Korean mothers only want a White Native-Speaker English teacher for their children: Myth or reality?

In blogs and break rooms alike, you may have heard that Korean mothers prefer native speakers to teach their children English. But who counts as a native speaker? Do Korean parents of hagwon kids want anyone who has spoken English from early childhood? Those of us who have taught here for a while have looked around and noticed that, in Korea, not all native speakers are created equal. If this is true, then what kind of native speaker do they prefer? Are Korean and other non-White teachers unilaterally seen as less preferable, or are there factors that might increase their appeal? Does gender matter? Do mothers prefer female teachers, as we’ve heard? We know age is important in Korea, but how important is it for choosing an English teacher? Or perhaps we’re assigning blame where none is due. Is it the hagwon owners who are to blame for hiring on the basis of race, age, native-speaker status, and plain old good looks?

We were curious about what Korean moms really look for when shopping for an English teacher for their child. As part of our research into the issue, we have been asking Korean mothers from a variety of social and economic backgrounds what they want in an English teacher for their child and why. Our research aims to heighten the understanding of the issue and to better address non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) inequality in Korea. There have been only a few studies on this subject (Chang, 2005) and our study serves as an investigation into the factors that influence perceptions and preferences for English teachers.

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It’s been over two years since I graduated from my M.A. program and I’ve done very little reading other than blogs. I’ve picked up a number of books over that time fully intending to read them but never got around to it. That has all changed recently as I finished The Vocabulary of World English (this entry) and Autonomy in Language Learning which I had bought and read sections of for my M.A. but have now finally read the whole thing strait throught (this entry). Tonite I will be starting English Language Learning and Technology by Carol A. Chapelle.

The book by Chapelle is for background research on an action research project that I will be doing in conjunction with a colleague and friend. This colleague specializes in research and is published in several academic journals. He is going to help me with research design and understanding how to analyze the data. That being my weak area and one of the most difficult things I did not learn while doing my M.A. We’ve been meeting over the past few weeks discussing the study design and will be preparing the materials and background research over the winter vacation and then conduct the research in spring semester.

It feels good to be learning again and getting something productive done. I’m also looking forward to getting published assuming the research and article writing go as planned.

Yesterday, I cut Korean class in order to do some level testing for the IGSE. Actually it was more for a Ph.D student doing work there. The pay was reasonable and I can always use a little extra cash so I agreed to do it. Additionally I was interested in how rater training was done as I’ve read about it in my Assessment unit doing my M.A. but hadn’t actually experienced it.

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I just finished reading the book I recieved as a door prize at the last conference I attended. Near the end of the book there is a reference that I’m trying to get a hold of, but cannot find. I googled the authors name, Chaz Pugliese, and found an email address and a couple of internet articles. However when I sent an email to Chaz Pugliese it bounced back with a message that the address was no longer valid. Below is a copy of the email and reference. If anyone has the email or article in question and can pass it on to me I would be very grateful.

Mr. Pugliese,

My name is **** ***** and I am currently teaching EFL in South Korea. The reason I am writing to you is that I found a citation, in a book I am reading, for a paper you presented at MICELT 2005. I would very much like to read this if you still have a copy and would be willing to share it with me.

The exact citation is:

Pugliese, C. 2005. Helping the students sing a better song: Multiple Intelligences Theory in the Classroom. Paper presented to a meeting of the MICELT (Malaysia International Center for English Langauge Teaching), Damai Laut, Malasia, April 26, 2005.

I found your email address from this page where you also published an article on the internet.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

**** *****

Last week in my Korean language classes we had mid-terms. For the most part I felt that the test was fair, accurate as well as valid and reliable. In the writing class we were given three questions and expected to respond with about a page of writing for each question. I did that and finished a few minutes early. I haven’t yet recieved my grade so I don’t know how I did. The questions were similar to ones covered in class so I felt they were fair.

In the listening/Reading class we listened to several texts and answered multiple choice questions or wrote down one word answers. This was very fair and consistent with what I have read on assessing listening skills. I blew a couple of questions as I could not discern the most important word in the text. The reading section was also fair and consistent, but I think I didn’t do as well as I should have.

Speaking class is a two hours out of the four hour day. Speaking is a misnomer as it is really a speaking/grammar class with the focus on speaking. Grammar is only explained in this class; in reading/listening and writing we are expected to know the grammar being focused on and used communicatively as it has been explained in speaking class. There are additionally grammar explanations in the textbook.

