ESL

Do all South Korean students need English in order to be a success? And why are students learning to score well on tests rather than to actually speak English? Seoul-based essayist, broadcaster, & Los Angeles Review of Books Korea Blog writer Colin Marshall joins Korea FM’s Chance Dorland to discuss the negative consequences of Korea’s ESL industry he describes as a cancer.

Part of my job as a high school English teacher in South Korea involved giving out, and then correcting, weekly creative writing assignments. It quickly became one of my favorite parts of the experience, as it allowed my students to apply the language with more freedom and personality. It also helped me to get to know them in a more private way. From unintentionally funny remarks, to profound realizations, their writing was a joy to read.

Below is a small collection of some of my favorite excerpts. I’ve also taken the liberty of underscoring their messages with related images. Perhaps this could have been made into some sort of class project… Enjoy!

Hello, fellow ESL teachers. Do you have 10 minutes to kill in a class? Have you already shown your students every (currently available on YouTube) episode of the animated Mr. Bean series? Are your kids bored to death of Hangman or–in the case of South Korea–“Nunchi Game,” where they each stand up in the order of words or numbers on the board and the last one to stand is out? Do you have a class that is relatively advanced in English and can offer some creative discourse? Or, do you have a class that barely offers input at all?

Right now I’m sitting in a place called Cafe Sunrise. As I type this, there is an elderly gentleman with a gold watch on sits in front of me. He’s in sunglasses smoking a cigarette. I caught him taking selfies, and thought oh how cute.  Then I looked closer, and noticed that his selfies were carefully composed to feature me typing on my computer in the background of every shot. 

I eventually decided to just go up to him and strike a pose.

How do you teach mean girls?

Today, my evening class contained arrogant, catty, and peevish young women.

These kids are fourteen, so I felt like I could talk to them as if they were young adults. WRONG. I allowed them to sit wherever they wanted at first, and I let them to snack. Those two minor allowances turned them WILD! They weren’t listening to me AT ALL, and were virtually ignoring everything but their own conversations. When I tried to split them up, they obstinately refused. They refuse to engage with anyone they consider uncool or ugly. How infuriating. So I called in the branch manager. He yelled at them, and I morphed into a cold, angry dictator for the rest of the lesson.