Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will begin sending foreign English teachers to a 2-month training program in Gapyeong, starting in May:
Seoul education authorities have started to train native English speaking teachers to improve on their English teaching ability. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Tuesday, a 2-month program at its English education center, located in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province will be provided from May.
It is the first time for the education office to introduce this kind of training program for foreign English teachers. So far, it has offered programs just to help foreigners adapt to Korean culture and life during orientation.
This is probably a good thing, although some of you might get a kick out of this:
University professors and supervisors in charge of English education, as well as other excellent Korean English teachers, will lead the teacher training programs. “Although some of the selected foreign teachers have English teaching certificates, they need to learn about the Korean education environment for better cooperation with teachers,” he added.
During the training programs, 15 foreign teachers at the center will learn the curriculum of English education at Korean schools and teaching methodology for Korean students.
Some might argue the “teaching methodology for Korean students” has been the problem facing foreign language education in Korea all along.
37 Comments
Wow. Just wow.
What a load of horsecrap. “Korea-style” education is the problem in the first place! Grammar translation is not the way to go about teaching a foreign language. I’ll be damned if someone tells me how to do my job when I have two certificates and over 9 years of experience.
If they want to improve the English ability of Korean students, they will get rid of the ridiculous system of grammar translation, something that they abandoned in North Korea quite some time ago. With nearly non-existent opportunities to interact with native speakers, the North Koreans still do nearly as well as SouTh Koreans who are constantly bombarded with English, and in many cases, have countless opportunities to put what they know to use.
Are you comparing TOEFL scores? South Korean test takers span a much broader proficiency spectrum, for anyone there who ponies up the fee can take the test.
Yes, the local model for teaching English has been, for the most part, a failure. (Unless encouraging a shadow English education system - language “hagwans” - has been one of the intended outcomes.)
Reckon this two-month course is going to be paid job training? You might assume so, but…
I liked the part about how these 15 hapless whiteys will be also be stuck with “developing textbooks and materials”, and training Korean teachers in 3 or 6 month immersion programs.
Can you dig the circular non-logic?
We know that our current public school textbooks and curricula are crap and our teachers don’t even know what’s wrong with them. So we’ll get foreigners to correct the grammar in our crappy textbooks, and then teach our teachers their own courses using their own textbooks. This will make our crappy courses non-crappy. What genius thought up this plan?
Hahahahahaha. This is gonna be a hoot!
What a ridiculous idea!
When I worked for EPIK(English Program in Korea), back in ‘98, I eventually ended up at the main office at a university near Chungju. They had a grand plan to build a teacher training center for Korean English teachers from around the country to come for a have one month training sessions in a “new, ground breaking” program.
What happened?
They spent all the money building the nice, new building (and several rounds of soju parties for the administration I’m sure!) and had nothing left to purchase materials with. The building was bare- they didn’t even have chairs, so they had to get these terrible old wooden ones carted over from storage in another building.
Our staff of 7 foreign teachers- including 4 Korean-American women who were far more Korean than American- were informed that we would be writing the training textbook and preparing all the materials ourselves. We had no budget and 2 weeks to finish it. The result was less than stellar!
We actually had the training program twice, for two months, and many of the teachers who attended complained that it was no different from their local provincial training programs.
Our staff agreed.
It was a cock up from the word go because they had no idea how to properly set up a training program and they wasted all the money on the building.
None of our staff had any experience designing a teacher training program, so it was a new and not always successful experience. This is especially the case when 4 out of the 7 foreign teachers are really Korean and spending most of their time sucking up to the boss who had no idea what teaching English entailed.
The result was crap. I had to leave after that.
As for this idea- training foreign teachers about the Korean school system and way of teaching/learning- F***!
As someone said, isn’t that what causes the problem with Korean English in the first place?
A lot of times I have to spend teaching my uni students to unlearn what they learned in middle and high school.
If this is some sort of cultural lesson and getting the foreigners accustomed to working in Korean schools, that can be accomplished in a one week program.
2 months? Farking ridiculous!
Prediction- this will be a real cock up from the get go and eventually the plan will be scrapped. I’d certainly hate to have to be those 1 or 2 groups that have to go through it!
Also, guess when these “training programs” for public school teachers will take place?
Vacation time?
Bingo!
Say goodbye to any travel plans!
Is it just me or are they actually searching out ways to worsen the foreign teacher shortage by making it less and less desirable to work here?
