영국사람

My Korean sucks!

It is a common misconception that those of us married to Koreans have an ‘on-tap’ Korean language tutor, and that our language abilities should be much better than people who do not have such ready access to a Korean to assist. My F-pat friends and I know that this is not always the case. Before I met my wife I studied Korean out of necessity. After I met her, the necessity disappeared. Rather than having access to a tutor, I found that I had access to a translator. This is MUCH more convenient! Or is it?

Sure, I can get pretty much anything I want in Korea. If I need a new bank account, my wife speeds up the process. If I want to get insurance, my wife gets it for me. When I needed business cards printed up, the wife came along for the ride. When I had to go and give evidence at the Police station, my wife ensured that there was no ambiguity when my words were translated from English to Korean.

I did try to study more, but my wife is not a teacher. If I am honest, I don’t want her to be my teacher, in much the same way I don’t want to be her teacher. I have a great set of Textbooks (Integrated Korean – Google it), but sometimes I need access to a teacher who can explain why things happen to be the way they are. Once the baby came along, my wife had less time to help out. This caused me to cut back to the point where I was only learning what I needed to survive alone. Important stuff could wait!

There has always been a little resentment in the family when it comes to my language abilities. Whilst the grandmother and the father-in-law accepted my poor language abilities 2 years ago, they are less comfortable doing so now. My wife’s sister has commented that it would be easier for me to learn Korean than it would be for all of them to learn English – and that is a pretty good argument. The father-in-law is most distressed, because he has a son-in-law that he can not properly communicate with. These people all want a relationship with me, and the language barrier is huge.

Now, my daughter is really starting to talk. She speaks a few words of English and can understand what I say to her, but her vocabulary is 75% Korean. She is starting to form her first sentences, and these are also in Korean. It’s about time I get off my arse and start to study the language properly.

I am a firm believer in L2 grammar being taught in L1. It cuts down on any confusion, especially during the early stages of language acquisition. So… I went looking for places to study. There are just a few options for studying in a traditional environment:

• Language exchange: This could be good if it wasn’t for the fact that too many ‘tutors’ are really just looking for free English lessons, and they are not usually qualified to teach.
• University: Many of the Korean Universities offer a program that is 3 hours per day, 5 days a week. This is expensive, though the cost per hour is pretty cheap.
• Hagwons: There are a few hagwons offering classes. These usually cost a little more per hour than the University classes, but the reduced hours (usually 1 or 2 per day) does make the outlay significantly less each month.

At first I decided upon a University course. The wife agrees that it is a good investment, and she says that every fluent Korean speaking foreigner she has met has studied at Yonsei. The problem is, the 3 hour classes, and the location of the University, means that I would have real trouble making it to work each day. The same is true of all other Universities in Seoul, as they all offer similar deals, with similar times. My regular job has me travel a lot, and I need to be at different places in Seoul each afternoon. I also have an extra job in Goyang that I need to be at for 2pm on Monday. The Universities are out.

I then looked at Hagwons, and found 3 which offered classes:

• Seoul KLA, with campuses in Gangnam and Jongro, offer classes from 10-11:50 daily (370K/month), though I have it on good authority that their books are pretty bad. (They actually offer a range of packages, included afternoons, evenings, or saturday intensives).
• Metro Korea Academy near city hall offer a range of classes at slightly lower rates: 5 days from 10-11:50 costs 350K, or there are 3 days (M/W/F) for 230K. (Again, check the site for other options, as they also offer a range of classes that do not interest me).
• YBM offer a full range of courses at Jongro, and their 9-10:50 classes would suit me (or perhaps the 10-12:50). They use the Konguk and Yonsei University textbooks (a good thing) and the tuition for 2 class hours/day is just 226K/month. Bargain!

I had heard decent things about YBM, and I was going to sign up, but then my employers presented me with an opportunity to be involved in the writing of textbooks for a new home-study course. I would be spending some time at head-office, and breakfast meetings are pretty much the norm in any deadline driven environment. I could have said no, but figuring this was a great opportunity to get involved with an aspect of EFL I had never experienced, the hagwon idea had to be shelved.

My wife was pretty pleased about this. Whilst she has a lot of respect for the Yonsei University program, she does not think a hagwon will be as useful. She learned English through a combination of self-study and having to deal with schools in the US/Canada as part of her (pre-marriage) job placing students overseas. She thinks I would do much better studying a little each day and then getting out and using what I have learned. She is probably right…

I went back to the drawing board. It looks like I was going to be stuck with textbooks and the internet. I needed a plan!

