Education News

First out of the blocks, a chance for sharp-eyed English-speakers to earn some money: the Korean Tourism Organization is offering a reward to photogs who submit signs in muddled, Konglishy English found at "tourist spots". No precise definition of tourist spot, and road signs, restaurant menus and guidebooks are not eligible, as KTO doesn't have jurisdiction over them. Still, an interesting concept, and a chance to get a W50,000 debit card for your efforts. Click here for more.

The Chosun Ilbo carried a report last week of a study done by SMOE (my employer) analyzing the results of a survey "conducted among 28,761 students, 11,980 parents, 2,406 Korean English teachers, and 595 native English-speaking teaching assistants at 1,282 primary and secondary schools in Seoul."

The survey found that Koreans are still quite conflicted about having native speaking teachers run their English classrooms: less than one-third of parents and students "preferred" native speakers to Korean teachers with good English skills, though about 60% are "more satisfied" with the teaching job being done by foreign teachers. IOW, yes, you do a better job, but we still don't want you here--aka, having our cake and eating it too.

Speaking of which, English success not cake, the CSAT or suneung results have been published, and some 17,000 of the exam's 648,946 takers aced the English section.

The Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), announcing the scores of the 2012 CSAT [Wednesday], said that 171 people this year received perfect scores on the exam’s three core subjects - Korean language, mathematics and English - compared to 11 last year.

Post-exam bellyaching is an annual sport here, as people complain the exam was too hard if there aren't enough perfect scorers, or that it's too easy if there are too many. The testing authority aims for 1%, but never seems to hit that mark.

As if to make a point, the JoongAng printed elsewhere this story: Student’s perfect CSAT is all his own, about Baek Ju-hong, who aced the suneung without the benefit of hagwons, thus proving the effectiveness of public education.

...Or the inteligence, inquisitiveness and hard work of an individual student:

An avid reader, Baek said, “In the countryside, where there is not a single college prep hagwon, the only way to develop logical thinking skills was by reading many different books.”
Baek said he also had a head start with his parents, who were avid readers themselves.

Movies Unit

For the last several weeks, first grade classes (remember, this is high school's first grade) have been doing a conversation unit about movies. After learning and reinforcing a lot of key movie terminology (based on the good work of our friends at Lanternfish: www.bogglesworldesl.com), we started applying it.

For example, in lesson three, half the sudents watched a Mr Bean vignette, then have to describe it to the other half, who had been sent out of the room. I provided vocabulary on the board, stopping and starting the video to make the plot and ideas clear; then, the co-teacher and I go around asking a few pointed questions of the ones who did not watch: What was the setting? What's the first thing that happened? What was the climax? Why didn't Mr Bean just walk back down from the high diving board? (Mr Bean at the Swimming Pool) Why was Mr Bean popping paper bags anyway? (Mr Bean on the Airplane), etc.

This week, lesson five, begins with a fifteen minute review of the movie terms, using a new methodology I found quite effective and will use again. To wit: I previously prepared a set of questions on little chits cut out from a Word doc, and put them in a container. The co-teacher walks around the room and randomly (more or less) selects a students to stand up, pull a question, and read it aloud. If the student reads it loudly and clearly, there will no repeating. I then pull a student ID number from my magic English cup for the student who answers.

If the student answers correctly, we all cheer and move on to the next question. If he doesn't know (or wasn't paying attention), the student remains standing, and will get a chance to answer another question later on. This was extremely effective in getting the question-askers to be loud and clear, and getting the rest of the class to shut the fuck up and listen carefully!

Plus, it can be used for lots of types of interactions: complete the sentence, vocab review, grammar points, etc. The key is not to allow your co or yourself to repeat or rephrase, as we so often do. How it took me so long to reach this formulation, I don't know, but I'll be using it regularly!

The main activity of this, the final lesson of the movie unit, is "Create Your Own DVD", an idea I stole from Eat Your Kimchi and modified to suit. One big difference is that my DVD template is actual size; anyway, the idea is pretty clear: students will design and execute a DVD cover for a favorte movie or a movie they'd like to make or see. I set up certain requirements of what it should consist of, requiring application of the things we've learned in the unit, like plot, genre, critic's reviews, stars, setting, etc. I show a couple of real samples, pointing out the features I'm talking about, then let them get to it.

