Kevin Kudic
ENGL B8104
Prof. Gleason
12/2/14
Found in translation
My
desk is cluttered with books on how to learn Korean. My most recent purchase, Teach Yourself Korean, is fairly concise
and expansive despite its deceptively small size and is splayed open with a Korean word written in hanja, staring at me:
안녕하세요
Hello, it says; it beckons me to forge ahead and continue learning as much
Korean as I can before my yearlong stint teaching ESL in South Korea. I am 24,
graduate of Queens College, an English major but have never taught before in my
life. I had initially wanted to go to Japan—because of my interest in Japanese
culture and manga and anime—to teach English. I applied to various language
schools in Japan, but didn’t get accepted. I even started seriously learning
Japanese and was comfortable reading some elemental kanji, hiragana and
katakana. On my wall there is a Kanji poster that helps me study the 2,000 +
characters that are needed for middle school students in Japan. This prompts
the occasional question from concerned family members: “Weren’t you learning
Japanese?”
I was excited about learning
another new language but wondered how my students would feel. How did they feel
about learning English? Did they share the same kind of excitement I did when
learning a new language? A cursory glance of South Korean culture didn’t
illuminate much. All I could find was the popularity of norebangs and the way the education scheme was organized: broken up
into the private cram schools of hagwons and
the public schools, hakkyos. It
turned out that I would learn more about myself then I ever anticipated.
At Incheon Airport, Mr.
Yang, the headmaster at Seoul Language Academy, greets me. He is wearing a
modest white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and unassuming gray
pleats. I’m relieved that someone is there to pick me up at the airport and I
don’t have to go through the hassle of finding transportation on my own.
At this point, I can read Korean and know
basic expressions. Mr. Yang drives out of Incheon airport to Ilsan, 25 minutes
northwest. I spend the car trip reading highway signs, absorbing all of the
sights and sounds in the country. When we arrive at Ilsan, I am engrossed by
all of the signage displayed across buildings. There are texts everywhere, all
rising vertically almost competing with each other. I see the words hagwon frequently displayed across the
signs. There are other words that I notice as well and it is exciting to be able
to read all of it. My sensory input is overloaded with the glare of the neon
lights in hazy cyan colors, flashing reds, and the incandescent glow of white
lights. We pass Madu Station, which means that my apartment studio is one
station away at Juyeop Station.
When I get home, I unpack
my suitcase and decide to explore my surroundings. Pretty soon, I am driven by
hunger and stumble into a restaurant. It smells inviting, so I walk inside.
* * *
Mr. Jung is in in the
kitchen cooking one of my favorite Korean meals, jae-yuk tupbap. It is a dish
of spicy marinated pork stir-fried topped with crispy slices of seaweed and egg
served over rice. It’s the perfect remedy for a frustrating an exhausting day
at Seoul Language Academy. It’s been a year since I started teaching and my
frustration has reached a tipping point. I face another day battling with Eric,
a young student that misbehaves and disrupts the classroom to no end. Eric is one
of the many students that seem to float in and out of the hagwon systems here.
Students like these are disruptive and unruly and make no effort to
communicate, use English or interact with me.
Mr. Jung’s food and
company has been one of the ways in which I am able to cope with the stress of
teaching here. He has been a constant presence during my time here in South
Korea and he is a familiar face. I have been learning more Korean and we
sometimes do a language exchange when I am not too tired.
Mr. Jung seems to be your typical
purveyor of mandu, or Korean
dumplings, but a closer look reveals a spark of individuality that separates
him from the clones of proprietors that own these small types of restaurants.
Outside, fall is ending and the bleak Seoul winter is creeping up. Two or three
customers pop their heads in the restaurant and casually survey inside to see
if the place is still open. Mr. Jung takes care of them and then when he is
free turns to me.
“Kevin, how was your day?” he asks
turning the T.V. on. The Kia Tigers are playing, Mr. Jung’s hometown baseball
team.
“Not too good Mr. Jung. I felt like
I was a jailer.”
“A jailer?”
“Like I work in a prison.”
Mr. Jung laughs but behind it there
is recognition of empathy for my plight. I am still struggling with trying to
find any direction at Seoul Language Academy. Remembering my first day of teaching, I am stunned by how I’ve
managed to survive here. It was a challenge that I was not prepared for.
On that first day, Mr.
Yang gave me a stack of books that I would be using for teaching. One of the
acronyms that I saw was TOEFL. I didn’t know what TOEFL was or what it meant
but it took up a good portion of the books in Mr. Yang’s bookcase. After
receiving a stack of books, I was told to go over them and be ready to teach a
full load of classes the next day. This was my first day as an ESL teacher and
it was sink or swim. That initial day turned into a week, and sooner than I expected
a whole month had passed. The initial shock of teaching, or just surviving as a like to call it had
already subsided and I had gotten used to handling things, although I took it
day by day.
