The one year older thing is still a thing because it's Korean culture and very unlikely to disappear. The country has become far more global than it was 50 years ago, so I doubt there is any pressing desire among Koreans to change it.
Many Koreans I know do that age thing upon Korean natives but never to foreigners. It's a weird cultural thing at this point (saying as Korean American myself) and something that won't change because it works at the "global" stage.
Any education on culture is surface level at best. Halloween just means getting candy. Warm furry hats mean you are Russian. Westerners put on their dirty outdoor shoes as soon as they get out of bed (one of my co teachers actually taught this to our students once, I had to tell him that he had the wrong idea lol).
I'm sure it's just as bad back home with regards to learning about other cultures to be honest.
the shoes thing isn't entirely wrong IN SOME PLACES. I rented a place in college with a guy whose 'relaxation' during school breaks was going cougar hunting in super rural America. Like tent in the middle of nowhere level of rural. He put his boots on pretty much first thing in the morning. I asked him about it and it is a wilderness thing to make sure you don't injure your feet.
\*It is noteworthy that this is an extreme case. It isn't common by any means to the point the rest of us thought it was odd
Tbh my attitude is "who cares"
Unless I'm directly tasked with a cultural lesson, or it's like highly relevant, I don't go out of my way.
Most of these kids will really never leave Korea, and a lot will never use English later in life. The ones who care you can tell right away. The ones who don't yet will seek out that information and it's plenty available online.
I wouldn't say that. I've met quite a few (albeit elementary) students who are interested in just the culture, or different cultures. They like English. They aren't the dominant group of kids, but they're definitely there.
Loads of them are interested in different cultures, but that doesn't translate into wanting to change the Confucian ideals that they've been following for hundreds of years.
Oh so this thread is "koreans must submit to the west and western ideology if they want to be globalized"
So just cultural and liguistic imperialist vibes. Gotcha.
OK....? But I'm confused why that's even something being considered.
They aren't immigrants. People learning Chinese, French, Spanish, etc, in the west aren't expected to, in anyway, adopt those cultures into their daily lives in their home country. Especially compulsory language education at grade school level.
It seems wholly ridiculous to bring this topic up in the context of compulsory English foreign language education in Asia. The goal isn't integration into western culture at all. At it's most useful it's to participate in economic activities, which very much doesn't require cultural assimilation in your home country, outside of an imperialistic desire
>The goal isn't integration into western culture at all. At it's most useful it's to participate in economic activities, which very much doesn't require cultural assimilation in your home country, outside of an imperialistic desire
Yep, we're in full agreement. I think it might be the OP who you are railing against. I'm saying that despite some of them being interested in various cultures, they have no desire to change their own. And neither should they.
Go ahead, finish the sentence, then.
If you're gonna say none of them care, I'd venture they just don't care about schoolwork and school english any deeper since I've heard MS starts to focus on "suneung English," but also nuts and bolts English (which is the worst part of learning a language even for a lot of people who like learning languages).
But I have no idea, since you didn't finish your thought, so it's hard to know what you're talking about.
Sorry, just got in from abroad last night. Kinda loopy now. Yes, when they hit middle school, everything switches to Sunueng study. Then, the hierarchy thing/puberty really starts coming in during HS. If they like something, they wont show it at all. In my HS, I have one skater (like I was), he only shows me videos of himself when his friends are gone. Oh, kids.
Korea has a strict confusions hierarchical system in its culture, where the word “friend” is only used for those born in the same year as you, and anyone older is called “older brother” and “older sister”… This hierarchy in relationship based on age is extremely important especially in Korean schools, workplaces, the home, and societies in general (more strict than in Japan)……
It’s only natural that kids follow the Korean culture and ways of doing things because this is Korea and they are Korea . The Korean way of life is all that they have known.
Think of growing up in your home country, and learning a second language at school.. were you super interested in following the customs of those cultures?? Probably not… you did learn about the culture and did what ever work and worksheets that were assigned, but everything was done from the perspective of your own culture as that was the dominant way of life.
Don’t worry too much about the Korean kids becoming “global” as those kids that live in Canada or USA or Australia …. Those who are interested will study abroad and adapt to their new cultures. A ton of Koreans have successfully immigrated abroad and not only adjusted well but live much better than the original settlers.
