I don't get it. In a crossword I gave the hint "Where THIS language comes from." All the students knew it meant English; you about 75% of the students seem to think English comes from the USA.
How on earth do they work that out? GERMANy speaks GERMAN. RUSSIA speaks RUSSIAN. The list goes on. It is not exactly difficult to understand, since they all know what and where England is. The amazing thing it that, for England at least, it works the same way in the Korean language.
Another problem is with them being taught American spelling. Why would you do that? I know of only one recognized English speaking country in the world who actually use it, and that is the USA. Not even Canada uses it. In all three grades they had difficulty fitting in "Favourite", despite the writing on the board that tells them to look out for that particular number in the crossword.
My reply to this is that Korean MUST come from Mongolia. It only makes sense. KOREAn, MONGOLIA. Same, same!
3 comments:
an ignint old man at a subway station once told me I shouldn't be in Korea teaching, because I'm Canadian, and schools in Korea should only hire AMERICAN teachers. Rather than argue, I ended the conversation and moved to a different bench.
I can see why someone would want to say that about South Africa. English First Language Speakers is a minority, most people speak it. A large part of the USA does not actually speak English either.
Canada, unlike South African does have a very large percentage of English Speakers. It is odd indeed. At least Canadians sound a lot like Americans. Students still look at me like I'm speaking Greek when I say a word like "pot".
You know what accent I like? The upper classes English from India. It has a nice sound to it.
Isn't the new buzz word in English Teaching "International English"? But then again I guess that would mean that the English publishing business would only have to print one set of books and therefore make more money.
Sounds like the basis for a new class though. Find out all the countries where English is an official language.
Cheers
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