Here I am in the cover story for last week’s Hankyoreh 21 magazine talking about it with three other foreigners.
-
English Books on Korea... and More!
-
Visit My Brother's Film Review Site
In Case You Didn’t Know How I Feel About English Education in Korea…
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on February 16, 2008 at 7:12 pm, filed under Korean Culture, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
39 Comments
‘강미노(32·독일인) 서울대 정치학과 박사과정’
what kind of name is that for a german guy?
It’s not his actual name, Pawi.
Looks like you’re talking more about Korean than English, judging from that link, Robert.
But I think the entire debate about English in this country totally misses the essence of the problem…and that is the issue of the MINDSET of the Koreans toward learning English. They are not first taught to learn the WHY (I must learn English) and then develop some passion for it. All they see is scores on paper….
There is no lateral thinking about learning English….it is only the appearances and ritual that count. As long as they are SEEN to be doing the right thing to please their parents or employers….who have the same old mindset anyway. So who cares? A vicious circle of course. After 6 years here in Seoul I have yet to see a Korean reading an English newspaper on the subway….aaaaaah sleep!!
Why is it a mystery that a xenophobic people does not learn languages well?
Robert, I never realized how much you have come to resemble Jeffrey Jones.
Ouch!
Speaking of Jeffrey Jones, who the hell did he piss-off to get the ire of the national tax service?
Dogbert, you ought to be banned for that comment!
Don’t have much to say about the article itself, but the headline of the article seems pretty inflammatory to me… It’s almost as if Hankyeorae wants readers to go ‘omg how dare foreigners say that about korea!’, which is pretty much what hankyeorae specializes in.
Ms. Jang is correct that Chinese and English share the same SVO syntax, which facilitates fluency acquisition. However, Chinese pronunciation is not similar to English. “F” is a shared phoneme, but “th” does not exist in either Mandarin or Cantonese, and probably not in any Chinese dialect as it is a rare phoneme. Whereas Korean has a number of final consonant phonemes, most of which have English equivalents, Mandarin has only two final consonant phonemes, “n” and “ng.” Singaporeans carry this feature over into English, creating the clipped final consonants distinct to Singlish. Moreover, Chinese syllable tone is rather different from English sentence intonation. Non-fluent Chinese speakers of English sound like a ping pong ball bouncing randomly on a table. Whenever I had difficulty understanding a Chinese speaker of English, the problem was almost always pronunciation; with Korean speakers, it was usually word choice or usage errors.
Don’t have much to say about the article itself, but the headline of the article seems pretty inflammatory to me… It’s almost as if Hankyeorae wants readers to go ‘omg how dare foreigners say that about korea!’, which is hardly surprising since xenophobia and nationalism are what hankyeorae specializes in.
totally off-topic, except for being an English translation, I guess, the old Bank of Korea building near Namdemun appears to be a Muslim bank now. Is that true?
why do people generalize so much on here? sure, koreans are easier to paint with the same brush than other cultures, but it just becomes so tired after a while. it has almost become a close minded view that we are so much more open minded than koreans.
ZZOOzzoo, I don’t think any regular readers of Hankyoreh21 would think in the way you described in your comment. I think some of the best news magazine articles on Korean nationalism and xenophobia available in Korean are from Hankyoreh21, though I agree with you that Hankyoreh Newspaper used to have a slightly nationalistic attitude compared to its cousin. I don’t know how this remains true now. I hope you read the article itself, not just the title..
“Ms. Jang is correct that Chinese and English share the same SVO syntax, which facilitates fluency acquisition.”
Well, English has other word orders (OSV…This I can’t do)…but SOV is indeed the marked order.
It is wrong to claim that a similarity in word order clearly facilitates the acquisition of a language. It’s a common misconception that is finds its root in comparative linguistics, not language acquisition theory. Just because two languages have comparable features does not necessarily mean that these similarities facilitate the acquisition. I won’t get into details, but when you consider that the same argument can be made of the differences that exist between to languages, you’ll understand that the assertion is not necessarily true to all learners all the time.
“‘강미노(32·독일인) 서울대 정치학과 박사과정’
what kind of name is that for a german guy?”
Hmm… So, is a Korean any less Korean if his given name is David, Jason, or Jenny?
@#14:
Do you have research to support your claim. I don’t, but I do have experience learning Spanish and German alongside English speakers and Chinese and Japanese alongside Korean speakers. In my experience in beginning level classes, the Koreans were faster on the draw in responding while I was quicker in Chinese. I think this is because beginners tend to think in their native languages and translate into the target language. This is easier to do if the languages have the same basic syntax. Yonsei’s Korean Language Institute reformatted their 6-level curriculum into an 8-level curriculum because non-Japanese speakers had difficulty keeping up with Japanese and heritage speakers. Nearly all of my Japanese language learning materials are in Korean because it’s easier to learn Japanese through Korean than through English since most grammar parts have a one-to-one correspondence, in addition to the large body of cognates.
