Thanks to our readers, 2011 was a huge success for us!
Extra special thanks to Jen, who’s been a content machine.
Check out the link below and see a summary for the year.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
–Daniel Daugherty
Filed under News
Thanks to The Marmot’s Hole for the translation of this article. Apparently, “students and parents preferred Korean instructors fluent in English over native speakers.”
Let’s just sidestep the issue of public education policy being left to parent and student surveys, rather than language and education experts. I kind of understand the policy decision to de-emphasize native speaking teachers as a key toward English proficiency for Korean students. Native teachers are very expensive to bring over. However, they are not the real problem. The real problem is an English education policy that mismanages personnel and fails to respect students’ needs, forcing parents to spend ever more money on the diminishing returns of a farcical hagwon industry. (Do I sound jaded and cynical, or what?)
Let’s address the elephant in the room, first. It’s apparent before you arrive in Korea that the vast majority of people TEFLing here are grossly un-qualified. Most haven’t even got a fly-by-night TEFL certification or any experience remotely related to teaching, let alone experience managing groups of children. Forget all the AIDS fear, drug testing and worries about “corrupting the youth” — most Korean kids are taught by under-qualified individuals. Yes, that included me when I worked at Avalon. (For those scoring at home, I no longer teach EFL.)
However, the wholesale sacking of mostly unqualified native teachers isn’t going to fix the problems with public English education in Seoul. From what I can tell of friends’ and colleagues’ “work” schedules, the public EFL curriculum is a non-priority at many schools. They often go weeks without seeing a single class while student assemblies, test days and other events crowd English classes off the regular schedule. A common complaint on Facebook is, “the internet ran out of things to entertain me at work today.”
When these teachers do see the kids, it’s in groups of 30 or 40 who come once a week. Not a chance for anyone to form a rapport or give kids enough reps to justify having a native teacher on hand.
My own students describe public-school English as a one-size-fits-all failure. They lump kids together by age, not ability. This means kids who lived in Canada and can read classic novels in English sit next to kids who can’t pronounce a “z” sound or remember the days of the week. How is this helpful to either student? And remember, this is Korea, where saving face is a paramount concern woven into the fabric of the culture. Some kids will just be left behind by their own ingrained desire to avoid embarrassment. This is a public education policy that fails to respect the socio-cultural reality of 99.9 percent of students.
Dropping native English speaking teachers wholesale is also poor management of personnel assets. Yes, most are unqualified. However, for the few who are qualified and passionate about teaching, the public school setting is the only place that gives them flexibility and planning time to apply themselves properly, as well as a pay scale that respects experience and credentials.
Hagwon hiring standards, on the other hand, are bizarrely low throughout most of the industry. Teachers are replaceable cogs in a preset curriculum cleverly designed to take parents’ money. In most, any actual learning is a happy coincidence. Seoul students will now be deprived of the only qualified, enthusiastic EFL teachers and lessons they can hope to encounter. Unless …
This policy might help the hagwon industry since parents who want native speakers will still be able to demand it with their pocketbooks. Those public teachers who are qualified and enthusiastic will likely gravitate to the industry if they want to continue living in Korea.
However, unlike hagwon teachers, public teachers are used to having the flexibility in their curriculum to design effective lessons based on professional best practices: Lesson plans that integrate reading, speaking, listening and writing skills; and games to reinforce those lessons, keep kids engaged and make them think dynamically in their new language.
Hagwon parents don’t get anything like that for their money, nor do they demand it. As I’ve previously written, they demand more homework and bigger vocabulary lists, not creative lessons and teachers who make the language fun. Those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teachers with any level of enthusiasm will become soulless TEFL zombies in most hagwons.
In the end, everybody loses. The education system will become even more dependent on hagwons and their flawed educational environments, good teachers will leave Korea or have their souls sucked out, bad teachers will proliferate the system even further, and the needs of children will continue to be ignored. They’ll lose sleep and stress out over a bunch of classes that aren’t designed to teach them anything, for teachers who don’t care about them.
–Daniel Daugherty
Filed under Culture, Employment Details, News
When it comes to children and their quality of life, the heli-tiger hagwon moms never fail to amaze me in their seeming indifference toward the suffering of their children.
Working in the industry, I’ve seen firsthand the spirit-crushing results of their insatiable demand for more education: Long hours in hagwons; even longer hours of homework; kids passing out from lack of sleep; kids who have just stopped trying; kids who only put effort into cheating. I even had one student tell me she wished she had never been born because her life was a constant cycle of homework and test prep.