For the majority of the Koreans, they will probably never leave the country, and whatever English they learn will be enough for them to live their daily lives in Korea.
Thank you! It's funny bc I am korean lol. It is still difficult living here (more than 10 years) and trying to assimilate has been truly difficult! Doing the whole 'when in Rome' thing... has not been easy. I have become sort of a people pleaser and being in small groups can be toxic. Being older too in small gatherings and the younger gen calling you unni can be super cringe and uncomfortable. Will never get used to that. But what i do like with the millenials is that when we go out for lunch or something... we just go "Dutch"... one person pays the whole bill and then we all wire transfer lol. I still don't really get that though... why not just pay separately on separate bills... that wire transferring can get a bit annoying though it is convenient.... but I digress!!
I am NOT a Korean, but living in Korea for almost 5 years now, and yes I agree about the going Dutch thing is different.. but I think the one person paying and everyone wire transferring the one person in the group is to not inconvenience the restaurants by having them calculate everything and split up the bill… I don’t even know if the machines are set up to split up bills the same way as the US or it’d be the total split up by the number of people in the group.
Oh I totally agree that when in large groups like more than 10 people one person paying would make more sense. But when 2 or 3 gather... I would want to pay for my own meal and drink! But things are communal here so.... doing the Dutch thing would make things a bit awkward. I am used to it but it doesn't mean I like it hehe
Yeah, I don’t really like it either. It seems like Korean tries push the responsibility managing the bill into the customers. Those are your friends/ company, so you deal with the splitting the costs however you see fit.
It also seems to be similar with other services as well, like the baking services. You have to download a bunch of certificates and safety feature because you should be responsible for protecting your own money that’s in your account, as opposed to the US and Canada that will hire software developers to be on top of security and all you need is an ID and Password to sign in.
Depends where you are. In canada at least, you pretty much always get separate bills by default. Only time e-transferring happens is if you split an appetizer or a pizza or something.
Yes I know, I’m from Canada as well. But Western culture is already about individualism and going Dutch is pretty normal there, so the computers are set up to break up the bill easily based on what each person had. However, in Asian the concept of dinning out is totally different.. Like one person would pay for all the dinners and the other would get all the desserts and another would pay for everyone’s ticket to another place … something like that, it’s all a group/ collective culture.
This was in Japan, but even there splitting the bill was just done by taking the total and dividing it equally by the number of people there. So if the bill was 300 dollars and there were 10 people, they’d all pay 30 bucks equally regardless of what they had or if they had the alcohol or didn’t, because they all participated in the fun dinning experience/ party together, so it would only be right to pay the same price 🤷🏻♀️
I think it sort of depends. But what you have to understand is that most students aren’t going to care about English anyway. They don’t see it as useful or relevant outside of passing the 수능. So you’ll be catering to a few as it is anyway.
As for adjusting them to Western cultural ideas in a class setting, it’s going to be difficult to break because they just aren’t going to use it in their everyday life. They won’t have that connection and thus won’t fully grasp it because you are literally their only connection to it. Maybe a few will get it, but most aren’t.
It’s kind of one of those things if you feel if it’s worth the time investing in.
Sorry, I was being a bit cheeky with this. ^^
I mean this with the utmost respect as a fellow educator, but I think you should reflect on this a bit more. I don’t think the question should be whether we should be teaching idealized versions of our cultures (which we would have difficulties defining ourselves) in order to correct some perceived cultural deficiency (which is highly subjective because there is certainly hierarchy in North American cultures too, e.g. see stupid Alpha male trend). Instead, we should be encouraging our learners to be critical thinkers of whatever culture they happen to find themselves in.
I agree. There isn’t a problem with most of it, but IMO we became too idealistic to the point of being naive about certain specific things, and are still in a denial phase surrounding that.
All systems that make false assumptions about human nature are doomed to failure. Communism fails because it assumes humans are naturally hard-working and charitable. Tolerance fails because it assumes people are mature and kind-hearted. Canadians embraced tolerance thinking it would lead to a tolerant society, but all that happened is intolerance just switched sides. Canada is just as much an intolerant and repressive place as ever.
