About EFL Geek

One Sentence Bio:
A Canadian teaching EFL in Korea.

Full Bio

I came to Korea in June 1997 with the intentions of leaving after one year, but met my wife and fell in love with her and the country. Actually when I go to Canada to visit my parents I miss Korea and feel like I am in a foreign country. I guess you could say I have gone native. Though my Korean abilities are not that strong. I would say that I have a low intermediate ability with areas that I am very strong and others where I know next to nothing. This is what you get by self-studying the language with no principled approach.

My first job I worked at a kiddie hagwon (private institute run by the devil) that was not exactly what I was told it would be when I signed the contract in Canada. I stuck that out and moved on to a better hagwon (twice) before finally making it to the big leagues: university teaching. Along the way I picked up a ESL teaching certificate and the knowledge that I wanted to do ESL/EFL as a career. While working at my first university gig I started my MA in Applied Linguistics (TESOL) from Macquarie University. I graduated with distinction in June 2005.

I am now working at my third university in Korea, where I intend to remain until I leave the country at some as for yet undertermined time.

My hobbies and interests include my wife, daughter (6 years), and son (2 years), web site design, reading anything but particularly fantasy novels, & drinking coffee. Don’t let anyone tell you that coffee is unhealthy. It is the perfect beverage: tasty, hot, & zero calories. If you think that cappacino’s, frapaccinos, or any bevarage that ends in cinno or atte is coffee you are sadly mistaken and not a true connoisseur of coffee.

Professional Interests
My professional interests involve instructing students so as to enhance their motivation to learn language. I teach learner styles and strategies in order to accomplish this goal. Additionally I will probably be doing my dissertation in this area though I haven’t exactly determined which aspect of motivation or styles and strategies that I wish to focus on.

What is Blinger?
When I first decided to make a blog I was trying to come up with some sort of catchy name. The only name I liked was already taken so I struggled with a name and ended up with Blinger a combination of Blog and linguistics. I have since come up with several names that I like but it is a little late to change.

If you look in the older entries you will see references to blinger as that was the name I wrote under at that time. As of May 24, 2005 this site has been rebranded with a new domain EFL Geek.

Languages
I studied Japanese while doing my undergrad degree but it has been many years since then and I have forgotten everything. Though at that time I was reasonably conversational. I also studied French in high school and hated it. In retrospect I can see it was the horrible methodology that the teacher employed: grammar translation and audiolingualism with zero focus on communication. Yuck!

In Korea I have primarily learned Korean on my own through a variety of books, Korean girlfriends and now my wife. I took two months of study at a private institute as well as one part-time semester at Ewha university though it has been over two years since I have actively pursued language. I am currently somewhat conversational with relatively good listening skills. As soon as I finish graduate school I will shift full time into Korean Language study. I did two more semesters at Sogang University and have for the last year stagnated. Not due to desire, but rather that other things are taking a higher priority than Korean langauge.

Newspaper Column
In 2008 I started writing a bi-weekly column on EFL education for The Korea Herald, one of the English dailies in Seoul. The columns are available on this blog in the category KH Column.

If you have any questions feel free to E-mail me.

Blinger EFL Geek