Why Few Koreans Master English

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

(This an opinion piece by Ray Stevens in The Korea Times in response for this article.)

Once again Jon Huer has approached an issue of interest ―"Why Is English So Difficult for Koreans to Master?" (April 25) ― but, rather than grounding his thesis in real-world research (i.e. talking to students or teachers of English), he has wandered off into thickets of abstruse philosophizing leading to risible and unsupportable conclusions.

For example, Huer makes much of the social stratification embedded in Korean versus English egalitarianism. I have yet to meet a Korean, however young, who took longer than 30 seconds to grasp that English has only one second-person pronoun, you, which is used to address everyone from the president to a janitor.

Similarly, Huer contrasts "efficient, calm and factual" English with the han-ridden emotionalism of Koreans. One wonders if Huer has read Shakespeare, Faulkner or Albee (to name a few), who have plumbed the depths of pathos and psychic torment in English.

Enough. Here is why Koreans have difficulty mastering English.

1. The Korean educational style ― rote memorization and regurgitation ― may work well for math and science, but not for English. Not surprisingly, Koreans readily learn grammar and vocabulary, but are poor speakers. Speaking requires creativity, spontaneity and risk-taking: not the hallmarks of Korean education.

2. If quality English instruction exists anywhere in Korea, it is only in isolated classrooms with exceptional teachers. There is no general awareness of how English should be taught or what a quality program looks like; certainly not among public-school bureaucrats or hagwon (cram schools or private learning institutes).

Most native "English teachers" have no training in education or ESL. With government regulations barring British and American language schools from establishing branches here, Koreans have no exposure to quality instruction or know-how to recognize it.

3. Confucian roadblocks further hinder effective English instruction. In my first hagwon job, I found that every class had students of similar age but widely varying abilities (age is one element of status, and students dislike being in a class with younger children).

When I suggested grouping students by level, not age, a Korean teacher said, "Oh, we wouldn't do that." Hierarchy trumps efficiency, and learning suffers.

Other cultural roadblocks: the boss is king; a contract is just a piece of paper; appearance supersedes substance; the inability to plan or think ahead; what do you mean you can't teach eight hours straight?

4. English is crazy. Few languages sport roots as profuse and tangled as English (Celtic, Germanic, Latin, French, Spanish, etc.).

No sooner is a rule propounded than exceptions bury it. Pronunciation is haphazard: "ough" is pronounced differently in tough, trough, though and through. Articles (a/an/the) confound Koreans, whose mother tongue lacks them.

English is written three different ways ― lower-case, upper-case and cursive ― compared to Korean's unitary alphabet. Third-person singular verbs take "s" (I eat/He eats) for no logical reason.

Here is a spelling rule, pulled from today's lesson: "When the verb ends in a single consonant after a single short vowel, double the final consonant and add ed." The wonder is that even native speakers learn the language!

5. English has sounds Korean lacks, among them F, V, and the hard R (as in teacher). Korean students have trouble distinguishing between (and pronouncing) P, B, and V; R and L; D and T.

6. Koreans love numerical indices of rank and progress, fueling the cycle of constant testing. The time and effort students expend cramming for tests is largely wasted.

I once borrowed a Korean co-teacher's word list to review with our students; they cried, "But those are yesterday's words!" They had flushed them from memory to absorb the next list of words, in a meaningless cycle of wasted effort.

7. The dreaded "mothers mafia". Why parents who don't speak English presume to dictate how it should be taught is a mystery, but hagwon owners bow and tremble before maternal threats to take their children elsewhere.

Too little homework, too much homework, more grammar, more pronunciation ― the complaints never cease. Pages filled with red circles, and constant testing, constitute quality instruction in the Mafiosas' eyes, and schools bend to appease their ignorance.

Despite all these obstacles, I have met a number of Koreans with a strong mastery of English. They fall into three groups: (1) those who have lived in English-speaking countries for an extended period; (2) children of well-off families who have studied with native speakers from an early age; and (3) those who self-study by watching American movies.

That these Koreans have mastered English undercuts Huer's abstractions about hierarchy and emotionalism, and underscores that motivation and quality instruction are the keys to English mastery, in Korea or elsewhere.

The writer teaches English at a hagwon in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. He may be reached at rs2ray@yahoo.com.

Source

Comments

[heesica.livejournal.com]

This is a TON more logical than the other article.

[aabass89.livejournal.com]

yes. yes. and yes.
and it's generally the same method to learn/teach english practiced in my country. The english I grasped from middle/highschool was largely non existent. it's only after years of after school course that I had the basic knowledge of conversation...

[herro-kitty.livejournal.com]

"When the verb ends in a single consonant after a single short vowel, double the final consonant and add ed."
I hated when teachers explained grammar like that! I was just like give me an example plz!

