Pronunciation matters.

The Marmot's Hole brings us a story via the Chosun Ilbo about Korean English teachers feeling pressure from students to improve their poor spoken English ability. The teachers' poor spoken English, I mean. Two excerpts from the Marmot's write-up:

According to the Chosun, due to the English craze gripping Korea, students and parents are concerned more about how well the teachers can converse in English than about the quality of class. And with many students having studied abroad or studied English from kindergarten, teachers sometimes find themselves the target of humiliation from their own students.

and

Another stressful element is the ability differences in students. Some teachers wonder how they are to teach when students exhibit such wide differences in language ability. Then there are the districts where early English education is almost nonexistent, and teachers worry how students will fare if teachers begin teaching in English, as they are supposed to do from 2010.

That last excerpt is a glimpse into my world, since I have to teach English in English every day, after all, to classes of mixed-level students who show little interest in being there.

I'm torn. On the one hand it drives me absolutely up the wall that far too many colleagues can't pronounce many of English's sounds. And I'm not even talking about with a "perfect" accent, whatever that's supposed to mean, I just mean in a way to distinguish the distinct sounds and to be understood. I've met far too many teachers who consistently cross over into incomprehensibility---or who permanently reside there---due to poor pronunciation and grammar. While I think it's a good idea to use as much English as possible in the classroom, I sometimes worry about the input the students are receiving in these situations. I do my best to model some tricky sounds in my class, but seeing each group of students once or twice a month does little to combat the poor pronunciation they're getting from other teachers or from TV, and constantly using so many English loan words in Korean doesn't help, either. I had to be a bit of a stickler on my recent speaking exams and give lower grades for poor pronunciation. 마이 패보러트 서브제크트 이즈 마스 isn't English, sorry, and didn't get an A.

On the other hand, though, there's more to knowing a language than simply being able to converse in it. And, you see, I'm trying to be sensitive and positive and not so cynical in this post. If the goal of learning English is purely academic, as it was in Korea for a while, having a decent vocabulary and an understanding of grammar is sufficient. Right now there are mixed signals, though, because while spoken English nominally gets a lot of attention, the emphasis is, largely, still on teaching for tests. But, and I say this knowing it sounds negative and knowing that I myself have sooo much room for improvement, I really have to question the myth of the Korean grammar expert given what I've experienced fairly consistently in school and from reading the papers and around the internet. That causes me to question what, exactly, English teachers learned in school and to what purpose they're being groomed.

Irregardless *cough* one of the users on waygook.org put together a nice little list of pronunciation activities you might modify for your classes or for your teachers' workshops. It's always tricky to bring up pronunciation among teachers, especially when they're the proud sort, but it needs to be done. Often times teachers and students alike will resent remedial lessons, especially when they've spent years working on more advanced stuff, but honestly it's necessary, it's just a matter of tactfully bringing it up. Whether it has a lasting effect remains to be seen.