Korean Students

 

Well I figure I should be posting more information about what I do here in Korea and what it is like to be a teacher in the “land of morning calm.” As an English teacher, like many of my comrades here, I have been tossed head over heels into a position with little explanation about teaching methods and information about the school. As rapidly as I recieved the job (2 days after applying for it) I was thrust into teaching by a woman who can barely speak English into a school whose teacher’s materials are all written to the teacher in Korean. At first it felt like I was just told “go do it” and some magical form of osmosis would transmit English to the children from my valuable Canadian university education. To say the least, it did not and has not happened like that at all, Teaching is difficult!

I feel everyday like the supply teacher in junior high where the kids come up with sadistic games to play on me and try as best they can to ignore me. Don’t get me wrong I have several classes that I teach with no problem and they love and treat me really well. I will say that my first week shattered any myths about “hard working studious Asians” I may have harboured, Korean children are just like children in Canada in every respect. Some of these students make me think of friends of mine when I was young, some make me think of enemies I have had, but this is all made more complicated as I do not speak the language well.

I have found many ways of keeping the student’s attention through making the readings, from books I forced the director to buy,  seem more relevant (how I hate this word, what is not relevant?)  and humourous, realizing that I had to keep things simple and repetative for foreign language speakers. I am constantly confronted by the terrible method of Korean, and Japanese, education which is to force something into a student’s head by constant droning repetition. Nothing sinks into your head this way it only ever burns into your short-term memory only to be erased a few weeks after the test is over. Needless to say, this is no way to learn a language! Another problem is that Koreans are given a Korean short hand version of English to start them off which handicaps students as they continue their education. In Korean one cannot say F, X, V, Th, Z or end things in a consonant, also most consonants are not compatible in Korean so when speaking English an “eu” is slipped in between consonants. So what ends up happening is that F becomes P, X becomes Ch, Th becomes S, Z becomes a hard J and consonant pairs get split and consonant endings get vowels added to them. Here is what some words sound like: Seuteurawberry, Keuriseumaseu, Hoteu, Joshi, Lettuseu, Viruseu. These form a huge obstacle with which I fight daily.

One hilarious and very imperialist thing about teaching here in Korea is the fact that teachers have to invent names of an English persuasion for the students. This is humourous because most children forget the spellings of their names and do not use them outside of Hagwon (private english school). I think is is incredibly odd considering the Koreans fought against the Japanese renaming of Koreans explored so vividly in the novel “Lost Names” but are willing to have their children given English names. I can see that it is hard to remember Korean names they are all so similar and difficult to pronounce but a name is a name and people should really stick by them. So to mock this system I have given the kids really funny names because they are easy to remember and make me laugh at the absurdity of calling them invented names. So I have students I named Optimus Prime, The Weed, The Brain, Princess Leah, Yoda, Golum, Spark, Super Mario, Doctor Roboto, Jenga, HeMan, Stalin, Ghostface, Shyness, Captain Hook, Peter Pan, John Lenon, Ringo, Eureka, Tito and many more which I get a chuckle out of daily.

On another note I have the trouble of dealing with a WonJonNim, a korean boss. She feels I am a piece of her property and my bum is an object to slapped weekly. I do not mind her terribly but I do have trouble with her version of communicating in broken English, which makes her resort to “you are a always a so happys and I likes very muchs de yous Joshi” and a slap on the ass while she gets back to her work. This is an odd relationship but better than what most are subject to here in Korea, Korean bosses are absolute and quite authoritarian. There is a reason Kin Jong Il is in control in the north! But my relationship with Won Jon Nim is okay and overall she is a funny if overly greedy person.

The students have begun to take to me but still manage to find endless distractions and time wasting methods which start trouble with me quite often but kids are kids where ever they are. My students are numerous but on the whole pretty good people. What this experience with Korean children has highlighted for me is that I do not want to have children so soon, and if I do they better not be assholes and I pray they are not stupid. The thing I have learned the most form these students is that patience must be maintained on the part of a teacher and that a teacher can not show when they are being upset. Oh and I have learned a lot of Korean language from these kids they are a cute and funny people with endless energy. I do enjoy my job and think I can handle it for a year longer but when I get back a key bonus will be communicating with students in my own language, something that I am sure I will be strong at after having endured five months of half communicating with 126 Korean children.