Korean students have trouble distinguishing between (and pronouncing) P, B, and V; R and L; D and T.
I also noticed they have a problem with S, they pronounce it like SH sometimes: shupa junia, shupasta and sekshi. ^_^

[finchburg.livejournal.com]

LOL when I read that first one I paused to try and think of some examples quick. Stopped, spotted, matted...

[yourexsilly.livejournal.com]

I like his article infinitely more than the other article. English is a hard language to learn, and I feel bad for people who have to learn it.

[drumstick220.livejournal.com]

I think English is one of the hardest language to learn. In fact, I have yet to find another that was as complicated (Chinese is a very close second). Writing, reading and speaking it varies so much it's unbelievable!

In USA alone, pronouncing Worcester as "woo-ster" just boggles my mind.

I speak five languages and I am gonna start learning Spanish. I already know that Spanish will be a piece of cake compared to the ESL classes that I had :D

[iraia.livejournal.com]

try learning basque xDDD (that's my native language along with spanish)

But I THINK english is easy as long as you don't try to rationalize it. I get languages fast anyway BUT all i have ever done to learn is watch cartoons when i was a kid, listen to music, watch movies and so on. It's just... the educational style most of school grant is pretty useless. I swear I didn't learn a shit while i was still on school.

OH SNAP!

[cookie-nut.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad this pin-head got told.

These are all very reasonable logical answers, non of that Eurocentric, pseudo-philosophical bull crap.

Now I'm hoping someone will pwn the idiot over his fail concerning Korea and the internet.

[darenothope.livejournal.com]

I like this article better than the other one.

English is a hard language to learn. I'm really glad I didn't have to learn it as a second language. I think being a native English speaker learning Korean is much easier than the other way around.

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

"ough" is pronounced differently in tough, trough, though and through
SO TRUE. I think my parents have difficulty in that, rofl.

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

And never mind that one word can have two pronunciations/meanings like "wound" (wow-nd and woo-nd). English is effin' crazy.

I'm still a grammar nazi though (that's what I get for having an English teacher as a parent... also the crazy amount of reading I do).

[finchburg.livejournal.com]

I learned it in elementary school but I've barely used it since. My lowercase has morphed into a mix of cursive and print. Some letters, like g y t a, still are more or less cursive in that I write so they connect with the following letter but there are others like the lowercase r m b n z q... the weird ones that don't resemble the cursive much anymore at all.

We should do handwriting samples in the next FFA lolololol

[finchburg.livejournal.com]

5. English has sounds Korean lacks, among them F, V, and the hard R (as in teacher). Korean students have trouble distinguishing between (and pronouncing) P, B, and V; R and L; D and T.

I lul'd because I can't read that w/o thinking about the SS501 video.

This was a great article and much more logical and informative than the other tripe. I am hoping Huer writes a response, I'd love to see the back and forth and how he would ultimately get pwn'd every time.

[-ochre.livejournal.com]

This person seems to know the structure and linguistics of English and comparing it properly. Huer was just pulling ~cultural~ shit out of his ass.

[cookie-nut.livejournal.com]

That's because unlike Huer, this guy teaches it for a living. I'd like to know who told Huer he had the credentials to even have an opinion on the subject. :/

Obligatory

[-ochre.livejournal.com]

Re: Obligatory

[finchburg.livejournal.com]

Youtube is blocked but I know what this is and it makes me so happy! I need to download this video and put it on my iPod tonight so I can always watch it when an applicable post is made.

[mistakened.livejournal.com]

Somebody needs to print this article, tie it to a brick, and throw it at Huer's head.

[hoyah.livejournal.com]

:) this actually criticizes the way english is taught. demonstrating that there's nothing inherent about why a korean has a difficult time learning english. reasonable, well thought out argument, with points from a real life experience teaching english. jon huer, this is what you *should* be doing

[paperlet.livejournal.com]

I really want to go teach English in Korea through one of those programs, but I'm afraid I'd be a bad teacher. LOL Maybe I should just learn how to speak Korean, it sounds so pretty but complicated

[xradiostatic.livejournal.com]

thank you, thank you, thank you ray stevens. this dude knows what he's talking about. jon huer, go sit down somewhere.

Re: SUPERIOR WENTZ WOULD LIKE TO TEACH YOU ENGLISH

[bubblyshades.livejournal.com]

LMAO. That was for "Thursday"? I thought he was trying to spell "Saturday", lololol.

[bubblyshades.livejournal.com]

I love reading stuff like this. Language is so fascinating to me.

I really agree with number 3.