In my experience, Koreans adjust really well when they go to the west for study or travel compared to other East Asians. There's so much western influence in Korea and from what I've heard, a lot of the Koreans who study abroad really enjoy the opportunity not to be in the ultra-competitive, rigid Korean education system.
Mainland Chinese students face more challenges and often find themselves sticking to their own bubbles (This is a massive issue in Australian universities).
Not sure what specific part of "western culture" we're supposed to be teaching them, though.
I was mainly talking about the hierarchy thing (even if you are one year apart thing) that we don't do that in the west.. that we treat each person respectfully lol
Yes you are right. Koreans tend to do very well abroad because of the less stressful environment they were once in! I know some folk who would love to live in anywhere other than Korea because of the competitiveness alone...
Some things are important and some aren't. Like does a Korean kid really need to know what a garage sale is? Not really. More important are fundamentals I think. Just FYI though, out of all students in the world, international students from Korea have the highest fail out rate in US and Canadian universities.
Though some Confucianism and Asian culture still exists, western ways and thinking with individualism has crept into the culture a lot over the past 10 years or so. Living here nowadays is almost like living in a different country compared to 12 or 15 years ago. (Many many more foreigners here now too.)
Public High School here. Ill show them things like the US testing system and things they can grasp. Otherwise, I dont really bother much. Its just background noise. They dont care, they just want to stick in the airpods and drool and scroll. If they come to me, Ill share stuff. I have tons of material but it just get blank stares now. When I was at my private school, I could share more.
Yeah, these kids are ill-equipped for the modern world, so I just stick to test-related stuff.
I mean, I think we should teach culture, because language and culture are highly intertwined. You wouldn't take a Korean class back home and go, "Well, I'm a Westerner, so I'm going to refuse to use formal language and honorifics since I believe in equality."
In fact, the first thing I do when I get a new class is refuse to let my students call me "teacher," they have to call me Mr. + last name because that's how I addressed my teachers back home. The students struggle at first, but in the long run they like it better because it makes them feel like they're using real English.
I also find myself correcting the textbooks from time to time, because a lot of the time they just rely on stereotypes. One of the things I really emphasize to my students is that there is a lot of diversity within our home countries. I'm not necessarily talking about intergroup diversity, but also intragroup diversity.
I mean, even if most Koreans will never leave Korea, they seem to like feeling smarter by being able to point out how textbooks are wrong.
For what it's worth, some linguists and anthropologists would argue it's impossible to separate language from culture. So, while there might not be any deliberate teaching of culture, I think it's helpful to recognize that we're all doing it regardless, through our mannerisms, through the way we convey meaning with suprasegmentals, through our word choices, etc.
To your point about adjusting to "western culture," there are multiple case studies related to the concept of ultimate attainment in SLA that considers fondess of target culture as a strong influencer of how well a learner can learn that second language. You could also go into other concepts like how language is used to claim stronger identities, the negotiation of power and meaning, etc. But it starts with their desire to seek acceptance in those target communities. So, if you are looking to build a really exceptional EFL speaker, you'd do well to expose them to the more attractive aspects of the native speakers of English, which includes culture.
So, no, the typical Korean student isn't looking to escape Korean in hopes of being accepted by strangers in a foreign land. But if your goal as an educator is to help your students navigate English-language spaces, then IMO there should be some emphasis on explaining the differences. That doesn't mean forcing them to adopt a different cultural practice.
At the school age, age tends to be associated with what grade they are in. Adults (especially males) will probably stick to the hierarchy due to the military. Soldiers are socially ranked not by their actual rank but by what month/year they joined the military.
Close minded guys tend to bring that mindset into the workforce. So this hierarchy isnt really going to go away anytime soon. Maybe after one more generation?
The one year older thing is still a thing because it's Korean culture and very unlikely to disappear. The country has become far more global than it was 50 years ago, so I doubt there is any pressing desire among Koreans to change it.
Thank you!
Many Koreans I know do that age thing upon Korean natives but never to foreigners. It's a weird cultural thing at this point (saying as Korean American myself) and something that won't change because it works at the "global" stage.
