Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Saunagukin]

I thought I remember reading an article in the newspaper(I thought it was the Herald) relating English ability to spending. Something like Korea spends the most money on private English education, but has the lowest speaking ability in Asia.

I found TOEIC scores from 2003 with Korea higher than Japan, but no spending stats.

I'm looking for a link to the actual article. Anyone know where it is?

Thanks.

[excitinghead]

Hi, no link sorry, but I cut it out of the Guardian Weekly, a British newspaper for expats, maybe about a year and a half ago. It's only a paragraph long, and I'm a pretty zippy typist, so here it is in full:

"Korea is the biggest spender on private tutoring, but is among the countries with the lowest English-language skills in the world, according to a recent report ranking nations across 203 economic and social segments. The Korea Herald (I guess you were right about the paper) reported that Korea topped the list in terms of its expenditure for private tutoring, which accounted for 2.73% of GDP. However, the report also showed that Korea ranked 110th in terms of the average score in the Toefl test."

Okay, all together now..." Whoah! I didn't see THAT one coming"

Cheers

[Saunagukin]

Great. Thanks.

[jaganath69]

what totally amazes me is that on my frequent trips to Indonesia I find the level of English there to be remarkably high, despite the fact that their education budget is so low.

[SPINOZA]

[Gord]

[billybrobby]

man...as teachers, you guys are really stinking it up. hahaha.

[excitinghead]

You have a good point about the mandatory testing bringing the average scores down Gord, I didn't think of it like that, and in hindsight the article IS pretty sensationalist.

Despite that, you'd probably agree that the money spent on English teaching here is way out of proportion to Korean's average English ability, right? Whatever it's real ranking in Toefl scores, showing that rank alongside that 2.73% figure is one of the things I'd like every Korean parent to see.

Why more money thrown at it doesn't equal better English ability in Korea is probably directly or indirectly covered by 75% of the posts here, so I won't delve into that, but I can't help but give one anecdote that summed up the whole issue up for me:

Last year in a business class one night I had I only had one student turn up, a middle-aged boss of a company, and usually I hate one-on-ones but he was pretty cool, very intelligent, near fluent, and with funny stories, so we got chatting...and then he casually mentioned that he paid someone (a Korean) something like 60,000 won a month (no, really) to call his son 2 times a week to chat in English for about 5-10 mins a time.

He sort of grudgingly admitted that it was so short that maybe it wasn't all that useful...but as for my suggestion that why didn't he himself spend 5 mins with his son instead of the phone guy, he seriously just couldn't handle that concept and looked at me like I was from another planet.

I know, I know, just one guy, I shouldn't generalise, but after finding out that one of smartest coolest Koreans I ever met thought about learning English like that I basically gave up trying to change my student's learning habits from then on...

Cheers,

P.S. Kinda reminds me of "Closing Time", the sequel to Catch 22, where one of the characters describes his shock when he found out that many of his intelligent friends were diehard Republican voters!

[Summer Wine]

[I_Am_Wrong]

1) That stat is flawed. It says the amount that is spent on "private tutoring" ie. tuition outside of public school. It doesn't say English "private tutoring," therefore, it is more than likely that this amount is being placed out of context and would include math, social studies, science, Korean, English, piano, computers etc. English is only a very small chunk of the private tutoring pie and I'd be more than willing to bet a month's pay that more money is spent on math tutoring.

2) People who say English levels are higher in Indonesia or Thailand or ful of shit. People who have learned basic English as a means of survival do not equate to higher levels of English among the general population. They know English cuz they wanna sell shit to the throngs of tourists they see every day. Try having a conversation with them beyond anything basic and you might as well be talking to a brick wall.

[kimchi-king]

[ajuma]

[/quote]

I had a similar experience, I had a mother come and ask me what she could do to improve her childs english. I mentioned that maybe if he could read, he might be able to understand the books better. She looked at me as if I was crazy and said, I think converstation and listening is important, not reading. [/quote]

Oh, do I agree with you here!!!!! So many of my students have asked me how to improve their English and when I've recommended reading, they've looked at me like I'm crazy! I tell them that if they think about it, they can learn a lot of grammar by reading English books. They can "internalize" the language without having to slug away at grammar books. When they ask for book recommendations, I suggest those cheesy "romance novels". They're only 100 pages long or so, and use a lot of idioms, slang, and REAL English. They guys usually balk, but a few of the girls have gotten into them.

Any ideas as to a) where they can get these novels cheaply and b) what can I recommend to the guys?

[Summer Wine]

Depending on age, I saw pokemon books written in english. But for older people, maybe those cheesy western cowboy books for men instead of romance novels. Maybe you could talk to your boss and see if they could create a library by asking libraries overseas to send thier old books. They are still readable and will teach more words than we can in our time here.

Its just an idea. Maybe see if certain english speaking countries have funds and books to promote. Still learning.

[ed4444]

Where is Real Reality when you need him?