I went back over the Sogang program, but I found I needed more instruction. I looked at KoreanClass101.com and whilst I was impressed with the amount of content, I found the site difficult to navigate. I thought it was too ‘busy’ and not easy to dip into, and that they were trying to throw together content you could memorise without any real structure (much like the PS English program in Korea).

I had also read somewhere (and I can’t remember where) about  learnkoreanonline. I remembered that it was a site run by an expat in Korea, and after digging around, I realised it was somebody I had met a few years earlier and I was about to see him again at a mutual friends birthday party. His name is Rob, and he is one of those ‘all-round good guys!’

I signed up for the 4 hours of free videos that he offers for new learners of Korean, just to get a feel for the classes. His site is pretty simple: you get emailed a handout, you print it, and you watch videos of him teaching a live class at his school in Korea. The other students ask the questions you probably would, and he will answer any questions you post on his site, often by creating a video response.

After having the site checked our by the wife (who commended his Korean skills) and a foreigner friend who studied at Yonsei many years ago (who said he was the first foreigner he had seen teach Korean without making an arse of himself) I signed up. I used the wife’s details, so that he would not know it was me, and I am currently waiting on lesson 10. So that people are not overwhelmed, or skip ahead before they are ready, he releases a class every 5 days. The material is a little low for me right now, so it is a great refresher, though I can see how it would be perfect for any new learner who did not have the time/money to study formally. I have learned something new with of these beginner classes, as Rob explains the ‘why’ stuff very well. The why stuff is pretty simple, you just need a decent teacher explaining it!

So… Each class is around 40-60 minutes of video. After the initial freebies are up, you pay just $27 a month (as at December 2009). It is money well spent! After the class, I run refreshers on the subway by copying the vocabulary to google docs and downloading it to my ipod touch so that I can use it with gflash. Best of all, I jumped into my Integrated Korean book again last night, and without even realising it, I am more than ready to continue with that alongside the learnkoreanonline course.

Where will the Bus Drivers Come From?

This article from the JoongAng Daily made me smile. It tells the tale of a Korean who has worked as a driver all of his life, and is still active on the buses of Seoul at 68 years old.

it also got me  thinking about something I often argue: The university experience has become severely undervalued due to there being too much opportunity for Higher Education. What we now have is a young population who are heavily in debt, and a labour market that is saturated, meaning that most people are overqualified for jobs what may be available. This is as true back ‘home’ as it is here in Korea.

This was discussed in a paper I recently read: “Causes and Countermeasures of Youth Unemployment in Korea” by Kim Hea-Kyung (MS Word file). Here are some nice stats gleaned from it:

• Employment of young people stood at 42.8% at the end of 2007.
• Small business tend to pay an average of 2,490,000 for a 201.8 hour working month, compared with 3,819,000 fir a 191.4 hour working month in a larger company. Graduates will do anything to avoid working at these smaller companies.
• Graduates expect 5-10 million won/year more than the market actually pays.
• In 1990, 32.2% of young people went on to college or university (with 25.8% of young people graduating). In 2006, that number had increased to 82.1% (with 52.6% graduating).
• The Quality of Korean University education has decreased due to the increase in quantity, so more businesses prefer to hire experienced workers.

Kim calls for better education of students, in order to give a more realistic picture of what their future will likely entail.

The Korea Times recently printed an article about the unhappiness of Korean Teens when compared to their peers in Japan and China.

Korean teens value money more than reputation or academic career, and tend to look up to rich people the most. About 92 percent said money was most important and four out of 10 said the rich were to be admired.

I blame the parents. Children are not allowed to dream any more. They move from school to hagwon, then into University, all in the hope that they will gain a job that, usually, doesn’t exist when the only thing they like about the job is the pay. No wonder there is such correlation between key academic milestones and suicides in young people.

As for where the bus drivers will come from: The chances are, they will come from some of the better Universities in Korea, bitter at their lot in life. Jang E-in is a man who probably receives nothing more than a cursory glance from those that board his bus in Seoul. The Ajumma’s who dread the prospect of their children ever leading such a ‘poor’ life would do well to give him more consideration, for he is probably more content than their children will ever be.