Well most of the teacher’s I’ve seen fuck up/burn out/start screaming at people over the years it has been more of a case of being bad at dealing with Korean bureaucracy than bad teaching skills. If this doesn’t teach the teachers how to navigate the educational bureaucracy then nothing will
Foreigners don’t know how to teach Korean kids? That’s a familiar mantra. A few years back, the Ministry of Education used what was literally a textbook example of bad research in language acquisition to support their ‘theory’ that kids learning English from native speakers did no acquire the target language more efficiently than with Korean teachers (I can’t remember which textbook, but it’s here in my bookcase). They got very young kids to learn English with a native speaker for 2 months and then compared their scores on a standardized test with that of older kids who had learned with a Korean teacher. Younger kids will naturally score lower on standardized tests because they simply don’t have good test taking skills and language acquisition cannot be effectively measured in a short-term experiment (get these kids to study with the same teachers for 10 years and you’ll see results).
“Is it just me or are they actually searching out ways to worsen the foreign teacher shortage by making it less and less desirable to work here?”
We have a winner!
That’s exactly what’s going on. Read my previous post.
As far as ESL education in Korea goes, the only people who need training are the idiots who hire unqualified ESL teachers in Korea.
I’ve noticed the juicy girls of It’aewon tend to speak excellent English, and they’ve essentially turned the standard ESL education paradigm on its head: They actually make native English speakers pay THEM to learn English.
That’s one model that definitely seems to be working!
“Is it just me or are they actually searching out ways to worsen the foreign teacher shortage by making it less and less desirable to work here?”
Hard to tell if this is happening by design, or is instead more a case of terrible planning. I enjoy conspiracy theories as much as the next guy - actually, a few regulars/semi-regulars at the Hole may like them more - but my first guess would be ineptidude.
#12
too funny King 
Ineptitude/incompetence is my bet, too!
Have you? Do they? How’d you come to know this? Oh… I see… nevermind. !
This is a joke, as much as i hate to agree with ESL teachers, they are right.
We’ve skimped on basic education and basic research and focusly solely on applied higher science.
There is this stupid notion that more work = better work and it has replaced all the advancements and techniques discovered by educational psychology.
“…as much as i hate to agree with ESL teachers, they are right.”
Thanks for the approval, Boss.
Well, I hate conspiracy theories as much as the next guy. This seems to be either more window dressing to show that the ministry is on top of things, or it’s a form of surplus labor, or both. The notion as always is that it’s better to blame the foreign teachers and try to rectify them rather than take responsibility and look at the underlying systemic issues.
As others have said the problems in the English education thing here is not the native teachers, here are just a few of the problems.
1)Lack of communication between NTs and admin
2)Classes are way too big, my HS classes average 34 kids
3)Terrible textbooks
4)The focus is all about passing stupid multiple choice tests, most of the text in those tests actually written in Korean!
5)Kids of huge differences in ability are grouped together. The lesser able give up as it’s too hard for them, and the kids of higher abilities get bored and can become disruptive. The naughties students are frequently the smarter ones who are bored out of their minds
That’s five critical flaws in the system without even thinking about it. I’m really lucky as I get to prepare all my own materials.I feel for the poor NTs who have to teach from the appalling Korean textbooks.
“4)The focus is all about passing stupid multiple choice tests, most of the text in those tests actually written in Korean!”
Once you accept that Koreans don’t learn English to communicate with foreigners, despite what the government claims, it will make your job a lot easier. Learn to know and understand your student’s expectations…and then try to show them that there is more to English than a standardized test. Some will come to see things your way.
I particularly remember two girls, two best friends, who could barely speak English until they came in my class (their mothers made them come). I had them talking in English with confidence after 2 months. I eventually got a position at a university and who showed the next year my freshman class? Those two girls. I was pleased to learn that they had decided to become English teachers. They have since developed the ability to speak English fluently. Last I heard, they had completed graduate school and had found positions as English teachers.
“4)The focus is all about passing stupid multiple choice tests, most of the text in those tests actually written in Korean!”
Once you accept that Koreans don’t learn English to communicate with foreigners, despite what the government claims, it will make your job a lot easier. Learn to know and understand your student’s expectations…and then try to show them that there is more to English than a standardized test. Some will come to see things your way.
I particularly remember two girls, two best friends, who could barely speak English when they came in my class (their mothers made them come). I had them talking in English with confidence after 2 months.
