teaching and learning Korean: some disjointed thoughts

Starting next week, the beginning of April, I'll be teaching Korean for not one, but three days a week. Last semester was easy by comparison: just one 90-minute day a week. This time around, my Monday/Wednesday "Absolute Beginners" class will be twice a week at 90 minutes per class, and my Tuesday "Veteran Beginners" class will be for two solid hours. Am I a glutton for punishment?

Obviously, this can't be "punishment" in anything like a true or literal sense; I wouldn't be doing this if I sincerely thought it was a burden. I like teaching, even if I'm not the world's best teacher, and I do feel that non-Koreans can use the extra help to ease into Korean culture. There's a lot about this country that seems, especially at first, nonsensical or even ridiculous (nine years later, some aspects of Korean culture still feel that way to me!); Korea and Koreans can rub foreigners the wrong way, and vice versa. At the same time, I think another reason to get foreigners learning Korean is that, as I've said before, it's the least thanks they can offer back to the country that feeds them, clothes them, and puts a roof over their heads.

So let me rant a moment. It's a familiar rant to longtime readers of this blog. I have a great deal of trouble understanding the foreigner who cruises along for decades—decades!—in Korea and never picks up more than a very basic, pidgin/grunting version of Korean—a jumbled storehouse of random expressions and interjections like "Kaja!" and "An-dwae!" and "Aigu!" I always want to grab such people by the shoulders, shake them until their brains are sloshing, and bellow, "What the fuck have you been doing all this time? Actively hiding from Korean society?"

I suppose some people are experts at creating tight little cognitive bubbles around themselves, bubbles that selectively screen out most of the reality of living in Korea, allowing in only those few things that would have piqued the person's interest back in his or her home country. Did you like beer back home? Well, there are bars in Korea! See? No need to change yourself! Such foreigners are amazingly incurious about the rich world around them. Instead of asking themselves "What's the name of that fish in Korean? What do you call the job that that old guy with the flattened cardboard boxes is doing? What's that sign over the restaurant mean?" or asking themselves "What does 'jjajeung-na' mean? I hear it all the time...", they let Korea just wash over them in a wave of squandered sensory data. The country is 90% opaque to such people, and they don't care. Why don't they want to know more?

To be fair, I have to concede that some folks really do have a tin ear when it comes to learning foreign languages (although this is sometimes selective: a person might master five European languages, then be brought up short by basic Korean). Other folks may be so paralyzed by their introversion that they find it difficult or impossible to insinuate themselves into Korean society on any level. Still other folks plead age as the reason why they don't seem to be catching anything about the culture. About this latter claim, I'm sure that theorist Stephen Krashen would say that, no matter how old you are, you're capable of learning quickly and well as long as the "affective filter" is low, i.e., as long as you're motivated and in a low-stress environment, free of the fear of embarrassment or failure.

If I may digress further, that in itself is an interesting topic: is a low-affective-filter language classroom always an ideal language classroom? I'm not entirely convinced that's the case. In my own experience learning French, some of my most mortifying mistakes have also proved to be some of the most effective teaching moments for me. My most embarrassing gaffe came early on, in 1986, when I was a rising high-school senior at my French host family's house over the summer. I wanted to compliment the Ducoulombiers on their excellent raspberry jam, so I asked, "Do the French put preservatives in their jam?" Unfortunately, the word I used was préservatif, which caused some guffawing. You see, un préservatif is a condom. You can talk about un agent conservateur (a preservative) or, more generally, about des produits chimiques (chemicals), but don't mention un préservatif unless you're feeling amorous. As you can tell, there's no way in hell that I'll ever forget how to say "condom" in French.

It's only one example, but it can be multiplied indefinitely, and I think an argument can be made that embarrassment and failure can actually be excellent motivators when learning a foreign language. What worse feeling can there be than in not being understood the way you intended? A language learner with any sort of conscience will do his or her best to avoid such a pitfall. At the same time, it's the teacher's responsibility to strike a balance between not over-coddling the student (who shouldn't be told that s/he's a great success when s/he just failed to perform a simple linguistic task) and not inadvertently abusing the student through teasing or ridicule. There probably should be some fear of failure in the classroom, but only enough to keep students alert and on their toes.

So those are some very scattered thoughts on teaching and learning Korean. Sorry about the rant, but I do feel strongly that it's the height of stupidity to move into a foreign culture and then spend the rest of your time avoiding it. I've got eleven students signed up for my classes thus far: six in the Absolute Beginners class, and five in the Veteran Beginners class. I doubt there'll be more: I've sent out several emails, hoping for replies from a few stragglers, but they haven't nibbled. Our loss, I tell myself. Perhaps these hold-outs will see the light and try to learn some Korean next semester.

Once these classes begin, I'll have to exercise discretion and respect people's privacy by not writing in detail about what happens during the lessons. I'm aware that one or two of my students know about and read my blog, so if any students turn out to be raging assholes, you, Dear Reader, will never be the wiser. (In all seriousness, though, these incoming groups both look to be great. I'm not too worried about how they'll get along with me, but here's hoping they all get along with each other!)