For the hapless hagwon owner, interactions with the heli-tiger moms are a regular, if slightly irritating, occurrence. “My kid doesn’t have enough homework,” or “My child should be in a higher level,” are stereotypes to anyone who’s taught in a hagwon for a couple of months. At my previous job, a mother had her kid secretly time teachers with a stopwatch, then asked for (and received!) a discount based on time not spent teaching. All of these are perhaps justifiable.
After what I heard today, perhaps “seeming indifference” is giving too much credit to some of these moms. We received a complaint over the phone that two fourth-grade children in a class together are coming home in “too good of a mood.” Apparently we aren’t doing a good job as a hagwon because children are still happy after three hours in our classrooms. (I’m as surprised as they are.)
Think of it: The mothers of these two boys sat down at Tom n’ Tom’s for cappucinos and made a joint decision that their boys’ light-hearted moods warranted intervention. How does this even come up in conversation?
Mom A: “Have you noticed anything odd about your boy, lately?”
Mom B: “I’ve noticed that he smiles when he comes home from academy. I think something might be wrong with his education. What kind of teacher leaves children in a good mood? And what kind of academy allows such teaching methods to continue unchecked?”
Mom A: “It’s like you’re reading my mind! Tuesdays and Thursdays, my boy’s got a hop in his step and a twinkle in his eye — unbecoming traits for the future CEO of Samsung. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong at home, but clearly it’s the fault of his academy. I will call them when I get home. Happiness is all well and good for an executive at Doosan, but we’re not paying first-tier money for second-tier employment. If nothing else, maybe we can get a discount.
In stroke of serendipity, Ask a Korean! is discussing the country’s notoriously high suicide rate this week, and that extends to youths as well. I know correlation does not equal causation, but there’s enough evidence to put the theory forward.
–Daniel Daugherty
Filed under Culture Shock, Students
I heard a rumor the other day that might have huge consequences for the Korean EFL job market. A fellow former-employee of Avalon English+ informed me that, per her director, the company is going to start offering two-year contracts to foreign teachers.
I spoke to two recruiting companies who deal with Avalon and neither has negotiated a two-year contract so far, so this may be specific only to the Imae branch, or nothing but a rumor. However, Reuben Zuidhof, CEO of the recruiting agency Adventure Teaching, did suggest that it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Avalon HR representatives did not return calls.
“Would be a huge task, but one I think you’ll see in the years to come,” he said in an email.
Indeed, two-year contracts may be the hagwon industry’s attempt to bring down a high turnover rate. My former head teacher at Avalon Sunae branch, Naved Ali, mentioned that corporate HR sought advice from head teachers throughout the company on how to retain foreign staff, although he declined to put his response on the record.
The possibility of two-year contracts leads to a few other questions:
Two-year contracts ” would change the industry and the quality of teachers who come,” says Zuidhof. As of this writing, he hasn’t elaborated on this statement. Any further clarification will come in an update to this post. “I think the teacher quality would get better simply because you’d be getting teachers who are more committed to teaching, learning the system, and (hopefully) engaging with the culture.”
I’d love to hear what readers think. Has anyone else heard this rumor? Would you come here on a two-year contract? What kind of benefits would sweeten the deal for you?
–Daniel Daugherty
Full disclosure: Daniel used Adventure Teaching’s services to get his first job placement in Korea, at Avalon English+.
Filed under Employment Details, News
Ever since our arrival, Jen and I have basically planned on doing two years here. We’re half way through and I’m beginning to think about what to do a year from now. A lot of people I know have gone back home to the States, and it seems like plenty of other people are planning to leave. Why? The more I think about it, moving back to the US would be a huge financial risk.
I plan to have ~$10,000 saved up by the end of my next contract. As soon as I arrive in the US, it will begin to disappear. The first thing I’ll have to do is buy a car, because you can’t get a job in the US without one. A car means extra financial costs like gasoline, insurance and maintenance, plus a lot of extra stress. Then I’ll have to plunk down a deposit for an apartment and start paying rent.
Then I have to hope I land a job with a reasonable salary. With a car and the fact that I have to pay for my own apartment, I estimate I’ll need to make 50 percent more per year than I do in Korea. Yeah, I spend like a rock star here, but I also don’t have to pay for my housing or a car. Transportation, internet and doctor visits are all very cheap here. Going back into credit card debt looks like a very real possibility, even if I have a job.