The results range from the ridiculous (click to see full size):


... to the sublime:


And a few more examples, for posterity:





These projects are not, however, representative, in one main way: the majority of students spend all their time on the front cover, the graphic in particular, and hardly do anything on the back, which is mostly about writing in English. That is, after all, the pedagogic function of the activity.

I don't know the solution to this, since one justification is that it allows the weaker English student a chance to be expressive in class, a class in which they usually understand about one tenth of what's going on. I get that.

What I don't get is how they managed to make it into high school English without one iota of actual English.

School Trip Weekend

I went to France this weekend--or rather Petite France (or rather 쁘띠 프랑스)--as part of the first school-type trip I've taken since coming to Korea. This was part of my Saturday Public Speaking class, and our twenty kids were combined with the same number from the Critical Reading and Writing class and the Mathematics class.

We left Saturday morning at 9 AM and returned Sunday, a half-hour late, at 5:30 PM. The weekend divided into three parts, so that's how I'll describe it. We drove northeast from Seoul into Gyeonggi-do, and spent most of Saturday at the Institute for Mathematics Culture, basically an interactive math interpretive center:







The morning was basically a lecture (in Korean) for the students, then we went to lunch at a tofu restaurant about a ten-minute drive away. The afternoon had lecture, but also hands-on activities for the students:







... as well as the teachers (my native teacher counterparts in the critical writing course, Lauren and Derek, learning about the 'catenary'):



We spent the overnight at SMOE's retreat center in the town of Namyangju-si, styled a bit like a Swiss chalet, but with few of the amenities. As the weekend was chilly, the ondol floor-heating was welcome, but the sleeping on the floor was not. Shortly after arrival, there was a welcome speech, then we played a game of Jeopardy we had prepared, with the kids in the PS and CRW classes divided into four teams. Later in the evening, the facility staff led the kids in a series of recreational games in the "program hall" before 11:00 PM bedtime.






Say what you will about the isolation of the location, the notable absense of elevators in a five-storey building and the lack of bedroom furnishings, the food was quite good!

In the morning, the students were supposed to wake early for an exercise regimen, but no one we talked to did; after breakfast, we packed up and left for France--you know, the smaller one (webpage here).

Petite France appears to be a combination tourist resort (there are guest houses for rent, and loads of sightseeing families and romatic couples) and educational center (vis, our visit, the SMOE logo prominently placed outside, and its other title as Gosong Youth Development Center). It has also been used for filming numerous Korean dramas.

Period French table hockey

One of my students as participant in the mime artist's half-hour routine

If it is supposed to recreate France, the site is an unmitigated failure--not to knock the art, architecture or artifacts, but the fact is that everything is in the Korean language, and what is not is in English. Oh, there is the occasional 'Le' in front of a noun--Le Gallery, Le Shop--but I heard not one iota of French spoken. You might as well save your money and go to Paris Baguette or Tous les Jours.

Okay, that's going a bit far; there were things to see and enjoy, enough to occupy an hour, perhaps. But then I found the "Saint-Exupery Memorial Hall, dedicated to the creator of Le Petit Prince:




Most of the exhibit was in Korean and contained reproduction photos from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's life. Ho-hum. But the top floor was the jackpot--two dozen or so original drawings and sketches, a sampling:










There you go, dear reader, my first school trip, and my first trip into the Gyeonggi-do countryside outside Seoul. The sites we went to were all well-done: professionally managed, more-or-less interesting for the students. However, we spent far too much time on the buses, and the week-end was just far too long and drawn-out.

However, my real complaints are dry and pedagogical: 1) while the extra class program per se is based on exclusively English-language instruction, not a single portion of any of the sights, site or activities was done in English (the only exception is our Jeopardy game); 2) none of it had anything at all to do with public speaking.

From a curricular perspective, this weekend was a waste of time for my students--hopefully they benefitted in other ways, not least by some informal social time with members of the opposite sex. The students were well-behaved, upbeat and positive, and seemed to enjoy themselves--more than I did, at least.

