Inefficiently-used native speaker English teachers inefficient.

I would be remiss not to mention the big news among foreign English teachers in Korea: that Seoul public schools plan to phase them out.

* Gusts of Popular Feeling has a lengthy post on these recent developments and their coverage in the local Korean-language press.
* The Korea Times and JoongAng Daily have some coverage in English.
* Roboseyo has a round-up of some comments among teachers on blogs.
* I'm No Picasso has a thoughtful reply to an idiotic interview with a 24-year-old Korean that repeats a lot of the same xenophobic bias we've been reading about for years.

Really, the writing has been on the wall for years: with the hiring of Korean "lecturers" in practical English and the growth in Teaching English in English [TEE] plans, the development of the NEAT, the increased interest in Indian and robot teachers, the increase in online English classes and distance-learning, the non-renewal of public school contracts over the past few semesters, the attention to and focus on the "myth of the native speaker", and the wall-to-wall negative coverage in the local media. If anyone is surprised in 2011 it is only because there is a definite timeline for their phasing-out in place.

Unfortunately the NSET experiment in public schools was marred by poor implementation, disorganization, and disinterest, and it's no surprise that inefficiently-used native English speakers were ineffective and, well, inefficient in the classroom. Little thought went into how to use them, what the ultimate goals of their classes should be, or how to achieve those goals while working successfully with their Korean co-teachers. While papers and politicians can vomit countless anecdotes and articles about poorly-performing NSETs and "unqualified" teachers, few column inches are devoted to who has done the hiring, the rationale behind those choices, and why the goals of English education in Korea are ultimately incompatible with the strengths of thousands of young, untrained, and inexperienced foreigners.

English class in Gangjin county's St. Joseph Girls' High School, 1970.

Native speaker English teachers have been in Korean classrooms for decades, and there will presumably be places for them for years to come: young, inexperienced teachers will still find work in cram schools and English-immersion Villages, while those with experience and credentials may move to colleges, universities, teacher-training institutes like the British Council or the Jeollanam-do Educational Training Institute, or reputable hagwon.

Background reading:
* Are native speakers part of English here? Your thoughts on the 2009 GETA conference.
* A must read: account of teaching English in South Korea in the sixties. The .pdf file of a 1965 Korea Journal piece by Julian le Patourel, which details many of the same challenges NSETs continue to face 40+ years later, is available here.

NEAT (국가영어능력평가시험) registration time through December 12th.

From December 1st through 12th is the first registration period for the National English Language Test (국가영어능력평가시험), the English-language proficiency exam with the lofty goals of replacing the TOEFL, TOEIC, and other foreign exams in Korea. Registration is now for Level 1---the “adult”, Business English exam---and is limited to the first 4,000 applicants. The test will be held on December 17th, at 44 different sites around the country.

The test consists of four sections: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. It runs from 9:30 to 5, with three breaks.

Under the test information (시헙안내) tab on the test's website you’ll find a .pdf with some sample questions, like:

Good morning everyone, here's a piece of good news for our company. After years of talks the U.S. and Thailand have agreed on a double-taxation treaty that will put American companies already operating there on a more level playing field with our competitors. That means royalties paid by a Thai firm to a U.S. firm will be subject to a Thai withholding tax of zero to 5%, compared to a 15% tax for countries without a treaty. That means more profit for us.

Q: What change will the treaty bring?
a) more sports coverage
b) less tax on royalties
c) a 15% tax on royalties
d) less American investment

Click on the 시험안내 tab, then click 영역별 문항유형, then click the Adobe logo.

Comparing the value of Korean and foreign English teachers.

The Korea Times writes "[t]he majority of Korean parents think foreign English teachers are needed in schools despite the government’s move to gradually reduce their number," but adds:

About 53.7 percent said the most effective type of teachers was “Korean teachers who had excellent English communication skills and taught well.” Only 29.7 percent answered positively about native English teachers. This was attributable to the low interaction between students and teachers and the difficulty in understanding the foreign educators.

And in the Hankyoreh:

parents prefer capable Korean teachers of English over native speaker assistant instructors, a Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) study found.

The report released Sunday by the SMOE found 62.2% of 12,150 student parents and 53.7% of 28,761 students taking part in an online poll describing the most desirable type of English teacher as “a Korean teacher who has excellent English conversation skills and teaches effectively.” The rates were higher than the preference for native English speaker assistant instructors, which stood at 26.9% for parents and 29.7% for students.

. . .

In-depth interviews were also conducted with English teachers on the native speaker assistant instructors. Among the factors cited as strengths were the “new cultural experience” and encouragement of student curiosity and interest regarding English. But teachers also voiced negative opinions about the instructors’ individual qualifications and the cost of their employment relative to the learning benefits.

Here's a July 2010 post about native speaker English teacher evaluations, including the questionnaires then given to Korean co-teachers. Here's a lengthier post inspired by the Busan Office of Education's decision to evaluate their NSETs. And last month, Seamus of Asadal Thought shared a questionnaire going around to parents in Gyeonggi-do who were asked to evaluate the performances of their children's NSETs.