[beauty0fparting.livejournal.com]

oh god i know!!!... ia with this article so much!!! i lived in an asian country and most of these apply in my own country!!... my school uses the rote way too! most of the students then tend to make mistakes in tests after teachers rephrase the definitions in the tests...

and for number three!!! oh my! it's so true... my school then have sections for each year... students don't have different classes and move from one to another like American schools... they pretty much sit in one class and wait till a different teacher comes in for a different subject... (this means you're stuck with the same people from the beginning of class until you go home).. and everybody is classified by their age... if you fail a subject or two, instead of repeating the classes you flunked, you repeat the whole year... sucks right?..

Sorry for the super long post but this has been on my mind lately

[borninjeans.livejournal.com]

That is a very well written article, even from a native's point of view.
I'm a Korean Korean with an early childhood in the States, which made my first speaking language Korean and my first written and read language English. Since I've been taught English by the American system, I didn't have a clue on how my peers were learning the language and what difficulties they were experiencing until I started tutoring the child of a friend, who didn't want to send her daughter to a regular hagwon.
The American way of teaching doesn't work at all. She's just a kid, so it doesn't mean that she has these hangups that adults do, but the linguistics, formation and syntax of Korean is so naturally embedded in her brain that she just can't seem to grasp how to tackle words.
For instance, I will teach her "this is a notebook" and she's able to read, write and say it when I ask her to, but if I show her a flashcard with just "this" on it, she's stumped. Which means that she memorized the whole sentence visually, and not the words separately as components of a sentence; connecting that whole visual with the meaning itself.
Baffled by this, I asked friends my own age and it seems like most of them "learned" English the same way. I was absolutely flabbergasted. No wonder they have so many problems. I guess you have to be in the environment itself (like the writer above mentions - either abroad or immersed in virtual reality of TV programs) to be able to conquer this mentality.

Eeeeep. Sorry for the ramble. Came here to check out news of Junsu's accident (do y'all know that fans are quicker with news than the main Korean news and portals?) and went on a tangent here.

Re: Sorry for the super long post but this has been on my mind lately

[cityscripts.livejournal.com]

A little late to reply to this, but you made an interesting point. Maybe I'm ignorant, but I've always been baffled over how hard English is to native-Korean speakers but it seems as if it's more of the language structure than anything else. That is interesting.

And this article is much more logical than the previous one. And I make no sense here. *brain fail*

OT but:

[rawthorne.livejournal.com]

I think grammar should be thrown out of language learning entirely. I've never learned a language in class and I speak three of them. I think languages should be taught by speaking and reading and giving as much opportunity to use the language as possible. That's how we learn our native languages, by imitation. Why do we think a different route works better for foreign languages?

Re: OT but:

[hp-groupie.livejournal.com]

True. I had two years of Spanish in high school, but in some local cities in Texas, half of what you hear and see is Spanish...and I learned more there by reading and shoppping. I'm not fluent, but I think the best thing is to EXPERIENCE the language. Hence those who learn so much dramas/movies/etc. as well.

[patapoufe.livejournal.com]

4. English is crazy. Few languages sport roots as profuse and tangled as English (Celtic, Germanic, Latin, French, Spanish, etc.).

I agree with everything else but this. HELL NO not this. There are sixteen damn tenses in French, including one used only when writing in past tense (I'm not sure how common it is, but I do know that I had to learn it). Some tenses are even pronounced the same with certain subjects and have to be distinguished by context. As for the English way of adding an s to third-person singular, Almost every subject in French has a different ending, and then you add in the agreements, gender of the noun, and the fifteen billion exceptions.

God, someone shoot me.

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

Idk I think that the writer is right in that there are more exceptions in English grammar than in French (if you ever study for instance Italian you will notice that its grammar is very similar to that of French), also English has huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge vocabulary (though you don't probably need most of it like ever), however, I agree with you on that French is much harder to master than English, at least on spoken level. Anyway, grammatical order doesn't mean easiness, as for instance Finnish has extremely ordered grammar with very few exceptions, but still usually only little kids can learn to speak it properly (it's almost impossible for a foreigner to master 15 different cases of nouns)

[shanny-w.livejournal.com]

OWNED

[deazaskia.livejournal.com]

5. English has sounds Korean lacks, among them F, V, and the hard R (as in teacher). Korean students have trouble distinguishing between (and pronouncing) P, B, and V; R and L; D and T.

i hear 'love' spelled as 'lub' in many korean songs. haha.

i'm currently learning japanese, and it really is getting on my nerves. my english is broken, i never had a special course for it, and i still have no interest to attend any. haha.

hmmm next will be spanish or korean. my sensei said if u can do well in japanese then learning korean will be so much easier. i don't know what are the references for that yet. but as far as i know "bag" in both japanese and korean is the same, it's "kaban" (kabang). lulz.

and it's so lucky for those koreans who speak english fluently like the english news readers. :)

[ic70492.livejournal.com]

if you know either chinese or japanese or korean, it should make learning the other two slightly easier :)