We’ve had this conversation many
times before and Mr. Jung always listens sympathetically to my woes and
concerns. He too has a daughter, Jung Hua, attending these hagwons, or private
cram schools. There is one for almost every major subject in the Korean public
school system with English being the most popular. The value of education is
impossible to over-stress here. The influence of Confucianism throughout
history has placed English learning on a very special pedestal. English is big
business in South Korea and will probably continue to be as long as it holds
its position as the lingua franca of the business world.
My jeyuk deopbap smells like it’s ready. Mr. Jung brings me the hot plate and I poke
at the top layer of marinated pork with my spoon exposing the steamy goodness
of rice underneath. I begin stirring and mixing; I’ve become quite adept at it,
as is the custom here to mix foods together. Mr. Jung also brings me an extra
fried egg, a banana and a yogurt drink that is consumed widely here as a digestive.
The T.V is still on while I eat.
“Ohhh! Homerun—Kevin, how
do you say mallu homerun?
I look up at the T.V. and see the instant replay.
“Grand slam.”
Mr. Jung and I have been
doing a language exchange at his restaurant and it’s one of the things I look
forward to the most. His
passion for English gives him an easygoing personality that non-native Koreans
can quickly detect. Mr. Jung’s place is perfect for expats like me that want a
nosh to eat. He is always amiable, hospitable, and always goes out of his way
to make sure you are comfortable. I once jokingly told him that he should
change the name of his restaurant to Mr.
J’s to reflect that sense of unique identity that he emits. He laughed and
said he would think about it.
Instead of a name that dignifies his
restaurant, what you’ll see instead as you reach the corner is a sign that is
ungraciously shared with a real-estate agency; the bottom half of the sign
reads bun-shik, a style of restaurant
that specializes in fixing various types of quick meals. The equivalent would
be the restaurant being called just plain “diner.” The interior of Jung’s
restaurant: yellow flower pattern stained wallpaper, the same stock photos of
food that every bun-shik style restaurant has with the upright chairs and the
austere wooden tables. Indeed, the atmosphere is humble like the man, but here
is the closest thing to a diner experience you will ever get in Korea, and Mr. Jung’s
food is the closest equivalent that I have ever gotten to eating a home-cooked
meal.
I leave, thanking Mr. Jung. He
wishes me a great day but I know that today will be difficult just like the
other days.
At Seoul Language Academy I start
the day by drinking instant coffee. These packs of instant coffee are
ubiquitous in Korean offices and schools and they are part of a ritual that I
do everyday. With a cup of coffee, I am caffeinated enough to handle Eric’s
class. I have to teach a class that I’m not even sure how to begin. I play CDs,
or sometimes tapes, of storybooks to a group of 8 year olds who clearly do not
want to be here. Eric is a constant
disruption in class. I wish I could do something to make the situation better,
but there doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do. I feel restricted here at
Seoul Language Academy and want to use creative ways to make the lessons more
engaging and fun for the students but don’t know how.
I play the tapes for the students
and they have to listen and do word gaps or different kinds of activities that
are given in their activity books. As soon as I play the tape, Eric starts to
make funny noises imitating the narrator. I’m actually surprised at his English
ability when he mimics the tape and wish he could harness this creativity
during my actual lesson. It would be a year before I would actually say,
“enough is enough” and do something productive with my time there.
After a year teaching at
Seoul Language Institute, I decided to devote my time to learning ESL teaching
skills that would help me in my profession. After doing research online, I came
across CELTA, a TESOL certification that gave opportunities for teachers to
take workshop classes and get hands-on instruction from qualified teachers. I
thought this would be the best chance to actually find out about the teaching
process and the ESL process.
My CELTA training ended up
being a watershed moment in my life. I found out about lesson planning, and how
to set up activities. Something I never thought to do before in my lessons at
Seoul Language Academy. The activity was very hands-on and the workshops were
collaborative so we were able to really learn in an environment that encouraged
everybody to participate. I actually got to teach and apply what I learned
first hand. My first group of adult students was very exciting to teach and the
experience gave me confidence to plow ahead. I had found a teaching practice
that gave me guidelines and methods to effectively teach an ESL classroom. I
went from knowing nothing about teaching to gaining information and knowledge
that would help me teach ESL courses and prepare lesson plans.
My CELTA transition couldn’t have come at a more
felicitous time. Almost two years teaching here gave me more confidence and
there were big changes coming ahead. Seoul Language Academy was trying to shift
gears to keep up with the competition from other hagwons that were trying to
incorporate more extra-curricular English activities that could spur students
to speak more English in a more communicative way.