수능달인

... You, too, can be a 수능달인, suneung dalin or Korean SAT expert. Just eat our glutinous rice cakes!


For a mere W 20,000, you are sure to get the university acceptance letter you desire, with this collection of lucky baked goods from Tous les Jours.




E-Mart seems to specialize in chocolate products to improve one's suneung score, from Dr. Yoo to Hershey's to Ferrero Rocher. The Ferrero Rocher display is all about the "Golden Bell", a TV quiz show. According to this article, other products you can buy to boost your suneung expertise include a math-formula cushion to enhance your bedtime studies, portable oxygen tanks, and a suneung watch which makes no disruptive ticking sound--and also indicates when test-takers should move on to the next section.

The "D-1" on the Golden Bell display, by the way, is the countdown of days left before the big exam. Yes, it's tomorrow!

The suneung exam is a spectacularly big deal in Korea; the second Thursday in Novemember is the one time the university entrance exam is offered, and it is therefore the one day to which every high school student's whole academic career has been building.

Students and their families and their schools try to obtain every possible advantage, naturally. Special study mats, yeot and beef-octopus porridge might not help, but they might, so why risk it?

My high school only met during first period today, for two reasons: 1) underclassmen need to clean up the school, since SAT-takers will be arriving for the exam tomorrow; and, 2) so they can then go set up cheering groups at the school where the seniors will go to take their exam (somewhere in Yeongdeungpo-gu).

Tomorrow is a school holiday, except for the unfortunate seniors, and most businesses will open late to decrease traffic congestion, in order to make sure seniors can get to their testing site on time.

That's another reason the school day is so short today: seniors have to go scope out their testing site to make sure there is no confusion tomorrow. So in addition to seeing wandering, out-of-place students, you see signs like these, at least in the subway:


At the entrance to the school was posted this board, being examined by one of our students. It indicates where they are to go for their exam tomorrow, and also maps out the locations for students coming to Young-il as their testing site.


Good luck! Eat your omega-3s tonight, and get to sleep early--preferably on your math-formula pillow!

This Week in Korean Education

I count four stories of interest in the week's online editions of the main rags. First up, do politics and education make good bedfellows?

Here's a great quote from a university student Choi, a law student who declined to give his full name to the Korea Herald for its story:

“One of my professors focuses too much on his political activities. Thus, his students, including myself, feel he has been negligent of his duty to teach and do research,” he said.
“Fortunately, his political views were quite similar to mine, so I was not offended. But many others with different views might have been annoyed when he expressed his views during his class.”

I imagine they might be, yes. The article, or thinly-disguised editorial by one of the right-leaningest paps, decries the involvement of popular professors, or "polifessors" [ugh] in the Seoul mayoral election to replace Oh Se-hoon.

One wonders if the story would have hit the presses had not Park Won-soon gotten the nod of the electorate, and pushed the poltical landscape a little further to the left than the KH editorial board likes. Park was an independent candidate, but with decidedly leftist tendencies.

In America, by comparison, Fox News and other right-leaning media doesn't utter a peep when, say, Georgia State University professor Newt Gingrich attempts to wield influence, but let a Barak Obama run for office, it's all effete intellectual professors of law trying to destroy the country...

So what do Korean university bosses think or say about this? Any policies guiding politics in the classroom? Apparently not, as:

Some critics also pointed out that as most professors joining politics and public service take a long leave of absence from their schools, young scholars cannot find permanent positions despite the vacancies.
Universities appear to be reluctant to take them off their payrolls as their activities in high-profile public positions help promote their schools.

Second, a weird story from Gwangju in Jeollanam-do, regarding a parent that injured himself in front of a group of teachers while complaining about treatment his daughter had received while being reprimanded by a teacher at the school.

According to the KT report, he had picked up a chair as if to attack the teacher during a meeting, then decided to use a tape dispenser, with which he cut himself. The father later apologized, and no charges were filed.

I am unclear about who the charges would be filed by in this, but in America, it's altogether possible the father would sue the school for having dangerous weapons like tape dispensers at hand.

