Korean Job Discussion Forums

[flotsam]

Prelude

I get along very well with my co-teachers, professionally and personally, I like Korea, can speak Korean pretty well and plan to make it a large part of my ongoing graduate studies.

OK. So this week started with my primary co-teacher and I sharing some news from the paper, as it usually does. I told her about the Joongang Daily article from Monday that announced the phrase "Danil Minjok" would be removed from school textbooks. She looked like I shot her puppy. But then, for all her kindness and skill, she is a wacked-out Evangelical, both for Christianity and Korea. (She just finished several months of petitioning pedestrians in Seoul to embrace Jesus--it's required by her church). So that pretty much set the tone for what happened today.

Which was, the new teacher-trainee asked me to help her with her Demo Lesson, which has to be done solely in English, because, as we all know, the Korean English teachers give all instruction in the L2. So, I was helping her edit her exciting lesson plan--making origami chickens and then composing dialogs with them--also the kind of thing that goes on every day in the Korean classroom: all well-modeled, realia-based TPR, all the time; no standing static in the front, Konglish pronunciation-based book lectures going on around here ...and we came across the phrase "folding paper". As in

Students will now do folding paper.

At which point she asked me how to better express that in English. And, of course, I told her we use the word "origami". And she said, "I know but Mrs. C won't let me use it because it is Japanese. She told me to ask you for the real English."

Now, I have been here long enough to know better than to get into the "it is real English once is has become a loan word" non-debate, so I simply said, "Well that's what it is in English. You can use 'Paper-folding' if you like, but it doesn't doesn't sound very natural. It's like calling a croissant a crescent-shaped pastry." She agreed, and wanted to try one more time with the teacher-tutor, Mrs. C (who is a crack co-teacher as well, I am quite lucky at my school).

Well, they both came back and Mrs. C said, "Look, can't you just think of a name? Make something up?" And I kind of laughed. I mean, I am not surprised when otherwise open-minded Koreans finally display their nationalism in some way, but come on. Getting whitey to help close the kids minds? But, knowing better than to argue, I said I would think about it.

So, I looked up Origami on Wikipedia and found that:

[tomato]

The first time I used that naughty word, I was not understood.

I noticed that one of my kindergarten students was interested in paper-folding, and I wanted to take advantage of the teachable moment.
So I went to the bookstore and asked, "�������� å �ֽ��ϱ�?"
The clerk frowned in puzzlement.
I picked up a piece of paper and mimicked folding the paper.
The clerk smiled and said, "�ƾƾƾ�! ��������!"