3. 원어민 영어선생님을 활용한 영어수업을 통해 귀 자녀의 의사소통능력 향상에 도움이 된다고 생각하십니까? Do you think that your children’s comprehension/understanding is helped through the English classes that utilise the native speaking English teacher?
1. 매우 도움이 된다. It helps greatly.
2. 도움이 된다. It helps.
3. 잘 모르겠다. I don’t really know.
4. 별로 도음이 되지 않는다. It doesn’t really help.
5. 전혀 도움이 되지 않는다. It doesn’t help at all.

We are in turn left to evaluate how, um, qualified parents are to judge the usefulness of their kids' foreign English teachers.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that "capable" Korean English teachers are preferred or considered more useful. The biggest reason--bigger than shared language and culture, and bigger than their significantly-greater staying power--is that they don't lead weekly or bi-monthly conversation clubs, they teach and review the exercises that appear on the all-important standardized tests. Even though the National Curriculum has nominally placed an importance on "communicative competence" for a decade, English is still overwhelmingly a subject rather than a language, a subject where limited proficiency in spoken and written English is enough to do the trick.

For more data and commentary, take a look at today's Gusts of Popular Feeling post.

수능 문제지와 답안지: College entrance examination questions and answers online.

A few hours after the 2012 College Entrance Examination (2012 대학수학능력시험), the questions and answers are online. Naver has a list of twelve places to find them.

Part three, the English section, will probably be of most interest to readers. Finding the main idea of the passage, via the 서울신문:

[34～35] 다음 글의 주제로 가장 적절한 것을 고르시오.

34. Living things naturally return to a state of balance.
When we are disturbed by forces acting on us, our inner
machinery kicks in and returns us to a balanced state of
equilibrium. Homeostasis is the word we use to describe
the ability of an organism to maintain internal equilibrium
by adjusting its physiological processes. Most of the
systems in animal and human physiology are controlled
by homeostasis. We don’t like to be off balance. We tend
to keep things in a stable condition. This system operates
at all levels. Our blood stays the same temperature.
Except for extraordinary exceptions, when people find
ways to intervene using methods more powerful than our
tendency to equilibrium, our habits, behaviors, thoughts,
and our quality of life stay pretty much the same too.
① physical balance needed for mental equilibrium
② inner mechanisms to enhance the quality of life
③ general tendency of organisms to keep equilibrium
④ major differences in animal and human physiology
⑤ biological processes resulting from habitual behaviors

Um, I’m fine, thank you, and you?

The last section is an optional additional foreign-language section: German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese characters. Arabic is consistently the most “popular” choice.

Students say, according to the JoongAng Daily, this year's "mother of all tests" was easier than last year's. Here's last November's exam, if you'd like to compare.

Here's a post from 2009 about walking to class and watching the pre-exam festivities on test day in a Gwangju neighborhood.



Unsurprisingly, Reuters has filed its story on the country's exam preparations under "Oddly Enough", so I won't bother linking to it.

Jangseong county tops in CSAT again.

From the 한국일보.

High school students in Jeollanam-do's Jangseong county received the highest average scores in the country on the 2010 CSAT. The JoongAng Daily writes:

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation released the test results yesterday of the 450,944 high school students nationwide who took the CSAT in 2010. Among all cities and counties nationwide, students in Jangseong County scored the highest in all four subjects - 116.5 in Korean language, 113.9 in Math-Ga, 125.1 in Math-Na and 119.6 in English language. Math-Ga and Math-Na focus on different tracks of mathematics and are geared towards the sciences and the liberal arts respectively.

GEPIK hiring and renewal freeze.

It's been interesting reading about the GEPIK hiring and renewal freeze from May through August, and what it means for new and current teachers. From an email from the GEPIK coordinators, via Waygook.org:

GEPIK will not be hiring and/or renewing teachers from May 25, 2011 to August 31, 2011. At this point in time GEPIK is working to restructure the program. During this three-month period, we will be working to streamline the program so that starting September 2011 GEPIK contract dates will be aligned. We are aiming to set contract dates for September 1st and March 1st so that the GEPIK structure will be more standardized. We do realize that many of you will be affected by this change, but please understand that we found it crucial to restructure our program to improve GEPIK, not only for the program itself but for our teachers as well.

To explain this situation further, last year (2010), GEPIK reached its highest numbers of teachers. However, from the year 2011, there has been a decrease in the number of teachers in our program. At the same time, during this period of change, it is in the best interest of our program to secure as much funding as we could in order to maintain as many GEPIK teachers as possible.

Remote English classes continue for Jeollanam-do's island schools.

GFN 98.7 FM writes that the Jeollanam-do Office of Education will continue remote English classes for students on rural, geographically isolated islands in the province.

The Jeollanam-do provincial Office of Education is offering remote English courses from [March 22nd] The teachers are located in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Some 2 thousand students will benefit from the program. These include those studying at sixty-six mini schools on five islands and 52 schools with less than 60 students.
The program has been offered every year since 2009. Last year about 1,300 students learned from native English teachers.
One native teacher handles five students with the assistance of one Korean sub-teacher. Classes will be offered one hour a week for a year.

