ESL

After 5 long months of working hard, it's finally our Summer Holidays!!

The whole English department celebrated on Monday night with some tasty sushi and soju at a restaurant in Haeundae, followed by some drinks in Jangsan. As I explained before about work nights out here in Korea, everybody had a great time eating lots of food and playing drinking games. I felt very bad for the teachers who had to be in school the next day.

I remember when I was younger and it was Mother's Day or Father's Day, I would always moan to my mum that it was unfair that parents each had a day, but children didn't get one. She answered that the reason was because every day is children's day, which cut that argument short. But here in Korea, everyone's celebrated on their own particular day.

There's Parents Day, Children's Day and this year I discovered the wonder of Teacher's Day on May 15th. Teacher's Day is the day when students give thanks to the ones that teach them. Apparently lots of middle schools and high schools close after lunch time, so students can go back to their old schools to see the teachers that made an impact on them when they were only a couple of feet high with their hair in pigtails.

It was nice to see all of my old 6th graders around school yesterday, as they ran up to their old homerooms.

Is Korea’s EFL teaching failing? This question was asked by Groove Magazine in its March issue. The article was a comprehensive account of the history of Korea’s attempt to make its population more competitive by making English language skills key to a child’s education. I thought that the answer was pretty straight forward. Yes. Korea’s EFL instruction programme is failing. But maybe it was an easy question.

Of course it’s important to set out from the beginning to establish the fact that you’re talking about the governments drive to instil native speaker capabilities among the populace. And it’s important to know that whenever you read an argument like this you have to remember that opinions have already been forged on the barstools of waegdom, so convincing any new comers to the discussion will allow for short work.

Work's well and truly started, the only place I can get a decent cup of tea is at my house and people bustle past me like I'm in a roller derby game- it can only mean I'm back in Korea, and have been for a while now. I have a serious case of the holiday blues. To try and combat it, I decided to list some of my favourite things about Korea. They may be obsessed with poop shape things, but not everything here is bad...

♥ The 'Yogi-Yoh' Button