There’s a meme that’s floating about in Korea that “low quality English teachers” or “unqualified foreign English teachers” are multitude here. Well, and indeed, depending on what you consider a language teacher, and what you think the qualifications ought to be, they could be argued to be legion… but in Korea, “unqualified” or “low quality” is an ethical judgment: unqualified is often misused by Koreans discussing foreign teachers in English, as Matt points out here, and then misunderstood to mean something more like “dangerous” or “criminal” or “bad.” Of course, the facts of life in Korean society include a degree …
Tag: Korean education
What Are We Fighting For?
Joanna Russ, the feminist critic and SF author, penned a book titled the same thing as this post. Complete the sequence: 20th… 21st… 22nd… Anyone whose English is reasonable–to the point where they are in a position to be holding forth on how to teach English–ought to be able to complete that sequence. Say, the organizers for a conference on new techniques in TEFL? When I see “Oct. 23th” as the date given on the webpage for such a conference, I pause and say to myself, “What are we fighting for?” On the bright side, I’m on at 5:00pm, so …
Whose Fault Is It?
Chris in South Korea calls Korea’s English education system psychotic, and his post here ends with some very sensible ideas on what needs to happen for it to become not-psychotic: Make English tests related to actual speaking and comprehension ability, not the ‘ability’ to pass a test. These are the hardest things to test, admittedly, but there are ways to test via a neutral third-party. Someone with no connection to either student or school – perhaps a third-party test center that connects to a call-center of trained native English proctors / testers. Indeed, a real step forward would be to …
Students: Do They Have Human Rights?
The answer to the above question is such that one would hope everyone working with kids would say, “Yes.” And to their credit, some teachers, parents, and students agree, as they showed by hosting an event back in July: Seven chapters of the progressive Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, the Parents Association for True Education, and the youth human rights group Asunaro will host an event Wednesday to launch the Seoul headquarters for rules on students’ human rights. Can you imagine who disagreed? In response, the conservative Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations released a commentary Tuesday saying, “Legislating laws on …
“Where Did I Lose Marks?” & “I Got a C+, But I Expected a D+”: Conversations With Two Students
[Note: This is a coda to a series of posts titled “On Teaching Writing in a Korean University. You’ll probably get more out of this if you start at part 1.] I had an email exchange the other day with one student, and a phone conversation with another. Both threw some interesting light onto the problems I’ve discussed in this ongoing series and in other posts about teaching in Korea, so I figured I’d share. (And my next post, maybe later this week, will touch on the question of what I have to say about essays and alternative projects after having done …