“Low-Quality English Teachers”

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” […]

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 […]

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, […]

“Where Did I Lose Marks?” & “I Got a C+, But I Expected a D+”: Conversations With Two Students

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series On Teaching Writing in a Korean University

[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 […]