I came across these videos at the S'pore blog iZ Reloaded. This is not quite how my colleagues and I taught English in Korea, but the videos do bring back a sense of nostalgia for me. Actually, the one thing that strikes me about the young women in these videos is just how badly they all speak English. When I was in Korea, most of my students were college-age, and while a few had poor speaking skills, most did not. Moreover, in the late 90s, the Korean government had required the primary schools to begin teaching English to the children at an earlier age. There was one time while I was visiting a beach in Busan when I ran into a group of kids who were able to maintain a conversation with me for about 45 minutes. Considering that these kids were about 10 years old at the time (and that most Korean kids at that age could only speak a sentence or two in English before they used up all their vocabulary), I was quite impressed. The Japanese girls in these videos are nowhere near the level of those Korean kids. Run times: 9:42 and 9:59.
2 comments:
When I was working in Korea, it was common for college students to come up to me wanting to have a conversation just to practice speaking English. A pretty easy way to meet new people...
Oh yeah, that was very much the case when I was there too. College students and primary students. Most of the kids couldn't get past "Hello" and "How are you?" But at least they tried. The college coeds were willing to go out on dates (because it was another chance to practice their English), even though they weren't interested in getting into a relationship (for the most part).
Korea was an awesome experience for me; I still miss it, even though I haven't been there in over 4 years.
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