This blog has done a few posts on similar programs done throughout the country that use teachers in the state of Wyoming and other rural areas to teach Korean students via videoconferencing. Elutian, a Wyoming-based company, had the bright idea to both "insource" jobs to rural America and meet the demand of reduced-cost native speaker English teachers [NESTs] in South Korea, a place turning to robot English teachers, certified Indian teachers, and domestic instructors to cut costs. It has been working with the nearby Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education since 2010, says a September 2010 article attributed to Yonhap:

GMOE disclosed Sep. 30 that, “Surprisingly, over 31,600 students are using the video class service for English conversation with U.S public school teachers.

The project began in earnest the latter part of June and by the end of August 22,300 elementary school students, 7,300 middle school students, and 2,070 high school students are engaged in the service.

Moreover, it is reported that 5,356 students from smaller schools in the farming areas, as well as Education Welfare schools, many of whom need special social consideration, are using the service.

Participating students also study English by directly conversing with the native English speaking teachers one-on-one through their school’s internet video system after school (7:00~11:00 PM).

Early this year GMOE selected 146 instructors from a pool of former and current school teachers, mostly based in Wyoming, US, [Eleutian Technology] for the service. A number of other Korean school district offices of education are now also using live native English video for regular classes, but GMOE is the first one to utilize the service for one-on-one sessions after school hours as well.

While there continues to be a large demand for native English speaking teachers in Korea, there has also been much controversy over the hiring of unqualified instructors. The ongoing GMOE project, however, is recognized as both very cost effective and effective at helping to improve the quality of instruction, as well as student results, through utilizing experienced US public school teachers.

Youtube has examples of the TV teacher in action:



The local office of education has also been operating remote teaching programs with native speaker English teachers from within the province since 2009. For information and teacher-created resources, see the Jeollanamdo Online Program board on Waygook.org.

GEPIK cutting 200 positions in 2011.

Gyeonggi-do English Program in Korea [GEPIK] will be cutting 200 native-speaker English teacher jobs in 2011 because of budget cuts, writes the Korea Times, picking up on discussion on teacher forums and what was blogged about here on February 18th.

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, the budget allocated to hire foreign English teachers fell to 22.7 billion won ($20 million) for this year from 30 billion won in 2010.

Cho Young-min, senior supervisor of the education office, said the budget cut is in line with the plan to reduce the number of foreign teachers in phases in the years to come.

``We plan to cut about 200 teachers in 2011 from this month. We will also gradually cut the overall number in the coming years,’’ the supervisor said.

But he did not specify how many jobs will be shed at its GEPIK (Gyeonggi English Program in Korea.)

Arranged as a three-year project, the English program by the provincial office had hired more teachers over the past three years. In 2010, the number of teachers increased to some 2,252 in Gyeonggi, a 110 percent jump from 2008 when they first started out with some 1,000.

However, after reaching its peak last year, the number of foreign teachers is expected to slide over the next three years in the province surrounding Seoul.

Cho said the cut will be made upon requests from schools, with Korean English conversation teachers replacing them.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will also see a budget cut, though the number of teachers will increase this year.

[SMOE] also cut its budget for the recruitment of foreign teachers to 35.9 billion won from 37.4 billion won in 2010.

But the cut will not result in the fall in the number of foreign teachers, as districts in the capital will increase their share of spending.

“As a result, 37 more teachers will be added to the total count this year,” said Yoon Ho-sang, senior supervisor at the office’s English education department. “

The article twice addressed, and dismissed, the idea that these budget cuts are due to regions providing free school lunches to students. It closes by saying that, contradictory to the reporting of that and other media outlets over the past four years, a 2009 survey found done by SMOE found that 90 percent of teachers and students, and 93% of Korean teachers "were very satisfied with the foreign teachers’ qualifications and class performance."

There has been talk of cuts for about a year, with experienced teachers being the first victims because schools are unable and unwilling to pay the salaries they'd command based on their qualifications. All while local media and hate groups bemoan the lack of "qualifications" among imported foreign English teachers.

Budget cuts put GEPIK teachers in limbo.

Native speaker English teachers writing a lot on waygook.org this winter break about how GEPIK budget cuts will affect their contracts next year. Commenter xnay wrote on January 29:

I've been teaching at the same high school in Gyeonggi-do for the past 4.5 years and got the axe the other week. On December 23 a memo was sent out to schools by GPOE informing them of budget cuts for the NET program to a number of schools. I found out after returning from a holiday back home on January 17. I was set to go to immigration that day to renew my visa since my school and I had signed a new contract before my vacation. I will now complete this contract to the end of February and then I'm done as the school's budget was already made so there was no room for me without the external funding provided my GPOE.

The copy of the official Korean paper I have from GPOE states that 487 schools in Gyeonggi Province have lost funding that will affect their ability to retain a foreign teacher. 360 elementary schools, 73 middle schools, and 54 high schools have been affected.

