Why do some journal articles have to be such a nightmare?

[Gandalf]

English as a second language in Korea? That's quite difficult...


Many koreans are coming to the Philippines to study english. My wife, who is an English instructor, sometimes has students from Korea and she would usually complain.

The Koreans are bonkers for studying English. They send their kids all over the place in order to learn. Groups of Koreans outside Korea are notorious for being difficult to deal with!

I like teaching but have conflicts with the Korean educational system. Everything is geared towards passing the multiple choice public school exams. Many teachers use old fashioned methods of instruction and communication skills get neglected. Im left with the task of trying to work on improving fluency and communicative competence. A tricky task when you get the students for only 50 minutes a week.

Yeah, they don't respect their teachers. They actually don't respect women.

Whew, 5o minutes a week? It's better not to teach if you are only given that time.

Multiple choice exams in English? No essay writing?

Actually, I have no issues with controlling them. A death stare along with a scowl usually does the job for me. I dont need to do that most of the time though. I generally enjoy my classes. I only teach the higher level students and some are remarkably fluent.

50 minutes is not enough time. Especially when they are getting 250 minutes at my school studying endless grammatical rules with the other teachers. Unfortunately they are given little opportunity to put their knowledge of the language into spoken use and to use language creatively. Its a problem. They also study 6 further lessons a week in public schools. Koreans study English about 10 hours a week but there is too much reliance on grammar translation. Its old hat and doesnt help anybody.

Korea is changing and the spoken element is becoming more important but changes are slow. Im gonna be earning my living here for quite some while yet.