“Problems Inherent in the English Native Speaker Conversation Classroom (ENSCC) and a Method for Overcoming Them”

Originally published in the Gyeongbuk Secondary Living English Association journal for their 11th conference, January 2010.

Introduction

In Korea, secondary schools typically utilize an approach to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning which I call the English Native Speaker Conversation Classroom (ENSCC). The goal of these classrooms is to supplement the school system’s already strong reading and listening comprehension curricula with an interactive class that will also teach the students to speak English. Despite English speaking not being tested on the National College Entrance Examination (대입수능시험, NCEE), schools and parents encourage the use of these classrooms and expect three things from such a program:

1. The students will get into better universities. Top Korean universities are increasingly requiring more classes, programs, and admissions procedures in English making it increasingly difficult for even a student with high marks on the NCEE to succeed.

2. The students will have more job opportunities. Especially since Korea’s economy is so tied to the global market, English speakers have more options for employment after school.

3. Students will do better on the English portion of examinations. The ENSCC should strengthen other English skills (i.e. reading and writing) allowing students to do better on examinations that test those skills.

Typically, a native speaker, if available, will teach this class in order to ensure the students experience what many Koreans assume to be error-free English.

Problems Inherent to the ENSCC

Though these are noble goals, several problems are inherent to the ENSCC. First and foremost is the lack of clearly defined objectives for the English language learning itself. Though everyone knows what the students are expected to be able to do once they acquire a facility with the target language, there is no clear definition of what facility with the language means. In other words, there is no standard for the teacher to teach towards.

A 1995 study conducted by E.B. Zechmeister et al. found that native English speaking high school graduates typically can wield a vocabulary of 12,000 words (Journal of Reading Behavior 27(2), 201-212). I can imagine that many of those words are specialized (e.g. words used in science and math) and so are not typically taught in Korean EFL classrooms. Teaching students to be able to comprehend such a vast vocabulary with 10 hours or more a week of instruction time between school and after-school academies is hard enough for Korean teachers. It is impossible for teachers to accomplish the same during one hour per week supplementary classes. Therefore, having an ill-defined objective for the ENSCC such as “We want our students to speak English,” inhibits the ability of teachers to accomplish that objective.

A second problem is that conversation typically has no contextual clues to aid understanding. This is especially true at higher levels and prevents understanding, which can eventually frustrate the language learner.

For example, If I am in a store with my Korean friend who speaks only a few words of English and I ask my Korean friend to pass me a can of tomato sauce while pointing to the can of tomato sauce, my Korean friend is able to see the can of tomato sauce which I am pointing to and give it to me. In this case, my Korean friend does not need to know any English because it is clear what I want given the contextual clues (i.e. my pointing finger and the can of tomato sauce). However, if a week later we are in the same store, but this time in the produce section and I say, “By the way, that tomato sauce last week was so delicious! I think I’d like another can,” my Korean friend, knowing only the word “tomato,” might think that I am talking about the tomatoes sitting next to us in the produce section we are in. The conversation has been taken out of context, and this creates misunderstanding. This becomes an even greater problem at higher levels when teaching abstract concepts and ideas (e.g. freedom).

For any conversation where the context is not immediately present, the parties must have a common vocabulary between them. Unfortunately, an immediate context is not always possible in the ENSCC, and so there must be a common vocabulary to carry the students through the conversation.

A third problem is the presence of multiple levels in the ENSCC. It is common wisdom that when a class is too difficult, students become frustrated and thus unwilling to learn. When a class is too easy, students become bored and are not learning anyway. Therefore, when deciding the material for a particular class it is important to strike the proper balance between too difficult and too easy. This is nearly impossible to do in a mixed-level class, however. Inevitably, the class will frustrate some students and bore others.

The final problem is the lack of incentive to learn English conversation. Though the vast majority of students would like to go to a good university, have good job opportunities, and do well on the English portion of the NCEE, all of the students are more concerned with receiving good enough scores on the NCEE so that they can go to a university and get a job. Thus, the ENSCC is often seen as either a waste of valuable time better spent studying for the NCEE or an hour long game session to just relax and have fun. This notion is strengthened by the fact that the ENSCC typically meets only once a week. The ENSCC is perceived by students, parents, school administration, and even the teachers who teach them to be, at best, a helpful but in the end unnecessary supplement to student success, at worst, a novelty or gimmick to boost the school’s prestige. To use a metaphor, whereas the standard school curriculum, designed to help the student pass the NCEE, is the student’s rice, main dish, and kimchi, the ENSCC is the student’s after-meal vitamin supplement. Usually, the student will be just fine without it.

A Helpful Method: Teaching Toward a Topic

These, at any rate, are the challenges teachers face when administrations decide to employ an ENSCC in their school. I myself have had to work with these problems for approximately two and a half years. While I have no firm solutions to them, I have developed a flexible method, which I call “Teaching Toward a Topic,” that works well-enough for my school’s purposes.