I eventually got a position at a university…but who showed the next year in my freshman class? Those two girls. I was pleased to learn that they had decided to become English teachers. They have since developed the ability to speak English fluently. Last I heard, they had completed graduate school and had found positions as English teachers.
tmc, what is this “system of grammar translation” you mentioned? Do you mean they shouldn’t teach grammar? It’s not very clear.
“what is this “system of grammar translation””?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8
Wow, you guys are harsh. If I read the article correctly, it’s that foreign teachers will be trained to teach English by highly qualified people, both native speakers and Koreans. This seems to me like a step in the right direction.
People get most frustrated with any system when it’s actually starting to get better. I really hope English teachers give fledgling projects like this one some breathing room. It could be the start of some very real and positive change in English education in Korea.
Again, it’s scapegoating the foreign teachers as the reason English learning is lacking.
Nevermind the crappy or non-existant materials/resources!
Nevermind the low pay and dwindling vacation time that inspires one not to commit so much to the job!
Nevermind administrators and curriculum designers who are incompetent, but insist that their ideas & methods should be followed as gospel!
Nevermind that public education here is so crappy that kids have to get their real learning after school in private academies!
Nevermind that the whole focus of learning English in Korea- to get a good score on the TOEIC/TOEFL when you can’t even have a basic conversation in the language- is completely flawed!
Yep, nevermind all that. Just train the foreign monkeys to “teach better” and everything will be okay.
B.S.
Adding to that, if you read my post #7, you will see that from that experience and years of others, I expect all programs of this nature to be poorly/incompetently planned, funded and executed.
It will just be a circus of people pretending to do a good job.
The proposal always sounds lofty, but what actually happens is just crap.
It’s happened every time before and I don’t see it changing with this new idea.
Hmm…training in Korea.
I’m going to guess teachers will be asked to memorize by heart some pseudo-intellectual drivel written up by a lackey of the god/leader of the program.
E.g. “We all most memorize TLAUETS: Teachers learning and understanding Korea and English teaching skills. If we understand TLAUETS, we will understand CRAP-caring reading and paper. Do you understand?”
-Teachers will learn to RESPECT their Korean co-workers for their skills in quietly extorting money or gifts from students or parents(Chonji)…and YES, IT STILL HAPPENS.
-They will need to hug each followed by a group cry. This is usually after receiving estrogen injections, and being forced to watch any sop sister drama staring your favorite metrosexualism star and his man-bag.
-The ‘Jump Rope’ game.
-50 field trips that are meaningless after #3.
-Bean soup and rice every money.
-All teachers broken down into groups of five with one Korean teacher who can’t speak English.
He or she will assist teachers to perform a 5 minute comedy sketch about teaching ala KBS or can opt for plan B and design their own English teaching web page.
I’m tired…anybody else with some other goodies to add?
I blame the British Empire for this problem.
“Well, I hate conspiracy theories as much as the next guy.”
–cinemagauche
Have you been in rehab or somewhere?
King - how much does it cost to teach the juicy girls English?
My research has indicated that they will request a 20,000 won drink for every 11.739 minutes of conversation.
#31: Cmm, Linkd is correct, and at such rates their special body language seminars are almost a better bargain.
A friend of mine here is presently cohabiting with a former It’aewon juicy girl, so that’s always another option.
Under such an arrangement, he gets to live with a broad and she gets to essentially live abroad.
They’re both very satisfied.
“They actually make native English speakers pay THEM to learn English.”
I knew there was something I missed,that’s why my English sucks, damn.
#34: JiMong, your English seems fine.
BTW, do they have juicy boy bars in Vancouver that cater to Korean female yuhaksaeng?
I’m willing to brush up my Korean there if the price is right.
In public schools the native English teacher (NET) is actually designated as a teaching “assistant”.
The Korean English teachers (KET) should therefore, already be teaching ( if only by example) the NET to teach in class, and the NET should be helping the KET develop their English language skills.
The idea is eventually that the NET will become redundant.
This program seems aimed at making the KET redundant.
#35 Wang Baeksu
“do they have juicy boy bars in Vancouver that cater to Korean female yuhaksaeng?”
Well, not that I know and not on my radar range! For sure, Vancouver also has fine juicy yuhaksaeng girl bars that carter to Korean male Gyopo where we pay THEM to entertain in Korean.
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