Let me also re-emphasize the sobering fact that, thanks to a bunch of loud-mouths at town hall meetings and the distressingly ineffective government who does what they say, I won’t have easy, affordable access to doctors and dentists. This means everything I do becomes a risk. Playing sports? I’m pushing 30 and have seen more than one friend tear an ACL during casual athletic activities. Car accident? “Don’t take me in the ambulance, I can only afford to hitchhike.” Candy at the movies? I’d better not risk a cavity.
Meanwhile, I really don’t want to make a career out of ESL. Especially not in Korea, where none of my experience counts for anything outside of the country.
One thing’s for sure: I’m going to have to start taking some risks in the not-too-distant future.
Filed under Daily Life
I always joke that my employer, Avalon English, is like the Fawlty Towers of educational institutions. All matters related to product quality, education and worker efficiency eventually come down to marketing and the school’s image. The company will fall all over itself to maintain or improve an image of quality and prestige, often sacrificing both in the process.
E-Writing is a fine example. Some parents pay extra money for the privilege of having their children submit weekly essays via the Internet. I am required to hand out semi-related worksheets to all students who aren’t enrolled in the program, part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to get Mom and Dad to ask “What’s this E-Writing all about?” This is no doubt touted as a great technological whizz-bang fix-all for their child’s poor ability to organize thoughts with a pencil. After all, it uses computers!
What parents actually pay for is the privilege for their children to type into a box and click “submit.” There are few formatting options and the only thing that seems to matter is word count, which is automatically tracked. There’s not even a basic spell-check function.
After submitting, the essays are read by an anonymous, likely underpaid, individual in the Philippines. Though I’m the writing teacher, I cannot access the essays. You figure it out.
With that in mind, you shouldn’t be too shocked by the latest technological “advancement” coming to ESL classrooms in Korea. Thirty ESL “robots” are now employed as teachers in Daegu. Obligatory: The Simpsons did it!
"No, Juho. 'Linguo IS dead.'"
The “robot” — technically, it’s a remote-controlled automotive computer shaped like a person — reflects another cultural idiosyncrasy tied to marketing: The preference for white European features. Like the essays I’ll never grade, it’s controlled by a teacher in the Philippines, but it displays a white female on a monitor intended to be its face.
It's only a matter of time until students throw food at Engkey.
No pun intended, here’s the money quote from Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist the Korean Institute for Science and Technology: “Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea.”
The fact of the matter is that there are ESL teachers around the world who are much more qualified than I am. However, skin color trumps all. Are Koreans racist against non-white people? I’m not sure. It’s more likely that hagwons just want to promote an image of American-ness, which they perceive as white, blonde-haired and square-chinned.
The JoongAng Daily‘s take seems to confirm my impressions:
The biggest source of the current problem with foreign teachers lies in English-teaching institutes that hire teachers without careful review. Many profit-driven institutes have been employing as many Caucasian English teachers as possible without conducting thorough checks because the marketing benefits from such practice outweigh the long-term side effects.
Claims of racist hiring practices are common among foreigners and it’s usually attributed to widespread racism among Korean people. It doesn’t help this perception when we all have to provide photographs with our resumes. Whether or not the racism is conscious or systemic, it’s real. Check out this excerpted letter Khadijah Anderson received from a recruiter:
Thanks for your email. I’m a former black teacher so whenever we get black applicants I like to cut right to the chase. At the moment we only have one position in Ulsan that is open to hiring black teachers. You’ve been here a while so you know the discrimination that exists in Korea. Once in a while we get Seoul positions for black candidates but it is a rarity.
I do think there’s a reasonable expectation of conscious individual racism here because this is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries on the planet, but this doesn’t reflect my — admittedly white — personal experience. In my Avalon branch we peaked at eight foreign teachers. Of those eight, four were non-white and included individuals of Japanese, Pakistani, Argentinian and black ethnic backgrounds. Whether any of us are actually qualified to teach English is another matter.
It looks like the Korean government might be trying to lead a change toward meritocracy, though. Per Brian Deutsch, EPIK, a program for hiring public school teachers, seeks to hire Indian foreign teachers.
-Daniel Daugherty
Update: Fixed the Linguo photograph, which wasn’t loading. I also changed the wording around Khadijah Anderson’s letter, which made it sound like she was accusing all Koreans of being racist. To clarify, the letter was a surprise because she has had a positive personal experience as a black female in Korea.