Step One: Long term goals based on specific topics. It can be for a month or it can be for a semester, but at the end of the given period the students should be able to have at least one or two basic conversations on the selected topic. For instance, if the selected topic is “Our School,” the student should probably be able to talk about their schedule, who their favorite teachers and subjects are, and what they do with their free time during lunch. Do not be too concerned with them answering at significant length. A simple statement of fact or opinion, a supporting detail or reason, and another question are what typical conversations are made up of anyway, so saying, “I like math because it is easy. How about you?” or “I am busy next period. I have biology. How about 7^th period?” is adequate for our example topic. Obviously if the students are ready for “Environmentalism” as a topic, the instructor should expect more from them.

At our school, the goal is to help students pass the English portion of their college entrance interviews if they choose to graduate from high school early. Since we know what questions are typically used for these interviews, we use those questions as our topics and design our lessons around them.

Step Two: Review necessary structures; discover vocabulary. This is the instructional portion of the ENSCC lessons and units. If the ENSCC instructor and the normal curriculum instructors can coordinate well, a minimal amount of time should be spent learning new structures and vocabulary in the ENSCC. The time restriction simply does not allow enough time to make instruction in these areas feasible and the main goal of the ENSCC should be practicing already learned material.

It is important to note that, while structures are reviewed, vocabulary is discovered. This helps deal with the problem of having 12,000 vocabulary words to study. The students know which words they know, which they do not, and which they need to complete a given assignment, so it is better for the students to discover these for themselves than for the instructor to assign words to be memorized hoping they will be useful. (As a student uses the discovered vocabulary during the practice activity, other students begin to acquire the discovered vocabulary as well, see below.) To implement this strategy, the instructor uses activities with open ended prompts (e.g. interviews) and sufficient time should be allowed for students to find the vocabulary they need to answer those questions whether by asking the teacher, asking fellow students, or looking in a dictionary.

I should note that during this phase, which can take up whole class periods in longer units, I allow the students to use a significant amount of Korean. From personal experience, I know the frustration of a foreign language instructor trying to teach me the target language through the target language and wasting 20 minutes just to teach me how to say one word, when it would have been a much more efficient use of time to allow me to look in the dictionary or ask a friend for the definition of the word in the my native tongue. To my mind, English only classes are for practicing old material, not for learning new material.

Step Three: Practice, practice, practice. In step three, the students participate in some sort of structured activity or game to practice the target structures and discovered vocabulary. If possible, it will be helpful to provide a context for the activity as well to enhance understanding. As a student uses vocabulary that is unfamiliar to another student, the other student begins to learn the vocabulary through repetition and sometimes through the far less subtle means of asking a classmate, “What did he say?” I still allow some Korean to be used at this point to aid quick understanding, but the goal is to begin phasing out as much of the student’s native language as possible and replacing it with the target language.

The Internet is a great resource for activities that will allow students to practice target structures and discovered vocabulary. I often use board games borrowed from other teachers online and modify the text to my purposes.

Step Four: Test. In this stage, the instructor assesses the student’s ability to perform in the selected topic. However, the test should be non-contextual and as conversational as possible. A good example is the following activity I used for a unit on descriptions:

1. Divide the students into small groups.

2. Have each group pick one student to be the artist. This student will draw a picture while the other students describe it.

3. Ask one student from each group to come to the teacher’s lectern.

4. Show the students the picture for 5 seconds.

5. Tell them to return to their group and describe the picture to the artist without using their hands.

6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 at regular intervals until all students have participated. Use the same picture throughout.

7. Show the pictures to the class along with the original. Decide on the most accurate picture.

Since the student artist has never seen the picture, he or she has not context for the conversation. They must rely on their group members to give them an accurate description. For this, the students must have an adequate command of the target structures and vocabulary, and the students must share a common understanding of the target structures and vocabulary.

Final Thoughts on Incentive in the ENSCC

Though I have found this “Teaching Toward a Topic” method effective in dealing with three of the four stated problems inherent in the ENSCC, it does not address the key issue of incentive. How are ENSCC instructors to motivate their students to learn English conversation when there is seemingly no immediate benefit.

At our school, we have a definite incentive built into our goals; students who can pass the English interview portion of their university entrance procedures are one step closer to graduating a year early to one of the finest universities in Korea. We are fortunate to have that incentive, but other schools are not so lucky.

ENSCC instructors often turn to in-class rewards (e.g. candy, raffle tickets, etc.), but these are sometimes not enough to motivate students if they would rather study for their math examinations or even just sleep rather than spend 50 minutes speaking English for a piece of candy that they can get from a store for 100 won.

In the end, I believe that the only way to create real incentive for the ENSCC is to make it an integral part of the curriculum rather than supplementary to it. Though this is difficult to accomplish given the pressure to focus on studying for the NCEE, what follows are a few suggestions.

One way would be to include the ENSCC in the school’s internal grading and evaluation standards. In other words, students would receive grades and rankings based on class participation and performance. Students who know that their class performance will be recorded on their permanent school record are more likely to pay attention during class and to take the class seriously.

Another way would be to increase the number of times students meet with their ENSCC instructor. The usual method is to hold ENSCC classes once a week which makes it nearly impossible for the ENSCC instructor to teach effectively and for the students to learn. Instructors and students inevitably feel that their classes do not matter if the students forget all of the learned material between meetings. Meeting more than once allows the instructor to teach actual lessons and build on and review material from previous lessons.

