Behold! Our shiny replacements.

Last week my school got a new addition to its language lab. It's the AMS-200, put out by the Korea Association of Innovated Foreign Language Education. It comes equipped with thousands of dialogues, stories, cartoons, and activities, and as my coteacher explained it you type in a number and retrieve your selection as if in a noraebang. These visual aids are accompanied by corresponding textbooks on topics such as TOEIC, grammar, short stories and fables, Elementary school English, beginner Chinese, and two levels of Japanese. Interesting illustration they decided to use for "Japanese person."



And that's in the Japanese book, as you can see.

I have no idea how much these things cost, but I know that a lot of the Korean English teachers at my school were against getting it. They said it was wasteful, but they softened a little after seeing what it does. What kills me, and the irony that nobody around here grasps except me, is that in spite of all this new technology for the language lab, I can't perform the most basic tasks in class because the connection between the computer and the television doesn't work. It's been spotty for the past 13 months, which means I usually haven't been able to show pictures, videos, powerpoints, or overhead projections. Both of my schools are big into the idea of touch-screen white boards, whatever that means, but the students can't read the white board we have because of the glare, lol.

As I've written many times, I approach things simply in class, both by necessity and by choice. To me, getting too fancy is like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. Do you really need to spend hours creating games, materials, and activities in order to teach basic sentences and vocabulary? Do you really need to spend thousands of dollars on a sooped-up karaoke machine? I know that the school is allocated a budget for English-language resources each year, but if you visit the language lab right now you'll find two large bookcases full of novels and textbooks nobody uses, a shelf full of English-language newspapers nobody ever looks at, and a cabinet stocked with CDs, DVDs, and tapes that do nothing but collect dust. Everybody loves to spend money except on me, I know, but what's wrong with just trying to be innovative with the materials you've got? I'm just thinking out loud . . . I don't want anybody in the comments saying "Nintendo? What was wrong with climbing trees and playing hopscotch?"

And since we're here and on the topic of wastefulness, here's something sad and funny at the same time. A little while ago I wrote about the teacher training sessions in Damyang, and that I've had a few Korean colleagues come back from them and tell me that they had a good time but they can't use anything they've learned because the techniques don't adapt well to the Korean middle school classroom. Another colleague returned from a five-month training session at an education university here, paired with a one-month stint in a U.S. university. He really enjoyed himself, and is filled with new experiences and new ideas, but he, too, says that the things he learned aren't applicable to Korea. ajf93jwer9aojojdfA. All this while foreign teachers aren't given ANY training opportunities. Hell, we can't even get our coteachers to come to class or take our class seriously. Anyway, some of my colleagues were talking about the AMS-200 and said it wouldn't work for large classes, and would be best suited for smaller, "special" classes. So, the reason it was provided to large public schools is . . . ?

And, seriously, let's fix the damn TV-computer connection. I was assured two days ago that the mechanic fixed the problem, but when I asked to see how it works---because it requires messing with some buttons I don't understand---it was revealed that it wasn't fixed at all. They made another attempt yesterday, in the middle of my class, which resulted in taking apart the computer's tower for some reason. What? Don't they sell cords at Geumho World for, like, a thousand won?

Pumping money into audio-visual materials while foreign English teachers aren't getting any support whatsoever. Spending thousands of dollars on what can be accomplished with Youtube, tape players, and worksheets. The past few weeks I've been asked to just teach grammar in preparation for the midterm tests. Some of my classes were cancelled in lieu of review time with the Korean English teacher. Okay, I get it, but I don't want to hear any bitching about how expensive native speakers are, and whether they're effective.