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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| freakyaye Senior Member Australia Joined 4647 days ago 107 posts - 152 votes  | Message 9 of 10 06 August 2013 at 12:21pm | IP Logged |
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I taught English in china and korea and every country has its problems. But the largest
problem by far were the teaching systems. In China I taught a 2 hour class based on rote memorization through activities that rewarded trying, and gave higher rewards for being correct. But everyone was a winner. In Korea classes were 45 minutes split 50 50 with a native teacher and the work was crazy simple without teaching anything truly communicative. In china statements were taught with corresponding questions to support the 'ask a question, give an answer' activities. In korea we used nonsensical songs and taught words in isolation with no actual phrases. A real shame. And while in China everyone was encouraged to give it a shot, in korea teachers were happy to accept blank stares. In my experience a blank stare means they don't know or are shy, Both of these are overcome by creating a positive supporting environment. I used to tell them the answer and they could repeat it back to me, but in korea kids were often unwilling to even repeat sounds. The school was happy to just not really teach anything or even expect students to remember anything at all. A real shame. The kids in china made such huge improvements in just a few weeks, but the system we used in korea just kept bums in seats - all the teachers acted like kids would just magically know English after being around me, but in china they understood that use and repetition were key. But huge props to Japan - it is the only country where the work visa stays with the person. In China and Korea it is tied to the place of employment - this leads to exploitation. *Sorry for my lang mistakes! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3982 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 10 of 10 06 August 2013 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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Firstly, this guy is to teaching what Gordon Ramsay is to cooking. He might very well be a great teacher (I doubt it if he thinks he can teach English to 120 people at a time) but his money comes almost exclusively from other activities.
I work in Vietnam, and the trainer at our school told us that they look upon any teaching experience from Korea with suspicion, and outright won't acknowledge any experience if it came before you were certified. Korea really is seen as something of a joke in the serious English-teaching community. I've honestly never heard a good word about it from a professional POV (which isn't to say there aren't good schools). And obviously the proof is in the pudding, with Korea having shockingly low standards of English compared to much poorer countries in the region like the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, etc. If you're specifically interested in language teaching, then surely some of these countries would offer a better clue of how to achieve that. And I suspect it's not achieved by having 3/4 students attending school from 7 in the morning until 9 at night. Looking at Sweden or the Netherlands or even Germany could tell the US more about how to teach language than Korea. Every time I see an advert for Korea (or Japan, to be fair) with the phrase "25 hours a week, no preparation required" I just laugh. On the main point that America could learn a lot from Korea in terms of privatisation and forcing kids to spend every waking hour in different types of school, I'll just present the counter argument: Finland. Finland came top of the PISA comparison of international education consistently for about 10 years, before finally being ousted by South Korea in the latest study. What is most interesting about this is that Finland had the lowest hours of classroom study of any countries in the study. So in terms of effective teaching, they're undoubtedly the best imo, because they achieve the most in the least time. Of course the fact that they achieved this with an entirely comprehensive, government-run system, with very little privatisation allowed, means that they'll never be able to be a role model for certain agenda-driven people. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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