A final, more drastic way would be to integrate the lessons into the normal reading and listening comprehension curriculum; in other words, to take a more holistic approach to language learning where each lesson includes some practice in each of the four skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Students would naturally pay attention during the speaking portion of the lesson if it were combined with the other portions that are designed specifically to aid their success on the NCEE. This may mean the elimination of the ENSCC as a model, and if implemented, there will inevitably be some concern as to what role native English speakers will play in the school curriculum. Alternatively, the ENSCC could remain as a sort of laboratory class where students apply the conversational patterns learned in a real and meaningful way. The ENSCC would remain supplemental in this case, but it would reduce the pressure of teaching the whole of English conversation in one-hour sessions once a week. Regardless, integrated the speaking curriculum into normal classroom activities would inevitably allow students to have a better grasp of the language as a whole.

Jeremiah Dost has a B.A. in history and is a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. He has been the native English conversation teacher at Kyungbuk Science High School in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do since August 2008. He taught previously at Pyeongchang High School in Pyeongchang, Kangwon-do for one year. He can be contacted at jeremy.dost@gmail.com.

Mrs. Lewinsky Remembered (Year 3, Day 68)

Here's something I wrote on May 20, 2009. I didn't have a blog then, but it is a reflection about my experience teaching. I thought now would be a good time time to share it.

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Mrs. Lewinsky Remembered

Working as a teacher in a program that hires teachers for elementary schools as well as secondary schools has brought me to a certain realization about my own elementary school teachers. They probably swore.

I always have this fond recollection of my elementary school teachers, especially the young ones right of college or even still performing their supervised teaching requirements, as being the kindest, gentlest, most sincere and, quite frankly, sinless beings on the face of the planet. They could do no wrong, no harm, and no evil. They were pure, unadulterated good. They were the perfect models to mold young minds and hearts in their most fragile stages, preparing them for the rigors of their later life.

But now I know elementary school teachers. More importantly, I know them as adults—adults who at one time were taking the exact same elementary school classes I was taking. They are no more sinless, pure, or good than the rest of us. They are human. Indeed, they bleed.

I came to this sad realization in what is almost certainly the most innocuous way possible—I saw a curse word in an elementary school teacher’s “Gchat Status”.

For the uninitiated, Gmail—Google’s email service—has an imbedded instant messaging service called Gchat. Users can write a short sentence or two indicating their current status to either elicit conversation or ward it away. However, by my estimation, most people just use it to post interesting links of one kind or another (mostly harmless) or to inform others about what they just did with their lives (mostly crazy; I’m still amazed by what people are willing to make public about their lives on the Internet, myself included). So, on the one hand, you could get a link to a humorously captioned picture of fuzzy feline or a sweet guitar lick played like a pro by an amateur computer science student. On the other hand, you could be informed that your friend just got married or that the-guy-to-whom-you-sent-an-email-only-once-in-your-life-but-somehow-he-wound-up-on-your-chat-contacts-list’s dog has diarrhea.

Or, you can come to a sad realization about your childhood—that Mrs. Lewinsky, you teacher in the 1st grade, was possibly going downtown every evening to carouse and that she more than likely uses words like shit, damn, and even the unspeakable f-word on a regular basis.

I can’t remember the exact phrase in question, and in fact before the incident, I’d heard many of my elementary school teacher colleagues use such colorful explicative in combinations worthy of any deep voiced video fighting game announcer’s talents (86 HIT COMBO!). I do remember it struck me though. I do remember the certain loss of innocence that came with it. And I remember the small part of me that died with a muffled whimper deep within my childlike soul on that day as a single tear streaked my cheek. Any loss of innocence is profound (and certainly worthy of illustrative hyperbole).

I also remember feeling at least a little bit betrayed. How dare Mrs. Lewinsky say I couldn’t swear! How dare she say that it wasn’t polite language, that it was un-genteel, that I would have to sit in the corner for 10 minutes if ever I committed such an infraction again! How dare she hold me to a standard of pristine innocence that she herself couldn’t possibly have maintained outside of school hours with a couple of beers in her!

But I do understand why. I too am an adult attempting to mold young minds, albeit high school minds far more intellectually advanced than my 1st grade mind was. And, thus, I too hold my students to a far greater standard of etiquette than I hold myself. It may have been hypocritical for Mrs. Lewinsky to hold me, a child, to an adult double standard, but it would be even more hypocritical of me, an adult, to hold my adult colleagues to such a double standard as well.

And in the end, I remember this—my friend is Mrs. Lewinsky when she swears in front of me, a mature adult able to handle such foul utterances. My friend is Mrs. Lewinsky when she insists in all-knowing hypocrisy that her students do no swear in front of anyone. But she is most Mrs. Lewinsky—pure, innocent, sinless Mrs. Lewinsky—when she holds herself to that same impossible standard in front of her children—wide-eyed, impressionable, 1st grade me.

