English as a Superficial Language
(From the Boston forum)
On the desk in the teacher's office, somebody placed a copy of the Korea Herald, open to an editorial entitled "English as a Superficial Language."
I saw it again on the Web.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=54207&highlight=
By this time, I thought it must be important, so I read it.
Jasper Kim, the author of the article, lists three filters whereby English study could widen the gap between the rich and the poor in Korean. Since the honorable Kim Seonsaengnim is himself Korean, he is not probably not conscious of two more ESL filters built into his society:
ESL Filter 4.0: the notion that learning can only take place in the classroom
At an English school in Kimcheon, there was an advanced class with only two students. The two students came to class bringing a small black rulebook. For the whole hour, they sat quietly and listened while the teacher read the grammar rules out of that book. That is all it was--no examples, no discussion, no conversation practice, no nothing!
I wondered what those two students were paying tuition money for. I would just buy the book and study it at home, wouldn't you?
I later learned about the Korean belief that classroom time equals education. It is because of this belief that we see an English school, an art studio, or a music studio on every corner, while bookstores and libraries remain few and far between.
ESL Filter 5.0: the notion that two people cannot converse in English unless one of them is a native speaker
When I was in South America, I met people from Italy, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Korea, Japan, and China. I didn't know any of their languages and none of them knew mine. So what did we do? We conversed in Spanish!
To some Koreans, this scenario may be inconceivable. An American who doesn't know Italian talking to an Italian who doesn't know English? That's impossible!
Yet this was no surprise to the South Americans. When they saw those two foreigners speaking to each other in a third language, they went about their business without even batting an eye.
The Korean people, on the other hand, have passed most of their history as a hermetic kingdom. They have had so little experience with foreign languages that they don't even know what a foreign language is. They don't realize, then, that a foreign language is a code which could be shared by any two people who know that code.
I am not saying that the rich people do not have any advantage over the poor people. I am saying, however, that the people of both classes could narrow that gap by tearing down these two filters. If the poor people could learn English through independent study and through conversation practice with other Koreans, some of them could put some of the rich people to shame.
--Thomas
On the desk in the teacher's office, somebody placed a copy of the Korea Herald, open to an editorial entitled "English as a Superficial Language."
I saw it again on the Web.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=54207&highlight=
By this time, I thought it must be important, so I read it.
Jasper Kim, the author of the article, lists three filters whereby English study could widen the gap between the rich and the poor in Korean. Since the honorable Kim Seonsaengnim is himself Korean, he is not probably not conscious of two more ESL filters built into his society:
ESL Filter 4.0: the notion that learning can only take place in the classroom
At an English school in Kimcheon, there was an advanced class with only two students. The two students came to class bringing a small black rulebook. For the whole hour, they sat quietly and listened while the teacher read the grammar rules out of that book. That is all it was--no examples, no discussion, no conversation practice, no nothing!
I wondered what those two students were paying tuition money for. I would just buy the book and study it at home, wouldn't you?
I later learned about the Korean belief that classroom time equals education. It is because of this belief that we see an English school, an art studio, or a music studio on every corner, while bookstores and libraries remain few and far between.
ESL Filter 5.0: the notion that two people cannot converse in English unless one of them is a native speaker
When I was in South America, I met people from Italy, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Korea, Japan, and China. I didn't know any of their languages and none of them knew mine. So what did we do? We conversed in Spanish!
To some Koreans, this scenario may be inconceivable. An American who doesn't know Italian talking to an Italian who doesn't know English? That's impossible!
Yet this was no surprise to the South Americans. When they saw those two foreigners speaking to each other in a third language, they went about their business without even batting an eye.
The Korean people, on the other hand, have passed most of their history as a hermetic kingdom. They have had so little experience with foreign languages that they don't even know what a foreign language is. They don't realize, then, that a foreign language is a code which could be shared by any two people who know that code.
I am not saying that the rich people do not have any advantage over the poor people. I am saying, however, that the people of both classes could narrow that gap by tearing down these two filters. If the poor people could learn English through independent study and through conversation practice with other Koreans, some of them could put some of the rich people to shame.
--Thomas
posted by Hodge E. at 3/28/2006 12:26:00 AM
1 Comments:
Good points. I often encounter Koreans who love talking to me in English, but when it comes to talking to another Korean in English, suddenly they're not so friendly.
Being stalked by a member of the opposite sex because of one's sex appeal is one thing... but Korea has its own special kind of stalker - the English Stalker. This is someone who, taken in by the suggestion that English improvement comes through speaking with native speakers, in effect become English hunters, stalking people like animals.
This is not a phenomenon confined to Korea, however. I saw a movie in Thailand that showed similar attitude on display - the rich and privelaged demonstrating their superiority over the have-nots by inserting English phrases into their speech... the same way North Americans still do with French.
I agree that if more Koreans saw English as a game they could enjoy with one another, it could become a powerful tool for social change in Korea. I only wish there were more foreigners I could practice my Korean with!
Buddy
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