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University freshman girl http://imgur.com/hXW7us8 I kinda want to see that painting....
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Dec 25, 2013 15:42
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 22:02 |
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Outrail posted:^^: What the? Need context please. I'm not sure what context you need. This is from an essay written by a korean university student.
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Dec 25, 2013 17:30
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Smarmy Coworker posted:People now receive English education in school but I'm pretty sure that wasn't around for the people who are making the video games. (speaking as someone who has been in Korea for about 10 years) People still gently caress it up all the time, believe me. There are a number of reasons: too prideful/ashamed to ask for help, admit not knowing, or make someone in a superior position look stupid by correcting him; something that sounds awesome in (this case, Korean) sounds stupid or hilarious in English (ex: a snack cake called "Ricetard", the slogan for a waterpark is "Feel the Climax!", thousands of other examples); and English is a really, really difficult language for most Asians to learn as it is super complex (article use) and has arbitrary rules and spelling. In addition, the education system has long focused on merely memorizing poo poo. This results in a lot of rote responses but little real communication skills. I could go on if you want. My PhD is in Multicultural Education, and I've done a lot of research about this and other related topics.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:26
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Outrail posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4
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Dec 25, 2013 19:30
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Smarmy Coworker posted:it is pretty interesting stuff. I know articles are a huge stumbling point for many people -- as an American guy learning French, gendered words are tough to remember and the article is based on the word. sometimes words can be homonyms though oppositely gendered too which blows. Yeah, it's always more difficult to go from less to more, like no gender to 2/3 genders, or no articles to 12 choices. Smarmy Coworker posted:it seems pretty weird that they're learning just through memorization in school, though. like, outside of basic stuff and words, it's ridiculous to expect to learn a language that way. I guess they never expect anyone to really use it? Here's part of it - the teacher's exam is insanely difficult, I mean insanely. It's a mutli-hour test on theories and who had what idea for language acquisition and things like that that have no real bearing in the classroom. Passing it, however, pretty much guarantees you a well-paying job for life with lots of vacation. Actually speaking English well is almost an afterthought. And, to a great extent, most of the teachers don't. The last president tried to institute a TEE (Teaching English in English) test that all English teachers would have to take to keep their jobs. Long-term teachers who had really lovely English were making GBS threads their pants about this because they knew they were about to lose their jobs. This initiative kinda failed, and so everything's back where it started: teachers who don't really speak the language instructing unmotivated students via rote memorization because that's just the way it's done. They've tried to bring in a bunch of native speakers to instruct students a few hours a day (ala bringmyfishback, to whom I mean no offense). Unfortunately, the majority of these native speakers have just graduated from college, have no formal training as teachers and even less as English instructors. They mostly serve as living tape recorders for the students to hear a real live English speaker. Recently, the government has come to the conclusion that the costs vs. benefits of having native speakers just isn't worth it, so many provinces and cities are phasing the native speaker program out. This, in my opinion, will only make the language academies (of which there are a metric shitload) even richer, because even if little Wonho isn't learning anything, by god at least he's in school 18 hours a day, so he has to pick up something through osmosis. Everyone is so gung-ho about learning English because it's seen as the key to being successful. It's pretty hosed up all around. Take that girl who wrote the essay I showed earlier - that's the product of 11 loving years of English instruction, and her spoken English isn't much better.
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Dec 25, 2013 22:12
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Brotein_Shake posted:I don't suppose you wouldn't mind going into more detail about this test? You have me curious about since I have been trying to beat myself with learning mandarin and have overall become fascinated by language and the teaching of it. I tried to look up specific examples, but, not surprisingly, I couldn't find any in English. If you really want to get a feel for what the test entails, go buy like 5 textbooks on language acquisition, 5 on second language acquisition, and maybe 2 on basic linguistics. Memorize them all and be able to regurgitate any and all information on cue. Seriously, though, if you're really interested, pick up a book on second language acquisition. I wish I could recommend an interesting, lighthearted one, but all the ones I read were for my masters, so they were not fun reading. Teaching students and learning a language is a whole new thing after age 8 or so (the so-called "golden age" of language acquisition), and people still aren't really sure how everything gets done. There's been different methods that have come into and out of vogue through the years, and none of them have really been the magic bullet that shoots language into your brain, and people still aren't really sure what happens in the brain to make connections and switches to other languages. For example, in high school, I studied Latin, and we learned via what was called the "Prussian Method", or "Grammar Translation". Sure, even today, I can decline the noun for "farmer" and I can tell you the his sword is long, but I could never go into a bank and open a checking account because I never learned how. This is mainly the how Koreans are taught English, by the way. Later, in my undergrad days, when I learned Spanish, French, and Portuguese, we actually had to speak and practice (The Communicative Approach). Though I haven't spoken French or Portuguese in like 20 or so years, I can still read and understand it, and my Spanish is still pretty fluent despite not getting to use it often. The wikipedia article about SLA is not too bad, but I personally kinda hate Noam Chomsky, and his ideas about a universal grammar and meta language are kinda falling by the wayside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-language_acquisition I think I've hijacked this thread enough, so if you have more questions, I'm sure there's some way smarter people than me in the linguistics threads that can help you or maybe point out a book or two. Feel free to email me at myusername at hotmail if you want, though.
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Dec 26, 2013 16:54
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Postal Parcel posted:I hate to be *that guy* but I've rarely seen anyone who has taken only classes for a non-native language actually learn it successfully. I don't say that to discredit teachers, I say that because if you don't do some (intense)self-study and only do what classes tell you to do for the entire period, you won't become successful in the language. It's a skill you have to practice, and unlike math, you probably can't cram for it before hand and hope to at least get a pass in life. It's also not teachers faults all the time. Students move at different paces and to actually cover enough to bring proficiency in a reasonable amount of time would require a LOT of commitment on the part of the students. Well, man, they say it takes some 10,000 hours of study and practice to master something, and most people don't spend 10,000 hours in a classroom. I mean, tons of American TV shows were super popular here, but watching them daily doesn't mean poo poo if you leave the subtitles on all the time.
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Dec 26, 2013 16:57
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