Translation: 'Our desire is unification' (Year 3, Day 64)

This is a song for unification written in 1948. However, as I learned from my discussion with the other teachers at my school today, the translation of the song can have far deeper implications.

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A disclaimer: Please understand that this is a very rough translation by a humble student of Korean. While I'm pretty sure it'll be more accurate than any internet translation engine to date, it still may not even be close to the original since I typically have to look up every three words when I try to read anything. (Hanja constructions are killer...) If you can translate Korean yourself, I would appreciate your constructive criticism. Leave your mockery at the door.

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"우리의 소원은 통일"

우리의 소원은 통일 꿈에도 소원은 통일 이 정성 바쳐서 통일 통일을 이루자

이 겨례 살리는 통일 이 나라 살리는 통일 통일이 어서 오라 통일이여 오라

Source.

"Our desire is unification"

Our desire is unification

In our dreams also the desire is unification

This true-heart is dedicated to unification

Let's succeed at unification

The unification these brothers keep

The unification this country keeps

Unification, come quickly

Unification, come!

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Today I had another interesting discussion with my fellow teachers here, this time about left-handedness, at least that's what it was about at first. (At this rate, I should just call the blog "Interesting things I learn from the teachers at my school". My co-teacher was telling us how when he was a child, he had to cut a lot of grass to feed to the family cow. He's left-handed, but unfortunately all of the family's sickles were right handed. He has scars on all of his fingers because of the cuts.

I was surprised when he said he was left-handed though because I have never seen him use his left hand for anything. I asked him about that, and he said that when he was growing up, it was rude to use one's right hand because it looked awkward and was different from everyone else. Whenever he tried to use his left hand, he was scolded by his elders.

Now, I'd heard about this before, how Korean families often force children to become right-handed. Indeed, even when I was growing up, it wasn't all that uncommon for lefties in my class to get teased a bit by my classmates (and probably myself too) before a teacher stepped in to impress upon us the value of diversity. Although, now that I think about it, I do seem remember one teacher actually trying to force one of my friends to learn to use his right hand... But memories are faulty that way. I could very well have just seen it on an episode of Little House on the Prairie or something.

But, despite being familiar with the topic, I decided to try to continue the conversation in that vein anyway. As a language instructor, I often have conversations about things I already know. This makes me respect how bored out of their skulls some of my Spanish instructors must have been when I was struggling with that language in high school.

This time, I'm glad I did. Otherwise, I wouldn't have learned the gem above.

The teachers began explaining to me one of the main cultural differences between Korea and the U.S., that while the U.S. appreciates diversity Korea appreciates unity. It was at this point that they quoted to me the immortal words of Syngmann Rhee, "United we live; divided we die," and cited "Our desire is unity," which is apparently a song that they all learned as children.

Again, this was something I'd heard before, but I pointed out to them that the U.S. actually appreciates unity a great deal. We are the United States of America, after all. I told them that the word they were looking for was probably 'uniformity'. Unity implies a sort of common purpose. It can incorporate uniformity, but it doesn't have to. Uniformity implies sameness across individual units.

But I wondered why my co-teacher, who is well versed in specific vocabulary words and painstaking in his use of them, would so quickly jump to unity instead of uniformity when describing how his parents and grandparents had forced him to use his right hand, and why he had chosen a song that stresses the 'unity' of a divided nation to express this concept of 'uniformity'.

After class, I took a look at my computer's Korean-English dictionary, and I discovered something very interesting.

The first picture is the translation of tong-il (통일) from Korean to English. The next is the translation of 'unity' from English to Korean. The final picture is the translation of 'uniformity' from English to Korean.

It's a little hard to see (if you really care, click on the pictures for larger images), but what's interesting is that from English to Korean 'unity' and 'uniformity' are translated as tong-il and hoik-il (획일) respectively, whereas from Korean to English they translate the word tong-il, without qualification as both 'unity' and 'uniformity'.

So maybe my teachers were right to use left-handedness as an example of national unity and unification. At least, they were right in Korean.

Teaching, Week 9, Part I: Korean Culture Quiz (Year 3, Day 59)

I've decided to break this week's "Teaching" entry into three parts, and you can view Part 2 and Part 3 at those links. Needless to say, it was a very productive, or at the very least interesting, week.

Between last week and this week, I adapted a lesson plan from "Garrett Gone Korean". The idea was brilliant: give the students a quiz on American culture and then explain the questions they missed. I gave the top scorers in each class a package of ramyeon (라면). During the next lesson, each student had to come up with a multiple choice question to ask me about Korean culture. I told the class that for every time I guessed the answer incorrectly, they would receive a point. Of course, for every correct answer I would receive a point. If the class received more points than I did, I would buy them all choco pies. I did have one caveat: they couldn't make a question that even Koreans wouldn't know. So, whereas "What is the most common form of kimchi?" would be fine, asking "Who invented kimchi?" would be right out.

