One benefit of the daily "breaking news! Korea to use robot English teachers!" threads on Dave's ESL Cafe is sharing the occassional new article or video, like this one from Masan's 합포초등학교:
Defeating the purpose of having an English-speaking white face in the classroom---whether from an actual foreign English teacher or drawn to cover-up the Filipino teacher's voice on the robot---is translating its conversations and directions into Korean. The video could be unrepresentative of the robot English teacher experience in that it's only a few minutes with four children---although all of the propoganda we've read about them have come after short sessions in reduced-size after-school classes---but the long adjustment period and the potential for overusing Korean reminds us of an additional drawback to replacing foreign teachers with the classrooms with these wheeled walkie-talkies.
To say nothing of the awkward, stilted English that sound as if English education just got knocked back 15 years.
7 comments:
Pause at 0:37. You can see that they're actually using the teacher's face and not an avatar. I don't know if this means they'll always be doing it that way (doubtful) or if they got a lot of flak last time or, as I suspect, they couldn't show the teacher in the corner with a different face on the robot.
When those kids go to those institutes of higher learning they're going to be shitting their pants. "White people aren't egg shaped!" (well, okay lots of us are.) But we don't have wheels!
Isn't part of the job of the foreigner teacher to teach kids in a HIGHLY homogeneous culture to be in a room with a foreigner and its okay to communicate, make errors, and the barbarian isn't going to laugh or get angry?
Robots teach this... how?
Just park the kids in front of computer screen. I'm not sure why robots are needed.
As a promo video, people are going to come away thinking "Koreans have money for robots but they don't heat their buildings? Why are half the kids wearing their winter coats?"
Isn't part of the job of the foreigner teacher to teach kids in a HIGHLY homogeneous culture to be in a room with a foreigner and its okay to communicate, make errors, and the barbarian isn't going to laugh or get angry?
Apparently, a mid-20's woman I saw yesterday didn't get those lessons. Walking down the street towards each other, everything was fine until we got a a few feet between us and she realized I was not Korean... and she jumped out of her skin she was so startled to see A FOREIGNER!!!
Really? What is this? 1995?
Anyway, back on point about the video: our jobs are safe.
whether our jobs are safe or not, i think the point is to give confidence to the masses. but where the puclic system lacks the private sector will puck up the slack. i'm writing this from the phillipines where i'm on vacation, and from what i see the fact that they gained confidence from speaking assesment and activites from a young age is a big advantage. that and their language is so fragmented. surely there is a solution, but from what i have been thinking about over the last few weeks is that it's not a question of of long term gain, but a medium term gain. correct me if i'm wrong.
You're looking at Koreans from a small sample: the ones who travel. Most do NOT leave Korea at all.
I'm sure you would see a correlation between those with the confidence to travel to a foreign country and those who have the confidence to speak English with foreigners.
In Korea, we still get people at McDonald's huddled in the back because they don't want to serve the foreign customer.
Darth Babaganoosh said...
You're looking at Koreans from a small sample: the ones who travel. Most do NOT leave Korea at all.
I would add to this that my impression of a lot of Koreans traveling is often pretty insulated - a lot of people seem to be into the tour or package deal. Some of this is probably shyness about speaking English abroad. I posted somewhere recently about people at work talking about packing boxes of Ramen or other Korean food for short vacations.
Things are very insulated in ways that are difficult for me to understand but I guess that's the way it goes here.
I would add to this that my impression of a lot of Koreans traveling is often pretty insulated - a lot of people seem to be into the tour or package deal.
Yep. Package deals that are still very Korean: they bring their own food/snacks with them(*), hotels that cater to mostly Korean tourists, going ONLY to Korean restaurants (I mean, who wants to eat that icky local food anyway?), nighttime entertainment at Korean karaoke bars, or to Korean nightclubs(**).
Other than getting a stamp in their passport and a few pictures standing in front of Ankor Wat, why do they even leave Korea if they are not going to experience the cultures/food/language or interact with the people? I don't get it. Is it just so they can brag to their friends that they "traveled"?
(*)I counted no less than a dozen LARGE boxes of ramen on the luggage carosel at CDG. Really? You're going to eat ramen in Paris?
(**)Traveling around Berlin a few years ago, following the guide book to a rather famous techno club I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at a completely different club. I didn't realize this until I had already paid my 20Euro(!!) cover charge and gone inside. Apparently, I had found the only Korean nightclub in Berlin. 아이구! Even when I leave Korea, I can't escape it.
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