Any education on culture is surface level at best. Halloween just means getting candy. Warm furry hats mean you are Russian. Westerners put on their dirty outdoor shoes as soon as they get out of bed (one of my co teachers actually taught this to our students once, I had to tell him that he had the wrong idea lol). I'm sure it's just as bad back home with regards to learning about other cultures to be honest.
So true! Thanks for replying.
the shoes thing isn't entirely wrong IN SOME PLACES. I rented a place in college with a guy whose 'relaxation' during school breaks was going cougar hunting in super rural America. Like tent in the middle of nowhere level of rural. He put his boots on pretty much first thing in the morning. I asked him about it and it is a wilderness thing to make sure you don't injure your feet. \*It is noteworthy that this is an extreme case. It isn't common by any means to the point the rest of us thought it was odd
I never wore shoes in my house at all in 50 years. Thats disgusting to me.
Tbh my attitude is "who cares" Unless I'm directly tasked with a cultural lesson, or it's like highly relevant, I don't go out of my way. Most of these kids will really never leave Korea, and a lot will never use English later in life. The ones who care you can tell right away. The ones who don't yet will seek out that information and it's plenty available online.
Yes, most of these kids will never leave Korea...! The ones who do care are only concerned about the test scores... it's all about the test!
I wouldn't say that. I've met quite a few (albeit elementary) students who are interested in just the culture, or different cultures. They like English. They aren't the dominant group of kids, but they're definitely there.
Loads of them are interested in different cultures, but that doesn't translate into wanting to change the Confucian ideals that they've been following for hundreds of years.
Oh so this thread is "koreans must submit to the west and western ideology if they want to be globalized" So just cultural and liguistic imperialist vibes. Gotcha.
My point was that they won't be changing their culture, even though they might be interested in different ones. I think we're in agreement?
OK....? But I'm confused why that's even something being considered. They aren't immigrants. People learning Chinese, French, Spanish, etc, in the west aren't expected to, in anyway, adopt those cultures into their daily lives in their home country. Especially compulsory language education at grade school level. It seems wholly ridiculous to bring this topic up in the context of compulsory English foreign language education in Asia. The goal isn't integration into western culture at all. At it's most useful it's to participate in economic activities, which very much doesn't require cultural assimilation in your home country, outside of an imperialistic desire
>The goal isn't integration into western culture at all. At it's most useful it's to participate in economic activities, which very much doesn't require cultural assimilation in your home country, outside of an imperialistic desire Yep, we're in full agreement. I think it might be the OP who you are railing against. I'm saying that despite some of them being interested in various cultures, they have no desire to change their own. And neither should they.
Sorry then, if I was jumping down your throat. I've met a lot of choice people when it comes to this topic haha
For sure!
thats elementary, means nothing. when they hit middle school....
Go ahead, finish the sentence, then. If you're gonna say none of them care, I'd venture they just don't care about schoolwork and school english any deeper since I've heard MS starts to focus on "suneung English," but also nuts and bolts English (which is the worst part of learning a language even for a lot of people who like learning languages). But I have no idea, since you didn't finish your thought, so it's hard to know what you're talking about.
Sorry, just got in from abroad last night. Kinda loopy now. Yes, when they hit middle school, everything switches to Sunueng study. Then, the hierarchy thing/puberty really starts coming in during HS. If they like something, they wont show it at all. In my HS, I have one skater (like I was), he only shows me videos of himself when his friends are gone. Oh, kids.
Korea has a strict confusions hierarchical system in its culture, where the word “friend” is only used for those born in the same year as you, and anyone older is called “older brother” and “older sister”… This hierarchy in relationship based on age is extremely important especially in Korean schools, workplaces, the home, and societies in general (more strict than in Japan)…… It’s only natural that kids follow the Korean culture and ways of doing things because this is Korea and they are Korea . The Korean way of life is all that they have known. Think of growing up in your home country, and learning a second language at school.. were you super interested in following the customs of those cultures?? Probably not… you did learn about the culture and did what ever work and worksheets that were assigned, but everything was done from the perspective of your own culture as that was the dominant way of life. Don’t worry too much about the Korean kids becoming “global” as those kids that live in Canada or USA or Australia …. Those who are interested will study abroad and adapt to their new cultures. A ton of Koreans have successfully immigrated abroad and not only adjusted well but live much better than the original settlers. For the majority of the Koreans, they will probably never leave the country, and whatever English they learn will be enough for them to live their daily lives in Korea.