A surprising number of the answers I knew cold, things like When was the Joseon dynasty established? (1392) and Who is the only Korean to have received a Nobel Peace Prize? (Fm. Pres. Kim Dae-jung). Others I could guess based on certain clues. For instance, my Korean teacher's family name is Park (박) and she's always bragging about how she's related to the first king of the old Shilla Kingdom (the first Korean country to unite what is modern North and South Korea). One of the questions a student asked was, "Who was the first king of the Shilla Kingdom?" and only one of the multiple choice answers had Park in the name, so I guessed that one pretty easily. Other times, my capabilities with guessing were far less subtle. Students often made the mistake of laughing at incorrect answers, so I would just guess the one that they didn't laugh at and almost invariably be right. When I pointed out why I was getting all of those correct, instead of clamming up, the students decided they would laugh hysterically at every answer.

Anyway, I highly recommend the lesson both for your students to learn about your culture and for you to learn about theirs.

In other news, I taught my kids the Electric Slide. One of them told me he was practicing it outside of class the next day. To do list: Be a cultural ambassador. Check!

Teaching, Week 9, Part II: Tattling (Year 3, Day 59)

I've decided to break this week's "Teaching" entry into three parts, and you can view Part 1 and Part 3 at those links. Needless to say, it was a very productive, or at the very least interesting, week.

In the beginning teachers' class, I had intended to play Boggle with them as a way to welcome them back after not having had class for one reason or another for three weeks. However, after one "student" hit another and then that other student telling me to punish the one student, we quickly got into a discussion (since it's the beginning class, more of a halting lecture, actually) over the conflicting ideas of "no tattling" and "good behavior" in America. Stereotypically, this is a pretty common conversation in the States:

"OW! Dad, Jimmy hit me!"

"Jimmy, don't hit your brother! Sammy, don't tattle on Jimmy!"

This always confused me to know end. We generally don't like snitches in American culture. At the same time, we don't like people who break the rules. I think it might have something to do with our revolutionary roots and thus thinking that our friends should be united with us against unjust figures of authority. Don't tread on me, and all that. I explained that within a group, right can turn wrong and wrong right. In a gang, for instance, crime can become the accepted way of life. For someone to betray that way of life by ratting the gang out to the proper authorities is tantamount to the ultimate crime within that group. It can be the same with low level violence with siblings or cheating with classmates. Though the person may be doing the actual "right" thing by tattling, they're still breaking the mores of that group.

Still, it's rather confusing to not report something like cheating in school because you don't want to be socially ostracized. Since childhood, I've taken the tact with my friends of not telling on them until they created a dangerous situation for themselves or others, instead earnestly encouraging them to stop and sometimes threatening to break off our friendship if they don't.

But, the teachers rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of it, the disadvantages to it, and the potential for serious consequences. I granted this, but pointed out that it wasn't a hard and fast rule, that there were situations--violent crime, for instance--where "tattling" was entirely appropriate. Indeed, in thinking about it now, I realize there are times where we think of tattling as entirely noble. There are just more pertinent times where we see it as entirely treacherous, even when that person was up to that betrayal one of our best friends in the world.

Anyway, it made for interesting discussion.

Teaching, Week 9, Part III: Korean Relations & Historical Trends (Year 3, Day 59)

I've decided to break this week's "Teaching" entry into three parts, and you can view Part 1 and Part 2 at those links. Needless to say, it was a very productive, or at the very least interesting, week.

With the advanced teachers, we've begun reading through Outline of U.S. History again. We're on the formation of the Constitution now, beginning with the original Articles of Confederation. We talked about how the Revolution made the states realize that they needed to work together to defend each other, but also how they hadn't quite yet got the concept that they needed to work together economically and politically as well to avoid being picked apart by the far stronger European nations across the pond and to avoid the sorts of increasingly violent internal disputes that were beginning to pop up.

That discussion devolved into a discussion of why South Korea doesn't really have any strong regional economic or military partnerships along the lines of the United States (when they were individual states) or the EU. (We're all about applying history in this discussion group.) Korea isn't exactly cozy with Japan or China, and it's geographically too far displaced from SE Asia for them to be really included down there.

I can actually see why China doesn't exactly work. After all, it'd be sort of like the U.S. entering into a close economic system with Jamaica. Sure, Jamaica would benefit tremendously, but what's in it for the U.S. I can sort of see why it wouldn't work with Japan, but really, neither Japan nor Korea are going to be able to balance off of China all by themselves in the long run, let alone the world.

It's become an interesting question for me because the problem Koreans most often cite--that the Japanese are the historical enemies of Korea, that they invaded us countless times, that they destroyed our culture and livelihood, and we can never trust them again--has begun to hold less and less water with me as I've begun to learn more about Korea's own history and also as I've thought about the historical trends globally.

In the first case, the countless invasions that Koreans are usually thinking of were brief incursions by pirates. Granted, they were Japanese pirates, but they were lawless vandals nonetheless. It would sort of be like Spain and Britain still being sore over the privateering days or anybody going through Somali waters these days being sore at the actual Somalians. In fact, as far as I can determine, there were only two major invasions of Korea by the Japanese, both happening over 400 years ago, both within 6 years of each other, and both spearheaded by one particular man with a lust for power, and an additional annexation and colonization period.