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I was considering writing a post about extensive reading sometime in November but while surfing for information to support my arguments I came across two posts by Mark of Tosuo.com. I’ve been reading Mark’s blog for a few months now, but these posts were written before I started reading.

intensive reading

extensive reading

Today I attended Oxford Day 2005 (Seoul) where Michael Swan and Henry Widdowson presented. Swan presented first, followed by a promotional presentation for person to person (which I skipped) and Widdowson presented last followed by a Q&A session. Both presenters were engaging speakers with a good presence on the stage. Swans presentation was the more practical of the two while Widdowsons presentation was more theoretical. On my way to the subway I heard two teachers talking about how Widdowson was interesting but if they wanted theory they would buy a book - clearly they didn’t particularly care for his presentation. I agree that his presentation was more theoretically oriented, but I disagree that theory cannot be applied to the classroom.

Michael Swan
Swan spent most of his time talking about how he developed his book Practical English Usage. When he started out teaching he was asked many questions by learners for which he didn’t know the answer. He initially responded to many of these with answers such as it’s a matter of style or it depends on context but his students were not overly satisfied. (Been there done that)

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My close personal friend and colleague, Captain Marvel has posted a message in forums about level testing. I have reproduced it here, but any responses should be added to his thread.

For some time I’ve been intending to put together a report on the need for level testing the freshman students in my university; however, I have a small problem. . .

I can find a ton of stuff on level testing and how to level test and considerations for level testing and whatnot, but, oddly, literature on the reasons for level testing is hard to come by. It seems to be just an assumed thing that level testing students so they can study with others of the same level is a good thing, but I can’t find specific research to validate that. I can think of a million common sense reasons, but does anybody know of concrete research which backs this up?

Today I recieved a grade report for my final two courses at Macquarie even though I have yet to recieve the final essays for those two courses back or the final essay for SLA which finished in Novemeber last year.

I got my lowest grade yet for Languages and cognition, which I expected as I really did not understand the course or see the relevance it had to teaching. I do believe a better designed course with more focus on language acquistion in a classroom versus what I recieved which was a course in experimental psychology with less than 1% relevance to classroom teaching would have been useful.

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I’ve had an email from the KATE mailing list sitting in my inbox for a few days that I hadn’t looked at until today. There is a one day conference/seminar on validity in foriegn language assessment and Seoul National University on Monday August 8. Interestingly there isn’t any registation information in the email or info about costs. Just time and location. I am interested in hearing what Bachman has to say especially after having to read his incredibly heavy articles on testing in my unit on Language Testing and Assessment.

Due to the lack of information I may or may not go. I googled around and couldn’t find any online information about the conference at the Kate site or elsewhere. One thing that I thought was strange about the KATE mailing list is that the instructions on how to get there are only in Korean. Location is in Engish, but if you don’t know which building on campus that’s not particularly helpful. I’ve included the Korean directions at the bottom of the entry and will attempt to provide English directions sometime over the weekend.

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I’ve finally gotten down to the real writing stage on the text-book my friend and I are working on. We’ve got the chapters outlined and the layout ready in InDesign CS2. However where we are stuck is with a corpus. We decided early on that we wanted to write our book using a corpus as a guideline for vocabular, probably around the first 2,000 words or so maybe as high as 2,500.

There are however 2 problems. One we don’t have access to a corpus. That is easily solved by purchasing rights, though that is not really cheap. It isn’t expensive either, but the thing is we realized that once we had a corpus we don’t know how to use it to ensure that what we are writing fits into our target. My question for readers is if they know where I could find instructions on how to best use a corpus for what we want to do or can point me in the right direction for finding guidelines.

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This is a multi-part review of my experience as a distance student in the Macquarie Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program. Go to the table of contents.

Recommendations for Students
This part will offer several recommendations for students embarking on a distance study program in Linguistics or TESOL. First read this article from ESL Magazine titled Distance Learning for ESL/EFL Professionals. Then think carefully about your personality. Are you able to work and discipline yourself. There are no scheduled classes when doing distance study. The only timeline you have is the due dates for assignments. If you work well alone and are able to keep a schedule and pace yourself well, then you are probably a good candidate for distance study.