Then from February 13:

I went to work on Wednesday and was told that the GPOE would call my school on Friday (11th) or Monday (14th) because they may now reverse their decision at my school (possibly others as well) and provide funding for a foreign teacher. My head teacher told me to wait and see what will happen rather than accept another job offer from somewhere else. From what I have heard, the funding debate is between foreign teachers and free school lunches for the students. What pops into my head is this: if they can flip-flop on this issue so easily and without considering that it's actually affecting people's lives, then what's to prevent them from doing this again on a whim?

Chelleinkorea wrote on another waygook.org thread on the 14th:

I'm surprised to see that nobody has posted anything about the recent GEPIK budget cuts and the fact several people (15 that I know personally) are now jobless.
I am one of these people. I returned on Monday after a holiday in South Africa to be told very casually that my school will not be able to honor the contract they signed with me in December last year because of GEPIK budget cuts.
I have a week and a day to find another job before my contract runs out.

Plenty more comments from teachers in both situations on the two threads. Commenter isanghan speculates

Apaprently (sic), it is coming down to the issue of NETs vs. lunches. However, parents finding out that their children's schools will have no NET is not going over as well as they had thought it would. So, they are considering reversing their decision on funding.

while patch83 brings up a point we could've made in 2009 when the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education pulled similar last-minute cuts:

What bothers me most about this, however, is that I got out of the hagwon racket after 21 months and one broken contract specifically to avoid having this sort of thing happen to me ever again!

News of these cuts came out last fall; a Dave's ESL Cafe thread about GEPIK scaling back teachers was the first public mention on the internet:

A few weeks ago I recall being at a bar when one of my friends mentioned a GEPIK coordinator gave notice that there were massive budget cuts, and all schools in Goyang with more than one teacher would lose half of their budget.

Didn't hear much about it since then, until yesterday.

Apparently they want to slash the number of NETs in Goyang down to 20 for all elementary schools, as there isn't a budget for English like there was 2/3 years ago.

For all the nay-sayers that will claim this is a bluff, that they will not 'fire' us, that isn't what they are doing. Instead they will phase us out and not renew our contracts. In doing that, they can tell the moms anything they want.

Even prior to these rumors and announcements, things were changing for public school teachers with, and applicants to, government-run programs like GEPIK, EPIK, and SMOE. In the spring of 2010 all three, and their intermediary recruiters, were avoiding hiring older, experienced foreign English teachers because they couldn't or wouldn't pay them the salaries they'd command. This while the other side of the mouth complains about the perceived lack of "qualified," competent native speaker English teachers in Korea.

Billings gets Korean English teacher from Gwangju.

Billings, Montana has been a curious intersection for English education in South Korea and English immersion programs for its teachers for a while---see here and here---and The Billings Gazette had an article last week about the latest batch of Korean English teachers to train in the US.

On her first day in class, Ji Jeong Ha, an exchange English teacher from South Korea, was asked by a Lewis and Clark Middle School eighth-grader if they had televisions where she comes from.

"I asked them, 'How many of you have LG or Samsung cell phones?'" she said. "About two-thirds of the class raised their hands. 'We make those,' I told them."

Ha — the students call her Jenny — is one of 28 Korean teachers visiting Billings School District 2 as part of an exchange program with South Korea's Ministry of Education. The goal is to immerse the teachers in American culture to help them better learn English.

"You guys speak so fast," Ha said with a laugh.

Ha comes from Guang Ju where she teaches middle school English. She arrived in the U.S. in August, and she and her 27 counterparts joined real college English classes in Powell and Cody, Wyo.

The comment section is, um, interesting, too:

"Do you have TV's in South Korea?"

"Um...as a matter of fact, we do you. Better, ones than you have here in the US, and we manufacture them ourselves. Our broadband speed is four times faster than your tiny little backwater of a town has as well. Also, based on the underlying cultural ignorance made apparent by your ill-informed question, it's safe to assume that us South Koreans have a far better educational system too. Sorry kid, the truth hurts. South Korea is looking at the US from its rear-view mirror. We have passed you by."

lol

The robots, you're using them wrong.

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.

Congratulations, Campbell 샘.

The Korea Times writes of an award ceremony held last month for top native speaker English teachers in public schools.

Atlanta native Stephen Campbell has been awarded the Native Speaking English Teacher (NSET) award for 2010 by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) last December.

The short profile covers some of his approach and attitude.

Teaching English Conversation has proved to be a bit of a challenge as Campbell has confronted many obstacles, especially student interactions.

“The subject I teach is English Conversation. My classes are 36 to 40 students, which provides a challenge in itself, never mind the fact that students are quite shy about practicing their spoken English. So having a lot of open-ended conversation exercises, the kind of thing you'll find in so many resources, like ‘Discuss three current news events with your partner,’ or ‘With your partner, choose and describe three favorite foods in your country,’ ― that kind of thing is hopeless.