Now, let me be clear, both of these were terrible, terrible events. After the Hideyoshi Invasions referenced above, the Korean economy was so deflated that rice production didn't reach pre-invasion levels until after the Korean War (Hawley, The Imjin War). Japan stole many of the technological, scientific, and cultural projects and thinkers from Korea and put them to work in Japan. It's estimated that a total of 1 million people died and only 250,000 of those from combat. During the close to 40 year annexation, Japan unleashed a deliberate campaign to stifle Korean language, culture, and identity in favor of new Japanese ones. Koreans are right to feel any range of emotions over these tragic events.

But, when I consider world history, I wonder if Korea holds its grudges for too long. After all, for all intensive purposes, NE Asia, especially Korea, has actually enjoyed a fairly irenic history with short intervals of (granted, brutal) war but far great periods of lasting and enduring peace. Europe on the other hand waged unremitting war on itself for the better part of two millennia. Most of Europe was under French control during Napoleon's brief rule as well, but they've gotten over that certainly. While most of Europe was under German control during WWII, those nations have realized that Germany was under a fascist dictatorship at the time and isn't any more. This last comparison is particularly poignant because Korea and Europe were freed from Japanese and German control respectively around the same time. Europe has moved on. Why can't Korea?

On reflecting on it further, my teachers' class pointed out that Korea has never successfully invaded Japan. (They actually tried to tell me that Korea never tried, but I pointed out that Korea was actually forced to aid in Japan invasions twice under Mongol rule. After looking this up on Wikipedia, they apparently actually encouraged it as well.) This makes Korea a little insecure compared to European nations who all had fair shots at conquering each other. Additionally, because of the imbalance of economic power in the region (China being a light- but fast growing to heavy-weight, Japan already a heavy-weight, and Korea a middle-weight), no nation is really willing to work together like the European nations who are much closer to each other in terms of economic output. Additionally, Japan's military forces are far superior to South Korea's in terms of technical capability. Though I pointed out that it is unlikely that Japan would ever attack South Korea in the near future (especially if they worked together), the concern is still valid. Partners, at least of the caliber of those in the EU, need to be equals in everything especially when the trust between them is already shaky.

I accept these reasons; I think they are accurate depictions of the current reality. The encouraging by whatever means that Koreans will forever hate and mistrust Japan because of historical atrocities is what I don't agree with. In order for nations to heal and to grow they need to move on.

Teaching, Week 6 - Their Dreams (Year 3, Day 37)

Chuseok (추석) is this weekend, and I will be spending today through Sunday in Pyeongchang (평창) with the family that so graciously hosted me during my first year in Korea. Since I don't want to be a rude guest, I won't be preparing my customary Friday posting while staying at their house. Instead, enjoy the following early edition.

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Since this week was mid-terms for the first graders, there's not a whole lot to report about this week's teaching duties. The adult conversation classes were personally productive, and as an added bonus, on Monday, the faculty treated me to lunch at a mushroom restaurant, famous for its Pine Tree variety mushrooms (송이버섯). Some of the mushrooms there were imported from North Korea. These were actually half the price of the South Korean varieties which sold at over 1,000,000 won ($842) for about six mushrooms the size of a fist. We did not partake of those instead favoring the cheaper mushrooms that came with the more usual bancheon meal.

I did get around to finally grading the writing assignments sitting on my desk from last week. Usually, grading is a rush job for me. I don't particularly enjoy reading the same answers to the same questions over and over again. But this time, I took my time with it since I had ample time to spare.

Despite the effort involved in grading the free writing assignments I give, I am learning more about my students through this medium than I could ever hope to otherwise. I am discovering that besides the science researchers and professors that everyone expects them to be they also aspire to be linguists, travel writers, musicians, painters, magicians, and space explorers. They are letting me into their lives in such ways that I question the veracity of their responses. Would they share these secret desires with anyone in Korean? Does English serve as a kind of safe zone for freedom of expression at times?

Regardless, I am honored and humbled to be allowed into their worlds.

The prompt was "Someday, I want to..." Below are some of the responses. Enjoy!

My quietest student...

Someday I want to study everything. I don't want studying Math and Science only. And I want to speak at least five languages.

On taking tests...

I want to make a line in OMR card in test. [He means draw a line straight through all of the D's on a scantron card for a multiple choice test.] During middle school, I tried to do it, but I wasn't so brave that I could make it. I heard that second graders [American system 11th grade] who will graduate early do it. They said they play blackjack game (making his point to 21) in test.... I'd like to do this happily (without worrying about my point)

There were many aspiring world travelers, but this one took the cake...

I want to travel Africa on foot. Because there are so many kinds of animals and plants. So maybe traveling Africa will be very exciting. And I also want to travel Antarctica. Because Antarctica is wonderful. Antarctica has clean air, water, soil.. so maybe traveling Antarctica will be so fresh to me.

The future Vincent van Gogh...

Someday I want to draw picture. Actually, I want to more free life. So, I want to go traveling all of country in the world. There are many personal people, variety culture, etc. I want to go through them, to feel them. In short I want to art, traveling many other country. I think that it is more free than now.

A child of faith and service...