Joong-Ang Daily had the only story I found on the Bureau of Audit and Inspection's report on university finances. Which is odd, because it's a blockbuster that should play into the hands of those who want to stymie the power of the education elites here. In essence, top managers at numerous schools have defrauded them of monies ranging from thousands to over ten million US dollars!

Not surprisingly, some universities take umbrage with the "interim report", complaining among other things that it's none of the government's business what they do with non-government money.

To be fair, academic independence is critical to a democracy, but that independence precludes both government and other power-brokers from excessive fiduciary entanglements. Also, when faculty members subvert the application process in favor of faculty children, that's particularly appalling here, where the application process is such a gauntlet. Speaking of which ...

The Suneung 수능 exam will take place this Thursday; it is the Korean SAT, offered once a year, and the only chance for most high school seniors to get into university.

It is not the only way, however, as some top students can get in via the "admission officer" system devised by the current administration to recognise superior students; and the early admissions system, which is much the same, and consists of a series of high-stress interviews with admissions officers.

I have been helping one of my students prepare for this exam process during periodic lunch breaks and free periods in the last few months: I give him a topic, a question and five minutes; he gives a five to seven minute response, including follow-up questions; then we debrief his answers.

He is an extremely bright kid with outstanding English skills, and while he got a lot better during this process, I can't take much credit. At the end of last week, he informed me that he got admission into his first choice, the Underwood International College of Yonsei--among the most prestigious placements in all of Korea.

Anyway, I mention this to bring you up to speed on the following story, about a kid with "sixth-grade scores" meaning "bottom forty percent of his school" who got into Hanyang University, one of the top schools, which requires "first-grade" scores. (My student 외수 earned "first-grade" scores at Young-il.)

Lee Kyu-hyeok used the admissions officer system to by-pass the suneung. Bribes? Powerful family? Blackmail? Creating an innovative software program that improves the performance of smartphones?

“When I was a senior at middle school, I bought the Blackjack Samsung smartphone. But it was too slow and sometimes stopped operating. I began work to repair it and made Kyuhyeok Rom. I thought it would be useful for other people, I distributed the software via the Internet blog, http://kyuhyuk.kr,” Lee said.

I'm not sure how well this guy will do in college, but I'm glad to see any signs that the suneung is losing its vice-like grip on the Korean educational system. Perhaps someday, English classes will teach students to actually speak English rather than to prepare for a nitpicky hour of grammar questions that are unrelated to English usage.

Lesson Plan: Quidditch Rules

"Very funny, Teacha!" was the typical assessment of this new lesson plan (and "funny", it should be noted, is Konglish for "fun, or enjoyable"). And if my goal is to hear students speaking English, which it is, then this lesson worked well.

I teach at an all-boys high school in Seoul. Two generalizations about my boys: 1) they love sports; and 2) they like the Harry Potter movies. Combine those two, and one thing emerges: a lesson on Quidditch, the sport played by wizards at Hogwarts School.

This is an information gap activity in two parts, enlivened by some videos. Class begins with a YouTube mash-up I found of flying scenes from the movies with Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrTjaknIgPo.

Now that I have their attention, I can explain the first part of the drill: each team (or table) has a set of materials:


A and B cards each have half the rules of each category. Each list of rules has missing information--those blanks on the A card can only be filled in by information on B's card. The A and B pair sit across from each other, read their lists aloud and fill in the other's missing information. They practice until everyone knows the rules--well, the rules of their category.



Meanwhile, the co-teacher and I circulate, helping with vocabulary and quizzing them on their set of rules, to prepare them for the next phase. Before we move on, though, we watch a video that might help make things clearer for them; I put (not very good) titles on this scene from the first movie, where Oliver explains the rules to new Gryffindor Seeker Harry (or watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcpbSsv-pQ4):


At this point, students should be well-familiar with a sub-set of the rules; I created seven sets of rules cards, incuding: the pitch, the balls, the players, the broomsticks, game progression, rules of play, and fouls. I decided not to use Fouls with my students, as there are a lot of made-up words, and I don't see any up-side to confusing them: Quaffle, Bludger and Golden Snitch are quite enough.