Our academy had introduced
book clubs and we also got new Northstar
textbooks to hopefully freshen up the curriculum. Two other co-teachers were
even trying to write a curriculum from scratch. This was a huge development and
miles from where I started in the school where the only textbooks available
were TOEFL based and not communicative at all. TOEFL is the standard test used
for international students who want to enroll in an English speaking
university. Our emphasis used to be solely on teaching for the TOEFL test but
that was slowly changing. This change proved to be conducive to my developing
skills and I thrived during the last few months at the academy before it would
eventually close due to reduced enrollment and competition from other
academies.
These skills extended to
not only teaching ESL but also the profession of teaching in general. I got a
better sense of respect for the craft of teaching and this was due to the immediate
hands-on training and coaching that I got with the CELTA course. Through this,
I also found out what kind of learner I was. I preferred learning in an
experiential way and I valued the different kinds of styles that learners and
made me more aware of the learning styles of my students in the classroom.
* * *
Mr. Jung has a daughter that goes to
an academy located right above the restaurant. Sometimes she glides into the
restaurant on her roller blades. Like many of my students, she is painfully shy
when it comes to interacting in English. I say hello to her, and she strains a
faint hello back, exhaled like a puff of air that condenses much too fast for
any kind of resonance to be heard. She leans into the crook of her father’s
arm, that one “hello” sapping her strength.
This is the typical demeanor of many
of the students in my classrooms that I have encountered over the 3 years
teaching in South Korea. Did my CELTA certification help them become confident
English learners? Possibly, but it takes more than a certificate to have any
meaningful impact that will carry over for the rest of a student’s life. I wish
I had more intimate knowledge about the culture to guide them and help them. I
want to understand everything there is to know about the education system here.
I wish I knew more Korean to be able to talk to them but there are limits to
what I can do.
If I had known more Korean, perhaps
I could’ve talked to Eric and found out why he was misbehaving in class. My
CELTA certification was geared for teaching adults but I could easily apply it
to teaching children as well. I never got the chance to find out how Eric
would’ve adjusted to my newfound sense of responsibility as a teacher. He
transferred to another hagwon and it made me aware of the short-lived nature of
the teaching experience here. Many of my students would tell me about their experiences
at hagwons and how fervently they hated them.
As a teacher in South Korea, my
biggest responsibility was making them enjoy themselves in class by making
lesson plans communicative and fun. Oftentimes, I eschewed strict grammar
lessons although the parents generally preferred this kind of teaching because
they felt it was more productive for the kind of standardized tests that are
administered in highschool—all in English—which are the bane of Korean
students.
My CELTA certification allowed me to
see the components of my teaching and it gave me self-awareness of what I was
doing, but it didn’t prepare me for the contextual understanding of English
language learning in South Korea, and perhaps many headmasters at English
hagwons feel like it isn’t the job of Native English teachers to understand. It
was just my job to teach English in class and be the token American English
teacher, a figurehead that schools could use to boast to parents that their
hagwon was better than the rest. In fact the Seoul Language Institute website
boasted about how the faculty graduated from Ivy League universities, Yale,
Brown—I was the only oddball CUNY teacher there.
Koreans viewed learning the English language as imbued
with prestige and status. Their views on education was viewed through the lens
of rigorous tests that saw English learning in an almost scientific way; the
way to learn English was to break it up into discrete components that had to be
mastered. If one didn’t do this, one couldn’t learn English.
This attitude made me
deeply critical of the nature of the English language education system in
Korea. What I was witnessing was a form of Standard Language Ideology
happening. Speaking English was the language of prestige and if you didn’t have
the means and access to get your son or daughter to an English language school,
then you were already behind. The sense of wonderment about learning
a new language is still relevant to me but I am not as naïve anymore regarding
the context and ideology under which English language learning in South Korea
takes places.
This contrasted drastically with the language
sessions between Mr. Jung and I. Those
moments form a strong impression in my mind. When we learned, we were learning
together and there was a tacit acknowledgment that we both wanted something out
of this. However it wasn’t wholly selfish, we both legitimately wanted to make
each other feel happy. Mr. Jung would always comment that real life is
unpredictable and that we have to study real situations not hypothetical ones.
He used the term “life English” to describe this.
Mr. Jung and I would continue to do
language exchanges until I left for the States. I valued and still value our
relationship together; in many ways it was more useful than my CELTA
certification. Mr. Jung’s “life English” suggests a practical way to learn a
language. But it didn’t just apply to the English language. I learned that
learning is a lifelong process and teaching for me meant a lifelong pursuit. Through
friendship and a form of creative translation in our language exchanges, I had
found a path I could call my own.
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