According to the Bible and many other predictor says, There will be a disaster in close future. So, I want to relieve other people from dreadful disaster. For this, I want to be engineer and improve life quality or solve problem.

A Korean who knows the difficulties facing his society...

Someday, I want to be one of the most famous people.... I want to find or to make a revolution in science. Sometimes, I want to have a revolution in Korean society. But.. I think it is too hard to do.

A future lover...

Someday, I want to marry a beautiful woman. I have dreamed that situation for a long time. If I marry a beautiful woman. I will give her all of my love. I don't want a perfect woman. because I fill her disadvantage. I think It is the LOVE. I believe somebody needs me. I want to feel the real love because I haven't love someone seriously. I want to sing a song for her.

A die hard fan...

Someday I want to see the scene which is Lotte Giants' victory in Korean Series. Their recent win in KS is 1992. At that time, I wasn't born. So, I can't see the Champion Lotte. I have liked Lotte since I was young. Thus, I long for their victory.

Serious ambition and an inspiration to us all...

I want to be a doctor of forensic medicine in the future. After do that, I'll be appointed to Korean science investigation. Then, I'll very busy, because there is few doctors of forensic medicine. It may be tired and hard, but it's my dream. I'll be a good adult. I'll not lose my dream.

May we also aspire to be good adults. May we not lose our dreams.

With special thanks to the 17th Class of KBSH.

Teaching, Week 5 - (Hidden) Charlie the Unicorn, Riddles, and Names (Year 3, Day 31)

As I mentioned in my last teaching post, we're coming up on the 10th grade mid-term examination period, and, as I also mentioned, the lesson immediately before that week, I like to play a game or perform some other light activity to give the students a chance to relax and take their minds off the test.

So, the plan this week was to do a used car salesman activity on Tuesday, which really is a lot of fun, and do a brain teaser race on Thursday, which is also a lot of fun.

On Tuesday, lesson plan in hand, I burst through the classroom door, as is my custom, and shouted, "Hello, how are you?" As is our custom, those students that were napping in between periods--and there's always at least five; seriously, they bring pint-sized pillows for these cat naps--should have immediately snapped awake and shouted back at least as loud if not as enthusiastically, "Fine, thank you! And you?"

Instead my traditional way of saying, "Hey! Wake up! It's time for class!" was greeted with the proverbial crickets. Not a head stirred, much less lifted, from their repose on the desks.

So, after getting them awake, I scraped the lesson in favor of something far stranger than they could ever have imagined, called it American culture, and called it a day.

Thursday was brain teasers, and while I had fun in my sense of superior intellect (I had the answer key), the students had fun completing each question so they could tell my co-teacher or I the answer in English and thus receive the next puzzle.

Some even saw fit to stump me with their own riddles, diabolical constructions that resembled ancient runes inscribed on a stone wall (You're going to have to enable Korean script on your browser to see this one. [Menu Bar-->View-->Encoding-->Korean]):

ㄱㄴ?田ㅁ田

The goal is to discover what the '?' should be.*

A riddle of less demonic origins was "Are there earthquakes on the moon?" Besides the obvious lack of tectonic plates and magma trying to reach the surface, I'll let you figure out your own reason for why there aren't.

I've been making a concerted effort to learn my students' names this year. This leads me to confess the sad truth that I have been remiss at learning them in the past. I could blame it on lack of exposure with the students and on the fact that names aren't used all that often in Korea, but the plain truth of it is that I've been lazy and a little conceited, learning only the names of students who deigned it good, right, and salutary to participate willingly in my sessions. This is my confession. May my students forgive me.

But when you start learning some students' names, you had better make sure you get all of them. They are like locusts that way. Spray the pesticide all you like, but if just one of them survives, you've got a whole new generation of locusts that think of that pesticide like we think of a light spring rain. Well... maybe they're not exactly like that.

I've had trouble with one particular student's name. I told him that the next time he sees me in the hall, he should come up to me and say, "Teacher, what's my name?" If I failed to produce the correct one out of my hat, he would earn a piece of candy as my punishment. I have only failed once since.

The students, at first, were happy with my new found facility. Basketball games go smoother when I don't bean a kid in the head with a pass because I can't call to him, and classes are more efficient when I don't have to say, "Hey, you three! No, the other three."

However, they are now guardedly optimistic. They have realized that me knowing their names means I can discipline more effectively in class, evaluate their English abilities better (or to the student's grade's detriment, depending on the student), and rat them out to their homeroom teachers.

Uncle Ben, your words of wisdom never rang more true. I know my flock now. Let us hope that they know me as well.

*I think I know the answer. The first six letters of hangul (the Korean alphabet) are ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂ. I think the point of the system given in the riddle is to connect any two exposed line segments that end parallel to each other and to bisect any interior line segments. Thus, when we connect the exposed ends of ㄹ and ㅂ and bisect their interior line segments, we get 田 and 田. Following this pattern, the ㄷ would only need its exposed ends connected giving us ㅁ. But, I have yet to check this with my student.

Teaching, Week 4... or the lack thereof (Year 3, Day 24)

For reference, here's my normal teaching schedule.

