Korean Job Discussion Forums

[The evil penguin]

Okay, todays topic in the (very crap) texbook in my middle-school conversation class was about tourism. The so-called discussion question was "discuss what tourists in your country might find unique and exciting".

soooooo..... i thought i'd try a different question.... After giving examples of camel riding in the desert, bungy jumping, snowboarding, surfing, shopping in new-york (for the girls), laying on the beaches in tahiti and other examples ranging from relaxing to stroke-inducing exhilarating I asked "if you could travel to any country or place (i even introduced the concept of space tourism to really get the imaginations kicking) and do anything.... stressing that finance is not an issue... and that you could go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING (using imagination)............... what would you do?"

The reply from every one of the students....... "Go PC Bang"....

In frustration i mentioned this to the korean teachers during the break while they were all de-oiling their faces with paper squares....
They kinda shrugged and said that maybe the students liked playing computer games.. I then put the question to them..... again stressing that they could do ANYTHING, ANYWHERE........... Without fail, the awnswer from all three was.... "Stay home.... sleep..."


ARRRRRGHHHHHH!!! Whats wrong with these people!!!!!!!!!!

[joe_doufu]

1. They are all crushed under the gigantic stone wheel that is the Korean way of life, and the most important thing to them is relief of stress.

2. The children literally don't know anything outside their home, bus, and school, except the PC bang, maybe a basketball court, and the movie theater. Going to a foreign country sounds like hard work to them. They probably think their tour guide would force them to chant the names of all the places they'd seen, and memorize the historical details for an exam back at the hotel.

3. The adults have heard vaguely of places such as Hawaii and New York, but as adult Korean women their lives have progressed from potentially meaningless and horrible to almost-definitely meaningless and horrible. I wouldn't be surprised to hear they'd like to go home and down a bottle of sleeping pills.

[Naruto]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Since that approach didn't work as planned (and I hate when that happens), maybe try something like saying they were going to spend two weeks in Spain. What would you do? Give every pair a different location.

[denverdeath]

[Corporal]

[ajuma]

Korean students basically have the "imagination" gene knocked out of them by the time they're in 4th or 5th grade. Ask 10 kindys to draw a dog and you'll get 10 different dogs. By the 5th grade, out of 10 kids, 8 or 9 will draw the SAME dog! Memorization/being the same is King! Creativity is OUT.

[The evil penguin]

[denverdeath]

T.E.P.,

Ever do some kind of (Internet) pen-pal thing with 'em? Might be a way to enhance their use of/interest in computers with getting them to see and talk to some people from other nations. Might also help your travel topic a bit. It worked quite well for a teacher before me and I'm thinking of using the same with my students. Or, maybe get them to make a week-long itinerary for a visitor, who hates computers, to Korea. Show 'em some of the good stuff from other places and try to get them to show some of the good stuff here.

[I_Am_Wrong]

[peppermint]

to the OP- next time keep it simple. I bet if you'd asked them WHERE they'd like to go, you'd have gotten a few different answers- everyone knows the name of a few countries after all. What they'd like to do might require full sentences, and that's just too much work as far as they're concerned.

I suspect that it's not so much that the creativity is beaten out of them in elementary school ( fairly sure that's left to middle school). What I see is that the less confident kids just follow the pack, rather than risk being creative more as the kids get older

[rumpolestitskin]

1) tell them that the back wall is the 'Thinking Wall'.
2) Select five male students. Demonstrate the invisible chair stress position and get them to adopt that position.
3) Laugh and smile while doing it to make it a little fun for them. The students after thirty seconds will be competing with each other to see whose the strongest.
4) The one who knows he's about to drop will not want to loose face and will shout out a semi decent answer.
5) Let him sit down.
6) Get remainding students to put out hands.
7) Pick on one of them and place some books on hands.
8 ) When a couple more shout out answers let them all sit down.

Might sound a bit harsh on the students to the western mind, but you'd be surprised how much they enjoy the physical competition. The key is to laugh and smile while doing it all so that it doesn't seem like a punishment to them. The problem is that if your not careful students in future classes will deliberatly not give answers so they can compete against freinds.

Just make sure its fun for the students else your'll be on the long slippy path to hatred.

[ajuma]

[Corporal]

[pegpig]

YES SIR!!! er....ma'am