Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ladyandthetramp]

I remember when I studied French in high school. After the first year, the teacher spoke a combination of French and English during class. By the third year, the teacher almost exclusively spoke French. This was the same with other languages I studied in high school.

In Korea, however, the teachers continue to speak Korean even after the students have been studying English for 10 years. I have met some English teachers with excellent English abilities who claim they don't want to teach the students the wrong expressions. These teachers had great accents and made about two mistakes per hour. This is hardly anything to worry about and definitely doesn't outway the benefits of allowing the students to listen to English for one hour everyday.

Admittedly, I've also met other English teachers that have good reason not to speak in English when they teach.

Just a short rant.

[peppermint]

I've gotta wonder iif the Canadian approach to second languages ( French) is ideal, cause god knows it left me with a lingering hatred of the language. That said, I think it's a helluva lot more effective than the Korean approach, where students "study" for two years before they're allowed to try writing it. (that's seriously what is expected in elementary schools)

[marista99]

[Real Reality]

Remember These Two Points:
1. Treasure Must Be Protected
2. English May Cause Mental Damage

In its ruling on the case in which Korean language-related organizations and Korean language scholars filed a compensation lawsuit against Kookmin Bank (KB) and Korea Telecommunications (KT) for causing mental damage to those who love the Korean language by writing companies' names only in English on their billboards, the Seoul Central District Court said, "Those companies broke a law stating that outdoor billboards should be written both in a foreign language and Korean, but they do not have any responsibility for compensating individuals whose pride in the Korean language is damaged because the pride is a social legal benefit." The court also said, "KB and KT violated a law requiring that outdoor billboards be written both in a foreign language and Korean side by side in a similar size, by writing their names only in English or in both languages, but with Korean in a much smaller size than English."
Chosun Ilbo
August 12, 2004
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200408/200408120042.html

[tomato]

Hello, Lady and the Tramp!

There seems to be a myth that error correction is more important than practice.

I asked one of the Korean teachers why they don't speak English among themselves. She said that it was risky to practice English if there is no native speaker present to correct mistakes. According to this argument, uncorrected mistakes would become engrained, so more harm than good would result.

I told her that the most successful music students are the ones who practice the most, even though the music teacher is not present to correct mistakes.

She didn't have a comeback for that.

[Badmojo]

It's all about face. Let's not lie to ourselves. Why didn't the Korean English teachers speak more to me in English? Because they were afraid to make mistakes. That's stupid, I said. But we are English teachers, we shouldn't make mistakes. That's it. That's what it's at.