Monday, March 07, 2005

ugh

I have a nasty cold, and it's gotten the better of me. I went to my first day of teacher training at CDI today. To call it intense would be, well, just about right, actually. They've taken a month-long program and condensed it into 3.5 days. I came out feeling old, useless, and stupid. But I also came out liking CDI, and I enjoyed my in-class observation of the teacher and his kids. More on this later, but Koreans hoping to apply to CDI should know: you're expected to speak absolutely perfect English. I met not a single Korean there who spoke with anything less than a perfect North American accent. No grammar errors, nothing*.

When I applied to CDI, I sent my app to two departments: the high-paying teaching department and the lower-paying R&D department. To be honest, after today's training, I'm leaning more toward R&D. We'll see what the future holds. Stay tuned.




*Don't take that the wrong way. I'm not astounded by the fact that people of Korean heritage can speak perfect, unaccented American English. That's a yawner for me. No; I'm talking more about CDI's obviously stringent hiring policy. Other hagwons give a lot more leeway to Korean employees, often hiring people who haven't mastered everything about English grammar, pronunciation, and usage. CDI, at least so far, is air-tight. I came away truly impressed... though I got the impression that a lot of those female teachers were suffering from acute kongju-byeong ("princess syndrome," i.e., spoiled and overprivileged).


_

No comments:

Post a Comment

READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!

All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.

AND A NEW RULE (per this post): comments critical of Trump's lying must include criticism of Biden's lying on a one-for-one basis! Failure to be balanced means your comment will not be published.