Since I’m rather busy right now, I’m restricting myself to a quick post.
I bring to you, then, two examples of questionable pedagogy from within the intense, bizarre, and big-business world of English language education in South Korea.
The first is a tale of Soviet-style indoctrination. Before class each day, I am required to lead my students in an embarrassing group pledge. My students hate it has much as I do; it goes like this (repeat after me):
My Promise,
One, I am doing my best.
One, I am speaking English everywhere.
One, I am having fun,
Because I am learning English everyday.
You might be wondering why “one” is repeated three times? Good, so am I.
The second example comes from a listening manual that seems to sell itself as “hip”. Five characters lend their voice and graffiti-like appearance to the CD and textbook respectively. Yesterday, on track 38 of CD B, cool-dude #1 leaned into cool-dude #2 and said: “Look at her. She’s very fat. She’s ordering some food.” The underlined words were filled in by my students– ever the good listeners. Unfortunately, the example was expanded in the review chapter, only this time a female voice joined the boorish boys. When cool-dude #1 said, “She’s very fat, I think she can eat 5 hamburgers,” the girl countered with, “I don’t think so, I think she can eat 3 hamburgers!”
Soak it in, children. Soak it in.
