Why Few Koreans Master English
2009-05-04 06:43 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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omonatheydid(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
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
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Date: 2009-05-04 07:55 pm (UTC)