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This is a multi-part review of my experience as a distance student in the Macquarie Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program. Go to the table of contents.
The Good

Now that we have gotten the ugly parts out of the way, it is time to talk about what is good with Macquarie. For the most part I found the content of the courses to be very relevant to teaching with the exception of two classes. The first, I knew was not relevant because the course dealt with managing language programs rather than with teaching. This course had problems which I will address in a later installment reviewing the individual units. The second course, Language and Cognition, was supposed to be interdisciplinary but in actuality was 95% a psychology course and 100% irrelevant to teaching. Again, I will provide more details in a later installment.

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This is a multi-part review of my experience as a distance student in the Macquarie Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program. Go to the table of contents.

The Bad, & the Ugly
There really isn’t much to say that is ugly, but there a number of flaws with the Macquarie program that need to be addressed. It is the large number of flaws that add up to something that if not ugly is at the very minimum homely and unpleasant. The first is WebCT. This is a very expensive proprietary piece of web software with many features that were not utilized at all. And the ones that were utilized were done in a sloppy unorganized manner that made it seem as if it were an after thought to the program. My guess is that the professors were told to use it, but not provided with any training or theoretical background on how to extend a course to the internet.

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This is a multi-part review of my experience as a distance student in the Macquarie Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program. Go to the table of contents.

Beginning the Journey
As of July 2005 I’ve been living and working in Korea for 8+ years. I started the Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program program at Macquarie University in August 2002. When I started the program I wasn’t blogging and hadn’t even heard of it, so there is no real record of how I felt about the course I took until I started blogging in January 2004 and commencing courses for semester one in Spring 2004.

I do remember being excited and nervous about starting distance education. Excited, because I would be moving on with my education and making a statement about my plans for the future and my career. Nervous, because I had been out of academics for a long time and could barely remember how to write a good paper at the undergrad level let alone at the masters level.
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In this series I review distance learning and my time as a student in the Macquarie University Applied Linguistics (TESOL) program. Please leave comments on your experience in Macquarie or other programs.

Part one: Beginning the Journey (612 words)
Part two: The Bad, & the Ugly (818 words)
Part three: The Good (656 words)
Part four: Recommendations for Students (766 words)
Part five:

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I’m Done!

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Well I’m almost finished graduate school. I have one more paper to write, which is due next Friday. I have the conclusion to polish up on another paper, but that won’t take long. Unfortunately, I’ve been procrastinating a little more than usual and have only read about 4 articles for the essay I need to read. Why are you writing a blog entry? you ask. Well that’s because I have a couple of secret weapons that will allow me to finish this essay on time. Listed below my secret weapons:

• I have a four day weekend starting tomorrow
• My wife and daughter are going to visit her parents for the weekend so there will be no distractions
• My lesson plans are already completed for next week
• I work incredibly well under pressure
The last two are the most important
• I have 17 cans of doctor pepper sitting in the refridgerator
• I have 2 pound of dark roast whole bean coffee and a coffee grinder waiting to work overtime

I’ve completed one new feature of my this site. It was the easiest and required almost no time. I’ve added a classic post page. This is where I’ll highlite what I think are some of the best posts, posts that get lots of ghits, or those with many comments.

update
I’ve added several entries from 2005.

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This morning I printed up a number of articles to read for my latest essay on culture and language and then headed down to Starbucks. After reading eight articles that were not as useful or interesting as I thought I finally came to probably one of the best articles I have ever read. Asian Students’ Reticence Revisited by Cheng¹ is an article that any teacher who teaches Asian students should read. The article address the common lament among language teachers of Asians who will not participate in class and how this lack of participation is attributed to cultural aspects of Asian behaviour. Cheng argues “it is a dangerous over-generalizatin to say Asian students are reticent and passive learners.” (p. 435) He further suggests that the causes of passivity and lack of participation are situation specific and related to lack of target language proficiency.

I agree. In my experience I have had very shy students and I have had incredibly outspoken dynamic students in my classes. The greatest number of students lie somewhere in the middle of those extremes. I do feel that there is a tendency towards the shy end but that fits in with Chengs ideas that it is related to lack of language proficiency and conflicts with teaching style. One might say that lack of proficiency is due to not participating. This is in part true and does seem to be a viscious circle, but that is where we as teachers need to provide scaffolding and safe opportunities for students to stretch thier linguistic muscles.
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