“So I try to use activities that are task-based, where students must use English with each other in order to accomplish some other task. Having groups compete works nicely, sometimes; but I don't give out candy to high school students! I tell them their reward is the respect and admiration of their peers; when that stops being funny, I tell them it's the satisfaction of a job well done. I do sometimes take photos of the winning teams, and post them on my bulletin board. The photo gallery is a popular feature of my classroom.”

. . .

“One week during the year, students come to class only to find it transformed into a crime scene ― there's crime scene tape and body outline in the hallway right outside. In pairs, they are a famous consulting detective and his friend, and they have to solve the crime rather like those choose-your-own-adventure books. After you get information from one station, you have to choose where to go next.”

Nice to see not only the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education recognizing the extraordinary efforts of some of its foreign English teachers, but also an article praising an award-winning one in a newspaper that frequently disparages and underminese them. I refer to the teachers in the plural because, in spite of finding no more details on the ceremony after several searches, a poster on Dave's ESL Cafe writes:

The article was a bit misleading, however, as more than fifty teachers received the exact same award from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (minimum two teachers per district with twenty-five districts).

It was nice to be acknowledged, but it's not quite as exclusive as I first thought.

Sagong Seong-dae is insightful ("they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months[.]")

One of the latest articles on the English-teaching robots from the AFP closes with this gem on the additional benefits of robots over native speaker English teachers, attributed to Sagong Seong-dae of the Korea Institute of Science of Technology:

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

That sounds like something from a parody on the pitfalls of teaching English in Korea, given how uppity foreign teachers *cough* are prone to "complaining" about not receiving the health insurance, sick leave, and severance pay contractually provided to them. He might have added that robot English teachers also don't have AIDS and aren't attracted to Korean women.


Poster created by The Waygook Effect.

Reminiscent of the president of the International Graduate School of English saying to Kang Shin-who of the Korea Times in 2009:

``Most of the native English speakers don't have much affection toward our children because they came here to earn money and they often cause problems,'' Park said.

a quotation that was later revealed to be fabricated by the reporter.

Anyway, we can't go too long without the western media writing some "news of the weird" story out of South Korea, and the English-teaching robots is the latest angle to fill that void. This most-recent batch of articles lend themselves to the same comment I made a month ago in a longer look at this misguided program:

If "English Fever" is as exceptionally high in South Korea as we observe and foreign correspondents note, and if communicative competence is as high a priority as the national curriculum has dictated for nearly a decade, it would behoove policy-makers to finally stop rash spending on gimmicks---like robots, expensive English-Only Zones, or inexperienced white people by the thousands---and start developing real solutions that produce results in the classroom, or at least ones that are suitable stand-ins until a generation of domestic English teachers can catch up to the roles in a communication-based English classroom for which they are currently unprepared.

In that AFP article readers with some knowledge of English education in South Korea will find plenty of objectionable lines and ideas. An official at the Daegu office of education said some robots "may be sent to remote rural areas of South Korea shunned by foreign English teachers," though over the past few years we've seen that it's not native speaker English teachers [NSETs] "shunning" rural areas, but rather rural areas unable or unwilling to hire and pay them. Many areas, including where I used to work, have long since stopped hiring NSETs for the public schools and have instead collected a few for regional "English Towns" where students collect for English immersion experiences once or twice a year.

Three paragraphs later the official is indirectly quoted saying she "stressed the experiment was not about replacing human teachers with robots," though the article---which relies a lot on "he said" and "she said," literally---closes with:

Sagong stressed that the robots, which currently cost 10 million won each, largely back up human teachers but would eventually have a bigger role.

The machines can be an efficient tool to hone language skills for many people who feel nervous about conversing with flesh-and-blood foreigners, he said.

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

Hell, Time magazine started its own lazy profile off just last month with "Call it the job terminator."

It is unfortunate that education officials would rather put remote-controlled tape recorders in the classroom rather than living, breathing native English speakers. The article a few times mentions the benefits of robots for shy English students, but that leads us to a point made by commenter Walter Foreman in November:

English in Korea is already too disassociated from the people that speak it (ie. it is treated as something of a novelty rather than as a tool of expression); having children talk to cute wheeble-wobble-looking robots will only help to reinforce that disassociation!

From here.

And it's ironic that these latest models will be controlled and operated by English teachers in the Philippines

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines -- who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he told AFP.

who would otherwise have a difficult time ousting a pretty white face from an English classroom, regardless of their experience and education.

More news about Korean teachers training in the US.

Via Jason Ryan of Kimchi Icecream comes an article from NorthJersey.com about Korean English teachers from Busan augmenting their training with stays in New Jersey classrooms.

Just days after arriving from South Korea, Fort Lee School Superintendent Raymond Bandlow on Dec. 10 welcomed Hea-Kyung Lim, the chief superintendent of the Busan Metropolitan City school district, which oversees 600 schools within the second largest city in South Korea.

During a tour of several first grade classrooms at School 1, Lim and members of her administrative staff had the opportunity to observe some of her teachers interacting with students and collaborating with Fort Lee teachers.