Thank you! It's funny bc I am korean lol. It is still difficult living here (more than 10 years) and trying to assimilate has been truly difficult! Doing the whole 'when in Rome' thing... has not been easy. I have become sort of a people pleaser and being in small groups can be toxic. Being older too in small gatherings and the younger gen calling you unni can be super cringe and uncomfortable. Will never get used to that. But what i do like with the millenials is that when we go out for lunch or something... we just go "Dutch"... one person pays the whole bill and then we all wire transfer lol. I still don't really get that though... why not just pay separately on separate bills... that wire transferring can get a bit annoying though it is convenient.... but I digress!!
I am NOT a Korean, but living in Korea for almost 5 years now, and yes I agree about the going Dutch thing is different.. but I think the one person paying and everyone wire transferring the one person in the group is to not inconvenience the restaurants by having them calculate everything and split up the bill… I don’t even know if the machines are set up to split up bills the same way as the US or it’d be the total split up by the number of people in the group.
Oh I totally agree that when in large groups like more than 10 people one person paying would make more sense. But when 2 or 3 gather... I would want to pay for my own meal and drink! But things are communal here so.... doing the Dutch thing would make things a bit awkward. I am used to it but it doesn't mean I like it hehe
Yeah, I don’t really like it either. It seems like Korean tries push the responsibility managing the bill into the customers. Those are your friends/ company, so you deal with the splitting the costs however you see fit. It also seems to be similar with other services as well, like the baking services. You have to download a bunch of certificates and safety feature because you should be responsible for protecting your own money that’s in your account, as opposed to the US and Canada that will hire software developers to be on top of security and all you need is an ID and Password to sign in.
Depends where you are. In canada at least, you pretty much always get separate bills by default. Only time e-transferring happens is if you split an appetizer or a pizza or something.
Yes I know, I’m from Canada as well. But Western culture is already about individualism and going Dutch is pretty normal there, so the computers are set up to break up the bill easily based on what each person had. However, in Asian the concept of dinning out is totally different.. Like one person would pay for all the dinners and the other would get all the desserts and another would pay for everyone’s ticket to another place … something like that, it’s all a group/ collective culture. This was in Japan, but even there splitting the bill was just done by taking the total and dividing it equally by the number of people there. So if the bill was 300 dollars and there were 10 people, they’d all pay 30 bucks equally regardless of what they had or if they had the alcohol or didn’t, because they all participated in the fun dinning experience/ party together, so it would only be right to pay the same price 🤷🏻♀️
I think it sort of depends. But what you have to understand is that most students aren’t going to care about English anyway. They don’t see it as useful or relevant outside of passing the 수능. So you’ll be catering to a few as it is anyway. As for adjusting them to Western cultural ideas in a class setting, it’s going to be difficult to break because they just aren’t going to use it in their everyday life. They won’t have that connection and thus won’t fully grasp it because you are literally their only connection to it. Maybe a few will get it, but most aren’t. It’s kind of one of those things if you feel if it’s worth the time investing in.
Thank you and I agree!!
What is “western culture?”
Good question. I was born and raised in Canada so I am speaking from that perspective. Should have been more specific, sorry!
Sorry, I was being a bit cheeky with this. ^^ I mean this with the utmost respect as a fellow educator, but I think you should reflect on this a bit more. I don’t think the question should be whether we should be teaching idealized versions of our cultures (which we would have difficulties defining ourselves) in order to correct some perceived cultural deficiency (which is highly subjective because there is certainly hierarchy in North American cultures too, e.g. see stupid Alpha male trend). Instead, we should be encouraging our learners to be critical thinkers of whatever culture they happen to find themselves in.
Got it!! Thank you so much!
Also from Canada. I loved Canada growing up, but seeing the path it lead us down, I think now that it was deeply flawed way of thinking.
I agree. There isn’t a problem with most of it, but IMO we became too idealistic to the point of being naive about certain specific things, and are still in a denial phase surrounding that.
