahahaha |
One of my less competent co-teachers once came into our class of grade 5 students and told them to write the alphabet 5 times... That was her entire lesson plan for 40 minutes worth of class...
With PS jobs it's really really the luck of the draw - Admin, Handler, Co-Teacher, Apartment... Lots that can go either really right or really wrong... |
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Troglodyte
Joined: 06 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:20 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
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.....
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Hilarious. I love that. |
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