They also took a tour through the pre-school learning disabled classrooms at the Good Sheppard Church, which are part of the school district.

Through the TICKET program (Total Immersion Course for Chinese and Korean English Teachers), now in its third year, seven teachers stay in Fort Lee from October through April 2011 to pick up techniques and skills they can apply in their own classrooms back home.

Readers may remember Superintendent Lim from October when it was announced Busan will begin evaluating native speaker English teachers.

The article goes on to say the six-month program costs $16,000 per teacher. It is aimed at further preparing Korean English teachers to conduct their classes entirely in English, and presumably to watch and learn classroom techniques conducive to that.

For a couple other posts on similar trips, with plenty of reader comments see:

* February 5, 2010: Korean teachers going to the US for further training.

* March 8, 2010: More Korean teachers going to the US for further training.

Gyeonggi-do to reduce number of native speaker English teachers next year.

Quantifying some of the talk we read last week about Korean public schools phasing-out native speaker English teachers, the Korea Times writes on Gyeonggi-do's plans:

Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education said Thursday it plans to cut the number of foreign English teacher by 200 or 8.8 percent to 2,056 for next year. Currently, a total of 2,256 native English speakers are working at 2,032 schools in the province.

The provincial education office said it is also considering cutting the number of native teachers in phases in the years to come.

Instead, the education office will increase the number of Korean English conversation teachers, who speak only in English during class, up to 1,100 from current 600.

“We plan to gradually reduce foreign teachers and replace them with Korean English conversation teachers,” said an official from the provincial office.

She said the policy change reflects higher costs to hire native speakers, including accommodations and airplane tickets for the foreigners.

. . .

Some education offices including Gangwon Province are joining in the move with Gyeonggi, while others in Daegue (sic), North Gyeongsang and Ulsan plan to hire more native English speakers.

In case of Seoul, the education authorities are trying to maintain the current number of foreign English teachers, approximately 1,000.

On Tuesday Gusts of Popular Feeling shared some recent Korean-language articles on the topic as well, with information mirrored in Thursday's English-language piece. A short excerpt, starting with talk about those Korean English "lecturers" said to be replacing us, that brings up a good point:

A November 25 Donga Ilbo article elaborates further on the latter instructors, saying that Gyeonggi-do began selecting Korean English conversation specialist instructors in June 2009, and there are currently around 650 working in schools, with plans to raise the number to 1000 next year.

It also notes that as the plan to reduce native teachers has become known to students' parents, there has been resistance due to fears of private education costs rising. According to parent Jeong Suk-hee, (39, Bundang): "Among parents there has been talk that Korean English conversation specialist instructors lag behind native speaking instructors," and, "If there isn’t much difference in the supporting budgets, we want native speaking teachers to be placed [in schools]."

The Times ran one generic photo of students talking with a native speaker English teacher, though if we're just going to decorate, I always enjoyed this one of a teacher organizing a prize fight in Yeosu.

Talk of public schools phasing out native speaker English teachers.

I received a message about this last month via twitter, but until recently hadn't had any corroboration, though according to active threads on Dave's ESL Cafe and Waygook.org, schools will drastically cut the number of native speaker English teachers over the next several years. The sources remain, for now, largely Korean coteachers, but, if true, it is a story worth following. The six-page thread on Dave's ESL Cafe begins in Gyeonggi-do with GEPIK:

A few weeks ago I recall being at a bar when one of my friends mentioned a GEPIK coordinator gave notice that there were massive budget cuts, and all schools in Goyang with more than one teacher would lose half of their budget.

Didn't hear much about it since then, until yesterday.

Apparently they want to slash the number of NETs in Goyang down to 20 for all elementary schools, as there isn't a budget for English like there was 2/3 years ago.

For all the nay-sayers that will claim this is a bluff, that they will not 'fire' us, that isn't what they are doing. Instead they will phase us out and not renew our contracts. In doing that, they can tell the moms anything they want.

Has anyone else heard of this? I know I only mentioned Goyang but are there other cities that are also affected?

The thread continues with news and rumors about budget cuts and non-renewals elsewhere in the province.

Waygook.org's "The end of Native Teachers" thread beginning on November 24th looks at other provinces and cities. jehall writes:

Hey my co-teacher just told me that she got word today from GEPIK that they will begin decrasing the Native English teachers they bring in as they are now near the point where they believe they have enough Korean teachers in the system who speak fluent English. She said next year's batch of Native English teachers will be much less than this years and the plan is to phase them out completely in the next 3 years.

And Janitor:

Yes, I had heard that by 2014 Busan will stop hiring foreigners to work in the public schools. Ulsan has already started training Korean teachers to replace foreign teachers but will probably wait until Busan stops hiring before they do anything. Last year, I did my open class alone and was told that it was the same for the part-time "English Language Professionals"

We will see what happens. Again, by not hiring foreign teachers the school systems will saving a lot of money and you know where most of the MOE's heart are. Certainly not with the quality of language acquisition.

And honeymooners:

We in Gangwon-do recently had a talk from our regional coordinator. She said there will be a 10% decrease in teachers next year, I think 30% year after and 40% year after (total reductions).