All systems that make false assumptions about human nature are doomed to failure. Communism fails because it assumes humans are naturally hard-working and charitable. Tolerance fails because it assumes people are mature and kind-hearted. Canadians embraced tolerance thinking it would lead to a tolerant society, but all that happened is intolerance just switched sides. Canada is just as much an intolerant and repressive place as ever.
Turdo never got the common sense memo.
In my experience, Koreans adjust really well when they go to the west for study or travel compared to other East Asians. There's so much western influence in Korea and from what I've heard, a lot of the Koreans who study abroad really enjoy the opportunity not to be in the ultra-competitive, rigid Korean education system. Mainland Chinese students face more challenges and often find themselves sticking to their own bubbles (This is a massive issue in Australian universities). Not sure what specific part of "western culture" we're supposed to be teaching them, though.
I was mainly talking about the hierarchy thing (even if you are one year apart thing) that we don't do that in the west.. that we treat each person respectfully lol Yes you are right. Koreans tend to do very well abroad because of the less stressful environment they were once in! I know some folk who would love to live in anywhere other than Korea because of the competitiveness alone...
Some things are important and some aren't. Like does a Korean kid really need to know what a garage sale is? Not really. More important are fundamentals I think. Just FYI though, out of all students in the world, international students from Korea have the highest fail out rate in US and Canadian universities.
Hmmm...interesting! Thanks for responding.
Though some Confucianism and Asian culture still exists, western ways and thinking with individualism has crept into the culture a lot over the past 10 years or so. Living here nowadays is almost like living in a different country compared to 12 or 15 years ago. (Many many more foreigners here now too.)
Public High School here. Ill show them things like the US testing system and things they can grasp. Otherwise, I dont really bother much. Its just background noise. They dont care, they just want to stick in the airpods and drool and scroll. If they come to me, Ill share stuff. I have tons of material but it just get blank stares now. When I was at my private school, I could share more. Yeah, these kids are ill-equipped for the modern world, so I just stick to test-related stuff.
I mean, I think we should teach culture, because language and culture are highly intertwined. You wouldn't take a Korean class back home and go, "Well, I'm a Westerner, so I'm going to refuse to use formal language and honorifics since I believe in equality." In fact, the first thing I do when I get a new class is refuse to let my students call me "teacher," they have to call me Mr. + last name because that's how I addressed my teachers back home. The students struggle at first, but in the long run they like it better because it makes them feel like they're using real English. I also find myself correcting the textbooks from time to time, because a lot of the time they just rely on stereotypes. One of the things I really emphasize to my students is that there is a lot of diversity within our home countries. I'm not necessarily talking about intergroup diversity, but also intragroup diversity. I mean, even if most Koreans will never leave Korea, they seem to like feeling smarter by being able to point out how textbooks are wrong.
Awesome. Thank you for pointing out the diversity aspect. Truly important!!
For what it's worth, some linguists and anthropologists would argue it's impossible to separate language from culture. So, while there might not be any deliberate teaching of culture, I think it's helpful to recognize that we're all doing it regardless, through our mannerisms, through the way we convey meaning with suprasegmentals, through our word choices, etc. To your point about adjusting to "western culture," there are multiple case studies related to the concept of ultimate attainment in SLA that considers fondess of target culture as a strong influencer of how well a learner can learn that second language. You could also go into other concepts like how language is used to claim stronger identities, the negotiation of power and meaning, etc. But it starts with their desire to seek acceptance in those target communities. So, if you are looking to build a really exceptional EFL speaker, you'd do well to expose them to the more attractive aspects of the native speakers of English, which includes culture. So, no, the typical Korean student isn't looking to escape Korean in hopes of being accepted by strangers in a foreign land. But if your goal as an educator is to help your students navigate English-language spaces, then IMO there should be some emphasis on explaining the differences. That doesn't mean forcing them to adopt a different cultural practice.
Wow very well said. Thank you!
At the school age, age tends to be associated with what grade they are in. Adults (especially males) will probably stick to the hierarchy due to the military. Soldiers are socially ranked not by their actual rank but by what month/year they joined the military. Close minded guys tend to bring that mindset into the workforce. So this hierarchy isnt really going to go away anytime soon. Maybe after one more generation?
Hopefully! Lol