Now a pair of students will share their rules with other pairs of students. "A" students will go first, receiving a worksheet with six categories of questions, as seen below:


My powerpoint for the lesson has a rotation diagram to move the "A" boys from table to table. They ask their questions and write down the answers they are given by the "experts" in the sub-topic. A timer goes off (100 seconds, for my guys) and they rotate to the next rule category. Watching the classroom clock, I have them do four or maybe five rotations.



Then the "B" guys get a question sheet and the process is repeated. As I said, this lesson worked quite well; one class had trouble with their behavior during the "rotation" sequences, acting like hooligans, but even they spent a lot of time actually speaking English!

This lesson preparation was extensive: first, I found the rules of Quidditch at a Harry Potter Wiki site (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Quidditch, though this page has changed since then); then I had to select and simplify the rules, eliminating as much lingo as possible; divide the rules evenly between A and B; provide "information gaps" to be filled by the other card; create two sets of question worksheets, with three questions on each rule category.

I made the cards and rules topic signs to look as polished as possible and printed them off in color (a moderate to-do at my school) and since I had gone to that much trouble, had them laminated. Now I had to work out the logistics and procedures, and voila, many hours later, another lesson for the files!

While I did this lesson with my second graders (high school juniors), it would also work with the first graders at my school. A great deal more simplification and selection could make this doable at the upper middle school level--and I think it would be worthwhile.

Sometimes a great lesson plan is an idea, a handful of words and a great motivation. Sometimes, it is a well-put-together powerpoint or a couple of songs and a piece of paper. Other times, though, it is a meticulously prepared set of materials, specialized technological resources and an exactingly executed implementation plan.

Education News

My friend and colleague 'Hwang-tae', as he is colloquially known, mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he was going to see a movie, Dogani 도가니 (The Crucible) which is based on true stories of sexual and physical abuse at a school for disabled children in Gyeonggi-do. The movie is for Over-19s only.

I said it sounds quite depressing, and he agreed. Well, it turns out something possibly good may come out of it, as JoongAng Daily is reporting that the government announced a new set of measures to permanently bar convicted sex offenders from teaching. This refers to Korean teachers.

I say "possibly good" for two reasons: alas, it mostly seems to apply to those abusing disabled teens, or at least "especially" disabled teens; further, it is probably yet another example of ill-considered overreaction, or legislation without teeth, as

Students will be disciplined more strictly when they sexually assault their disabled peers than when they do the same to students who are not disabled, the government said, adding that schools will be recommended to change their rules in that direction.

Huh? Recommended to change?

Okay, moving on: story #2 is a loosely-disguised ad for a group which wants to close down the English hakwons, this one called World Without Worries About Private Education (WWWPE). It says "private education" right there in the name, but they seem unconcerned about math hakwons (which I gotta point out more of my students attend than English ones) or music or sports or ...

That's--as I've pointed out before, in my opinion--fine and good: this culture is rather too focused on "getting ahead" in the education game, and thereby robbing children of adequate time to just be kids. The article touts a new "booklet" from the group that addresses "12 misconceptions about English education and gives alternative solutions". Sadly, at least in the article, some of the misconceptions are in the alternative solutions, and some of the solutions are mis-labeled as misconceptions.

I'm not going to belabor this, but let's just take one statement: "According to the booklet, the temporal lobe that controls language ability develops from age six."

Well, no. In fact, just go to the post above and watch the two eps. so far in Fry's Language series to see that fallacy be destroyed. In point of fact, most children have developed the majority of their syntactic and grammatical understandings by age three or four--take the kid whose weird father taught him Klingon alongside English: he learned the vocab, structure and syntax of Klingon quite well, but gave it up circa age three (which according to the bollocks above is before he even begins to learn it) because it wasn't very useful in communicating to his cohort.

So, if you want your child to be truly bilingual, speak Korean and English to her from the crib on up. I must hasten to point out, I am not seriously suggesting this as a solution to the English conundrum in Korea. No, it is clear from research that children absorb new languages like a sponge at least up to age ten or so; and even old people can learn a new language! My point is that it "develops from age six" is utter nonsense.