I've written about the phasing-out of native speaker English teachers [NSETs] a few times, and pointed to things like the hiring of Korean English "lecturers" with greater English proficiency; the future adoption of a "practical English" exam; the use of less expensive English teachers from outside the "Big Seven" countries; the wide gap between the "teach for tests" method and what NSETs bring and represent to English education; and the general complaints among academics and journalists about NSETs' ineffeciency, unprofessionalism, and cost, all as evidence of the trend. If this proves to be correct, and the number of sources from across the country leads me to believe it is, than this severe lack of future job security for NSETs---in an industry already greatly lacking in it---will serve as motivation for inexperienced applicants to either boost their credentials or qualifications for positions that even value them, or to reconsider a year abroad in South Korea altogether.

수능 문제지와 답안지: Want to look through the 2011 college entrance exam?

All the big Korean news sites have the questions and answers to this year's college entrance examination (2011 대학수학능력시험), with Naver having a list of eleven sources. Each link has them organized by subject, with 3교시 being English, and the fifth period being an optional foreign-language section with German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, the exceptionally-popular Arabic, and Hanja.

The English portion is quite difficult, considering the levels of most Korean students and teachers, and, in previous years, has like most Korean English exams been plagued by poor grammar, awkward readings, and ambiguous answers.

On a related note, last November I had the opportunity to watch the pre-test festivities outside a local high school as friends, teachers, parents, and underclass(wo)men cheered on their classmates:



And as police officers escorted late students to their classrooms:

Time magazine names Korea's English-teaching robot one of the year's best inventions.

One of several designs for an English-teaching robot; from 연합.

Top-whatever numerical lists are totally lame, but it might be worth passing along that Time magazine named South Korea's English-teaching robot as one of its 50 Best Inventions of 2010.

Call it the job terminator. South Korea, which employs some 30,000 foreigners to teach English, has plans for a new addition to its language classrooms: the English-speaking robot. Students in a few schools started learning English from the robo-teachers late last year; by the end of this year, the government hopes to have them in 18 more schools. The brightly colored, squat androids are part of an effort to keep South Korean students competitive in English. Not surprisingly, the proposal has worried a few human teachers — and with good reason. Experts say the bots could eventually phase out flesh-and-blood foreign English teachers altogether.

When I wrote about these robots in March, looking at one of several recent articles on the topic, I noted that these things seem to exist simply to show that South Korea can produce them. From a Korea Times article on a few trial runs, with special attention to the second paragraph quoted below:

"Using teaching robots in classes is expected to raise the quality of public school education, thus leading to less dependence on the private education," said Kim Hong-joo, a ministry official.

Also, an early start in teaching robot projects will be helpful in leading the new global market as the nation aims to be one of the top three global leaders in this field by 2013, he added.

They may very well be a remarkable invention or concept, then, but not a useful classroom tool. Other blog posts at the time share some teacher experiences with "Engkey" and its cousins. From a comment linked to by a February Gusts of Popular Feeling post:

I'm currently teaching in South Korea (and yes, there are always job openings... though less than usual, with the recession on). I teach at two public elementary schools, one of which is on the extreme outskirts of the city and only has 46 students. For some reason, this tiny school got an English robot called the Cybertalker, which uses voice recognition and some kind of face recognition to tailor pre-made conversations to students. The only time I've seen the thing turned on was in the frantic lead up to a school inspection, when my English classes were cancelled in favour of registering all the students in the system and trying to make it perform for the school board officials. Even with days of practice, the students couldn't make it respond - even the almost fluent teachers couldn't make it recognize their English. These are the crappiest teaching robots in existence. A Speak and Spell would be more useful.

And a New York Times profile, linked by a July Extra! Korea post, shows the limitations of robots in conversation:

“How can I help you today?” Engkey said.

“Do you have any fruits on sale?” the student said.

“Wow! Very good!” Engkey exulted. She sounded a fanfare, spun and raised her left arm for a high-five. A screen on her chest showed stars grading the student.

. . .

When Yang said, “I don’t like apples” instead of “I love apples,” as he was supposed to, Engkey froze. The boy patted her and said, “Hello, are you alive or dead?”

My March 2010 entry lists several other blog posts that detail the struggles these foreign, native speaker English teachers experience within this Korean experiment. Deploying gimmick robots won't do much good when their handlers---the administrators and Korean English teachers who have thus far proven ineffective leaders of "flesh-and-blood" foreign teachers---have limited English abilities and technical know-how themselves.



If "English Fever" is as exceptionally high in South Korea as we observe and foreign correspondents note, and if communicative competence is as high a priority as the national curriculum has dictated for nearly a decade, it would behoove policy-makers to finally stop rash spending on gimmicks---like robots, expensive English-Only Zones, or inexperienced white people by the thousands---and start developing real solutions that produce results in the classroom, or at least ones that are suitable stand-ins until a generation of domestic English teachers can catch up to the roles in a communication-based English classroom for which they are currently unprepared.