• Monday: Low-level Adults Conversation
• Tuesday: Intermediate Adults Free-Talking; Grade 1 (American system 10), Classes 1 and 2
• Wednesday: Intermediate Adults U.S. History
• Thursday: Grade 1 (10), Classes 1 and 2

In all 7 class hours. It's a pretty light schedule, and it's probably the lightest of all the teachers in my program. My friend has often quipped that my school is the program's retirement home, and there's justification for calling it that. As if it weren't light enough, my students are advanced, so agonizing over restricting my vocabulary and grammar patterns, talking like a robot, clarifying every minute detail over and over aren't really issues for me. I have been blessed.

Besides having a fantastic schedule and comprehending students, as an additional bonus, every so often I get a sort of unofficial vacation from teaching, a week or so of class-less bliss. (That's class-less, not classless. I've never been short on class.) This week was one such week.

Don't get me wrong, school is still in session here, but testing and preparing for the new group of students has decimated my class load. Specifically, this week we had Grade 2 and 3 (11 and 12) mid-term examinations and all grades had to take the national university entrance mock examination on Thursday.

On Monday, my Adult Conversation class was canceled apparently. No one showed up at any rate, and I realized that with mid-terms both students and faculty take the afternoons "off". The scare quotes are there because the students study for the next day's subjects and the faculty grade the tests so they can get them back to the students IMMEDIATELY. (The faculty do this for every test at this school, and I admire their dedication. Student scores are usually posted by the end of the period following the previous exam.)

On Tuesday, all of my classes being in the morning, I taught all three of my classes for that day. Grade 1 (10) read through personal ads and played match maker, a lesson I borrowed from Laura K., one of our better educated teachers in the program.

On Wednesday, two of the three teachers that usually participate in the U.S. History topic course had to go on a recruitment trip, so we decided to cancel that course as well.

Thursday was the national mock examination, so no classes then.

And Friday, my only responsibility is to sit at my desk for a bit.

Let me be clear. It's not like these mini-vacations allow me to get out of town. I have responsibilities here still (Korean classes, faculty meetings, etc.). So, what do I do with my free-time then? I write, and I read. Preparing for grad school is no small task.

These schedule interruptions are troublesome, especially when one is trying to develop lessons that build on each other. A few weeks ago, I did a lesson series on environmentalism that incorporated practicing open forum debate and discussion skills. Although it is fairly typical for teachers in our programs to teach single lesson topics, after teaching for two years I prefer these lesson series because it allows the students to acquire and practice new vocabulary instead of just retaining it for the one lesson.

This is difficult to accomplish with interruptions, however, because students will often forget what they've acquired with too much time in between lessons and because, as is the case with testing periods, students have trouble concentrating on their English when they're worried about the math exam they have to take tomorrow. To combat this and to help the students relax a bit, my co-teacher and I have adopted a policy of playing games during the lessons before major exam periods like mid-terms and finals, and I am careful not to schedule major projects so that they are due immediately before examinations.

Next week, for instance, I really only have Tuesday for a constructive English conversation lesson. The week after is mid-term examinations for Grade 1 (10), so Thursday will be a game day. After those Thursday lessons, I won't have class with my students again for another 11 days.

Of course, one might ask, why not just make them study in your classes? You are a teacher after all, and your responsibility is to the kids and their learning. Kids may not like broccoli, but parents make them eat it anyway because it's good for them to grow up healthy. Students may not like learning certain subjects, but we make them do it anyway because it's good for them to have a well-rounded elementary and secondary education.

I appreciate the sage-advice, oh, rhetorical device, but the reality of the situation here is, while I feel my classes are important and helpful for these students, I also realize just how supplementary they are.

Native teachers who first come to Korea often come with the misconception that they will be like their teachers in their home country. They will have control over their classrooms and curricula. They will stretch and enhance their students minds. They will improve their quality of life.

When I first came here, I was loathe to give up any of my classes for the sake of examinations. I decried the system. It was unjust to subject students to the kinds of torture studying for the national examination system entails. It was unhealthy for the students, and it was a poor measurement of aptitude besides. I fought for every class and bargained with teachers to make up classes I would miss because I knew that my class was making a difference in these students' lives and was helping them to see the world in new and better ways!

And while I truly believe that we do make a significant impact on these students, I came to realize that in the Korean education system, for better or for worse, we and our conversation classes are the sideshow. The main event is the examination. For most students, this means acquiring facility with English reading and listening, no more, no less. For most of my students, this means getting a good score on TEPS, largely a vocabulary knowledge examination, so that they can put that on their early admittance applications for top technical universities.

My point is, after a couple of years here, I've realized that we need to strike a balance. Yes, we should teach. Yes, we should educate. Yes, we should do all of these things with intention and diligence to present the best possible window into English speaking culture and to get our students actually communicating in our language rather than just comprehending it.

On the other hand, speaking English like a pro and knowing what Americans do on Thanksgiving Day isn't going to help my kids get into college. I have come to realize that I need to be humble, to step aside and let the students prepare and study and pass their examinations.

And these few hours, these few moments I am given to interact and explore with my students--these are all the more precious for it.