Update 2: Corrected spelling of Ms. Anderson’s first name
Filed under Culture, Employment Details
July and August have been busy months for me here. So busy, in fact, that my contact with family members is reduced to refuting various forwarded emails concerned with Barack Obama’s religious preferences and trying to set up this year’s NFL football pool ($100 buy-in, leave a comment if you’re interested). One of the purposes of this blog is to keep friends and family up to speed on what I’m doing, so I thought I’d get around to it.
Our kitchen on brew day.
My biggest development lately is that I’ve started homebrewing again. The main reason for this is that beer in South Korea is worse than Budweiser or Miller Lite. Dogs would rather die from dehydration than risk a sip of Cass or Hite — or as I like to call them, Ass and Shite — over-processed, nutritionally deficient macrobrews. Having spent a large chunk of my life in western North Carolina, I’m disappointed. The Seoul microbrewing “scene” is not adequate for a world-class metropolis.
Meanwhile, imported beers are too expensive to take home regularly, and they don’t have many styles — it’s all pilsener. Of all places, North Korea produces a pilsener-style beer that tastes similar to many quality German brews. The only problem is that, as far as I know, you can’t buy it outside of the DMZ gift shops.
Now, I like cheap-ass beer for tailgating and general binge drinking, but when I’m relaxing at home or hanging out with a friend, I like savoring what I eat and drink. So I got a buddy at work who willingly overpays for decent beers to go in with me on homebrewing equipment and last weekend we cracked open our first batch of pale ale, made from a malt extract.
Inside our mash cooler, grains soak in hot water to stimulate enzyme activity, converting starches into sugars. The grains are kept in mesh "tea bags" for the sake of convenience.
Given our laughably simple set-up, I thought it’d turn bad for sure, especially with the high temperature I keep in the apartment — around 77F. The temperature did me a favor, though, causing a fast fermentation that ensured there wasn’t time for nastiness to grow in our beer. The results were encouragingly drinkable.
Extract brewing is a little too simplistic, though, and I wanted to pick up where I left off years ago, with all-grain brewing. After finding a free cooler in my apartment building — they run upwards of $70 for even a basic model here — we were able to go all-grain with our second batch, a wheat beer which is busily bubbling away in the living room as I type this out.
Naved, the designated sparge bitch.
Our process needs refinement, but I’m confident that we’ll get it down with practice. Our biggest problem was not having enough hot water on hand to rinse out the grains. Our batch is a little smaller than our five-gallon target. Live and learn, I guess. The next step is a keg, and maybe a cheap kimchi fridge to keep it cold.
-Daniel Daugherty
Filed under Daily Life
Check out Daniel's awesome juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern!
Japan was pretty cool. It was similar to Korea with two key differences for naive observers like myself: 1) The locals smile without provocation; and 2) No garbage all over the sidewalks. Sadly, I wasn’t there long enough to have a more informed opinion of the place — I’m sure their cultural idiosyncracies are equally frustrating to Westerners.
As for what we saw and did there, I’d like to say I don’t need to visit another Shinto shrine for the rest of my life, but I never took the opportunity to drop in a few yen and summon the spirits. I’ll have to go to at least one more time — I could really use some of that bibbed-fox-statue magic.
For me, the most thrilling part of Japan was riding the train to Kyoto from the airport and finding out that it looks exactly like the pixelated backgrounds in “River City Ransom,” a beloved video game from my childhood. (I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find a book called “Dragon Feet.”)
Anyway, you didn’t come to hear my nostalgic quips about a Nintendo game. Click through for my photo album.
Please leave photo comments and questions here on the blog and I’ll try to get back at you. I’d post them all here as a slideshow but Google doesn’t currently support embedding into WordPress blogs without a ton of extra file management — I’m lazy enough about blogging as it is.
-Daniel Daugherty
A couple weeks ago our school had term tests. These are bi-monthly exams to check and see if students can advance to the next skill level. The exams include a lengthy vocabulary and grammar section, a simple conversational speaking test, and a writing test where students must answer a general essay prompt.
Some students received the following prompt:
Write a fictional biography of your teacher. Make up all of the details.
The two below were notable not just for their general hilarity but because they both independently decided that my mother would have foregone breastmilk in favor of beer.
The two essays are presented here with my students’ permission.
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| From TEFLorBust |
 Note: Cham-i-seol is soju, a vodka-like liquor variously made from rice, potatoes, wheat, barley and sweet potatoes. ABV is generally 18-22 percent. |
| From TEFLorBust |
Makes you wonder how they know me so well!
-Daniel Daugherty
Filed under Students
Jen Pace
Daniel Daugherty