Better English through robots, racing models; from 파이낸셜뉴스.

School in Jeollabuk-do imports Indian English teacher.

Kang Shin-who has written a pair of articles in the Korea Times about a private school in Wanju county that has imported an Indian English teacher, the first of his kind:

[A] small private school in North Jeolla Province has challenged this prejudice by inviting the first-ever Indian English teacher here last September.

Wanju High School became the destination of the teacher, Abby Thomas, who made English education history in Korea. Although some cautiously raised concerns that it may be difficult to understand an Indian English accent, the school students, parents and other fellow teachers responded positively to the Indian teacher.

“I cannot tell much difference between Thomas and other Westerners from whom I learned English when I was in middle school,” said Yang Gang-yeal, a second grader at the school.

In case of Na Eun-ha, another student, the Indian teacher’s English is easier to understand, compared to other foreign teachers she has experienced. “Thomas is very friendly and I really enjoy the class,” she said. “I can also learn Indian culture and traditions from him.”

The North Jeolla Province Office of Education has so far recruited two Indian teachers including Thomas. Another teacher Robins Mathew is working at an English experience center in the province. Lee Chae-chong, a supervisor dealing with English teacher recruitment at the education office, said, “Their English is understandable like that of South Africa. We plan to recruit more teachers from India, depending on responses from students and parents.”

The article says Thomas is paid 300,000 won less per month than a native speaker English teacher, and closes with:

It’s true that some native English teachers are not so serious about their classes and look down on Korean teachers. But our English teacher is very devoted to his classes,” said Yang In-sun, one of Wanju High School’s English teachers. “He also understands Asian values very well.”

Though some Korean co-teachers and academics do hold negative opinions of native speaker English teachers, as Gusts of Popular Feeling reminds us, and as many readers already know, Kang has a long history fabricating quotations that belittle native speaker English teachers, and given the bias and the translation back into English, it's unclear what exactly was said.

It's worth reiterating, though, that when the effectiveness of native speaker English teachers is criticized, that they have been practically set up to fail, with no support given them, no thought or planning toward their implementation, and, for most of their history, no interest in their qualifications or personal development. It's likewise hard to draw conclusions about the effectiveness and adaptability of Indian English teachers in South Korea when Thomas is the first: his maturity and apparent success could owe as much to his age, his teaching experience, or his personality than to his cultural upbringing, and might encourage authorities to actively recruit older, experienced, credentialed teachers, rather than continuing budgeting for young, cheap, untraveled ones and placing the blame on the foreign imports.

Also on the 10th Kang wrote a short profile about Thomas and his classroom manner.

Thomas said that Indian teachers use only positive words because of their belief and tradition.

“We don’t use ‘shut up,’ and many children in our country might not understand it. We say ‘Be silent’ instead of ‘Don’t make noise.’ ‘Come on time,’ instead of ‘Don’t be late.’”

“In India, no people are swearing. It is because we believe if we say negative words, we create negative energy. Which energy teachers spread in the school classes is very important,” he added.

The 53-year-old teacher said, “I am older than other teachers and treat students as my daughter and my son. Loving students is the most important qualification for teachers.”

Asked about his opinion about Korean English education, he said Koreans should not fear mistakes.

“I say to students, ‘Make a mistake and another mistake.’ Don’t try to speak perfect English, that’s the way to learn English,” said Thomas, who came here 10 years ago.

In spite of the veiled commentary by Kang in the articles, it's encouraging to see this Indian teacher succeeding in spite of discrimination against not only non-native accents but against darker skin and those from areas considered less-developed than South Korea. The 서울신문 has a recent article about 토마스 애비 as well, along with a short video report. I've written about South Korea's plan to import Indian English teachers a few times before, most recently in June when we learned English Program in Korea [EPIK] was recruiting 12 Indians for domestic public schools.

Rates of English teachers in Jeollanam-do schools low.

If you're interested in possibly learning how many schools in Jeollanam-do have English conversation teachers, a recent article in the Jeonnam Ilbo provides statistics. Suncheon, for instance, has a rate of 62%; Mokpo 43%; Yeosu 65%; and, as the headline says, Shinan county 11%. In my experience in Gangjin schools---where the county has a rate of 21%---few had the luxury of teachers who taught the subject exclusively: English was taught usually either by homeroom teachers or by other subject teachers---science, physical education---who had free periods.

The article, by the way, is talking about Korean English teachers. The article goes on to list the salaries offered these "lecturers" being recruited to provide competent instruction in conversational English, and apparently in many cases, to be an English teacher were previously there was none:

월 200만원의 기본 보수에 섬지역 50만원, 농어촌지역 30만원씩의 추가수당이 지급되는 등 높은 수준의 급여에도 강사들이 기피하는 것은 열악한 근무여건 탓이다.

Numbers released by two lawmakers in late-September show the native speaker English teacher rates for public schools in the country's administrative regions. Gwangju and Jeollanam-do are in the middle of the pack, with 84.2% and 74.4% of schools, respectively, having NSETs.