The US Defense Language Institute Aptitude Battery classifies the foreign languages taught into four levels of difficulty. Western European languages are clustered into level 1 while Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese require the most instruction to master. I suspect Chinese is a level 4 because of mastery of characters.
Should read: In my experience in beginning level classes, the Koreans were faster on the draw in responding in Japanese while I was quicker in Chinese.
:Do you have research to support your claim. I don’t, but I do have experience learning Spanish and German alongside English speakers and Chinese and Japanese alongside Korean speakers.:
I’ve got several articles and books that discuss this, but I really don’t want to spend the time looking for one particular quote. Google ‘positive transfer’ or ‘negative transfer’ along with ‘L1′ and ‘L2′, instead. It’s quite an interesting topic, actually.
I did google and found that Dr. Terrence Odlin’s Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic Influence in Language Learning is a frequently cited reference. It is available in Google books online. Language transfer, both positive and negative, does exist, and Dr. Odlin specifically wrote a chapter about syntax and word order. Generally, native language word order does influence acquisition of target language word order although similarities and differences do not always explain speaker choices.
So… Did they pick the photos to specifically make you two look like you were on trial?
My experience currently working in China is that Chinese generally do learn English better than either Koreans or japanese, and with access to fewer resources in terms of money and hagwons.
Gansu province is pretty poor, but I continue to meet people who have phenomenally good English, and they are not the least bit shy about using it. It surprises me when I learn that I’m the first native speaker they’ve ever met.
I’d throw out the comment that Chinese being a tonal language equips people with better ears.
Every time the topic draws down to the faculty of language, this blog becomes completely fucking boring.
Amen to #22, and I’ve got some letters after my name (Piled Higher and Deeper) in the field. When I want to read about linguistics or language acquisition theory, this is not where I do it.
“Generally, native language word order does influence acquisition of target language word order although similarities and differences do not always explain speaker choices.”
As I was saying, for some it makes things easier and for others it doesn’t. In in the case, for my students, it makes things worse…at least when it comes to English loan-words in Korean and the influence they have on the acquisition of new English vocabulary.
#24 Who the fuck cares?
Nearly all of my Japanese language learning materials are in Korean because it’s easier to learn Japanese through Korean than through English since most grammar parts have a one-to-one correspondence, in addition to the large body of cognates.’
and yet, you tried to argue with me once that japanese and korean grammar weren’t, for all practical purposes, identical to one another.
No, they are not identical. They are similar. Identical and similar are distinct words.
石鹅,
你应学习学习孔子的理论：“最要紧的是正名罗”
‘Identical and similar are distinct words.’
yes, that’s true but in the case of japanese and korean grammars, they are indentical FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES. did you read that part? you can say manchu grammar is similar to korean so saying k and j grammar are similar would really gives the wrong impression, wouldn’t it?
But Korean has pronounciation that is more similiar to Chinese than Japanese. Also, there is more non-Chinese based vocabulary in present-day Japanese than in present day Korean.
Any of you language acquisition pros think this is any good?
http://chinesepod.com/
I’ve heard good things about Chinese Pod, but I’m too cheap to try it. You can find out more from one of the hosts, John Pasden, at Sinosplice, linked in the Asia blog list.
#21 — I was thinking the same thing. I’ve noticed that in at least half of the articles where furriners are interviewed in the local media, the pictures always seem to be less than flattering. Eyes half closed, mouth open mid-speech, wrinkled expression, etc.
I don’t observe such tendencies in the western media, but I’m sure I don’t scrutinize it as hard either..
The whole article is Bullshit.
When a Korean and a Chinese meet, they use English. Even if it is a broken English, it is a great tool. The same is true when a Korean business man meets a Japanese.
English is an international language.
LMB is a smart man and this acceleration in English education will make a Dutch out of every Korean; he can go and conduct business everywhere in the world.
Korean ambition is to make goods in China and sell them in Europe and America (both North and South).
The vital requirement is English!
Actually this is a great opportunity for Koreans to beat the Chinese and the Japanese.
Just like a cell phone or internet game software.
The Japanese should be speaking better English than they do now. But, they had some Nationalist pigs who stopped English education and made students memorize Kimigayo instead.
So, they are stuck at pidgen English, making all Asians look bad.
Koreans will be the first Asian country where the educated will speak good English, with no strong accent. Koreans are smarter than the Japanese and the Chinese and they will make it happen.
As I wrote before, Koreans have good potential to become the most internationalized country in the East, once they free themselves from Commie ideology.
And, speaking good English, Koreans will gain respect in the West.
An Interview with Hankyoreh 21?
I thought you don’t like “hani” people.
I dunno, baduk…them Chinee are pretty smart fellers. I know y’all have bigger heads, but give them some credit.
And the Japs…whew…you know what they say, they’re so smart that can take anything and miniaturize it, just like that.
baduk is right. 2MB is in charge to make this happen. Forward and Upward.
“Asian country where the educated will speak good English”
Baduk, did you read what you wrote? I think you meant to say speak English well.