Slight tangent day.

While my primary motivations for coming to Korea included food, nature, language, and historical sights (with a side line in music and drama), I also had a slight underlying ulterior motive for planning this trip; the idea of seeing how I felt about the country with an eye to potentially coming here for a year to teach English.   

As I don’t currently have any strong directional plans for life right now (and with the way the UK is panning out at the moment, I am suspecting a lot of people are going to be questioning where to go with their lives…), I have a bit of an open mind as to what the next couple of years might hold.

Here in Korea, if you are from a native speaking English country, hold a bachelor’s degree (in any subject, no matter how far-fetched it may be), and have a 100 hour TEFL certificate; you are more than welcome to apply to teach English in this country. We won’t go into the specifics, but generally speaking, if you wish to work in this country or spend any length of time here but have no special skills and are not married to a Korean; teaching is basically your only option to stay.

There are two main routes that people take to make that happen – teaching in a public school through the government-run EPIK program, or teaching in an after-school academy known as a hagwon. If you do enough research you will hear positive and negative stories about both. Personally, I am really on the fence about the whole idea; teaching English as a subject has never really appealed to me, but potentially living in another country and culture for a year might be pretty darn interesting and a good life experience.

Therefore, when Andrew (English teacher chap) offered me the opportunity to go and observe a hagwon class, I jumped at the chance. Here was the ability to see for myself exactly what teaching in this environment might possibly be like.

Like all hagwons, the one I visited is privately run and parents pay for their children to attend lessons in addition to their regular school classes, sometimes these lessons run until late at night (up to about 9pm). The academy teaches children of varying ages and levels. It is also worth mentioning that while this is an English language hagwon, you can find these types of schools for many different disciplines; for example, I have seen music and sport ones in the area where I have been living.

The academy I visit is in a very non-descript office type building and the floor that it is on contains about 6 or 7 classrooms (from what I saw) and a tiny break room for the teachers. Each classroom is tiny. TINY. There seemed on average about 10 individual desks in each, the desks are just about big enough to open an A4 text book and have a pencil case on it. Each desk currently has a wobbly Perspex surround on it due to COVID, but there’s certainly no way to space the kids out any more than about an arm’s reach away (they are all wearing masks as well). There is a camera in the room filming and someone watching the camera at all times.

The lesson I saw was for a lower/earlier level of English, I think the children were about 7 or 8 years old. The lessons taught here are prescribed with no deviation from the material. The kids have a set textbook/homework book to follow and the lesson has a standard format each time. I don’t really want to say this but I will, taking in to account only the one 40-minute lesson that I saw, practically a trained monkey could teach this material. This, in my opinion and experience, is not teaching. This is nothing more than reading and repetition of material on both the part of the teacher and student.

I dislike saying this because it takes away from both the person standing at the front of the class and those sitting there. This is no reflection on the individuals themselves, but totally on the system that is being used. The talent and experience of the teacher may far and away exceed what they are being asked to deliver, and the students I saw appeared to have a grasp and use of the English language separate to the type of lesson they were being provided.

For those interested, the format of the lesson (timed at every stage by the teacher to stay on track and complete on time – one class immediately after the next) went like this:

Return of test from previous lesson – if it was a perfect score they get an extra note on it which the kids seemed happy with. Homework books are also checked at the same time tests are returned.

Immediate 3 minute test on previous lesson content (roughly 5-10 questions I think, no books allowed, had to be in their bags, timer on screen and no leniency) – test collected immediately and this is marked by the academy staff, not the teacher.

Start of lesson – introduce about 4 or 5 words of new vocabulary very quickly.

Move on to a listen and repeat section – there is an American audio clip of a short sentence and when it’s over (literally with no pause for breath and no repeat of it) the teacher is clapping and this signals for the students to repeat what they’ve just heard. There’s about 3 or 4 of these.

Bit of a question session as the lesson moves on, trying to get the children to identify certain sections of the sentence as in ‘is this word a who, what, where etc.?’ but to be honest most of the time the teacher is pointing to the answer and doesn’t actually give the child time to think for themselves.

There is also a lot of asking the child to read something either from their book or the screen and if they stumble on a word the teacher again immediately prompts with the beginning sounds of the word, basically talking over the child.

It seems as while all this is going on the kids are also expected to be writing down all of the sentences on the board and completing questions in their books – but there doesn’t seem to be a dedicated time for this.

Literally the lesson screeches to a halt (on time!) as the bell rings signalling the end.

Overall, I can’t possibly see how the kids took anything away from the lesson. The lesson subject itself (about what foods to eat if you don’t want to end up wearing glasses) seemed extremely random and almost nonsensical. There was no individual thought on the child’s part. Everything they were asked to do seemed rushed. There were no opportunities to ask questions, nor were they asked if they understood what was being asked of them. The children did not interact at all. When people have previously noted about the Korean education system of rote learning, I guess this would be a good example of it in an academy.

Could I do this job? Absolutely.

Would I enjoy it? Absolutely not.

Having said that, I am also reminding myself that I spoke with Evie who has a very different experience being in a public school, one which she enjoys. Andrew’s experience seems to be a little more just getting through the day and accepting it.

I hope to have the chance to speak with more people along my road trip. I doubt I would get the chance to see an EPIK school lesson, but that would really help seal the deal as to whether I’d want to sign my life away for a year.

And with that, tangent over.

And to say my day ended with this…

In case you are ready to take a dip into the k-drama world, Kyungsoo’s new drama ‘Bad Prosecutor’ will be out on 5^th October and should be showing worldwide on Netfilx.

Go on, you know you want to.