Rodney Tyson
Daejin University,
English Department
Sookmyung Women's University-TESOL Open House, November 22, 1999
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to speak here tonight about some of the problems I've had teaching in Korea, and to offer some suggestions for dealing with those problems. I thought, "Great! Now there's a topic I can talk about for hours and hours and hours." But don't worry. Fortunately, for all of you, I've only been given 15 minutes. So I'm not going to talk for hours and hours right now. Since my experience has involved teaching for a total of eleven years at three different Korean universities, let me just brainstorm for a few minutes about that....
First, there are the linguistic problems: pronunciation ("rice," not "lice"); teaching the grammar, vocabulary, and pragmatic aspects of a language so different from the students' native language; of course, there's Konglish; and so on. There are also the annoying little problems caused by Korean university students themselves: students who are reluctant to talk in class; students who don't like required English classes; students who want to sleep in class; students who bring their cell phones to class; students whose buses always seem to be late; classes that are suddenly cancelled due to MT, class trips, or a thousand other reasons; freshmen who don't want to study because they're burned out from studying too hard in high school; seniors who don't want to study because they're too busy looking for a job; and of course, students who don't want to study just because "It's Friday afternoon." How to deal with these problems? Well, simple really, though definitely not easy. First, learn to be a teacher--through training in a program like the SMU-TESOL Program, for instance--and then continue learning for the rest of your career. These are just problems teachers have to deal with on a daily basis. So get used to them.
Second, there are other more serious problems I've faced over the years caused by university administrations and faculty: poor facilities and planning (classrooms that were freezing in winter and boiling in summer, classrooms with seats that couldn't be moved for pair and group work, expensive language labs that were kept locked most of the time because no one knew how to use the equipment); being required to teach too many different classes, too many hours per week; large classes (at my first university, I regularly taught conversation classes with more than 50 students each, and I once had a composition class with more than 80). More importantly, there's the widespread and ridiculous belief among some administrators and faculty members that native English-speaking teachers should only teach speaking and serve as pronunciation models, while all of the "important" classes students take should be taught entirely in Korean (the result is that even students who major in English often end up spending most of their time listening to lectures about English and writing about English in Korean, so that they're actually required to use English for only a few hours a week--most often in "conversation" classes that meet only once or twice a week and review over and over again such fascinating and useful topics as greetings, talking about favorite foods, or giving directions); and finally, there's the equally widespread and ridiculous belief that Korean teachers can not teach language--but again, only about language in Korean.
Whenever I hear this last opinion expressed, I'm always reminded of my good friend Mohammed who had the desk next to mine when I taught ESL at the University of Arizona. Although Mohammed was from Syria, had lived in the United States for only a couple of years, and spoke English with a distinct Arabic/British accent, he was easily one of the best and most enthusiastic English teachers I've ever met, and extremely popular with students from all over the world. So there is no way to convince me that Korean teachers can't teach just as well as Mohammed with training, experience, and the right attitude. Anyway, I'm happy to see that some of these problems, at least, are starting to solve themselves as Korea continues to develop and internationalize, and especially, as Koreans have started to demand better language programs and better trained language teachers--like the people here tonight--teachers who know how to teach and are dedicated to doing it right.
Third, I'd like to point out one of the most serious problems that I've noticed over the years that I've taught in Korean universities. That's the problem of low expectations. Unfortunately, many teachers I've worked with--both native English-speakers and Koreans--simply seem to believe, secretly at least, that Korean students just can't learn English. I vividly remember a conversation I had with the head of the English Department at a university where I was teaching many years ago. She advised me just to focus on helping students to write correct sentences in my composition classes, since none of the students would ever need more than that in their future jobs. Well, I know one of those students she was talking about then is an English professor now, and another is a doctoral student in Applied Linguistics at a university in the United States right now. I'm really glad I didn't take her advice--and I'm pretty sure those former students are, too.
When I started my present job, I was told by one professor, "Our university is only a few years old, so don't expect much from our students. They try hard, but they don't speak or write very well in English." When three of those students had their English essays published in The Korea Herald and The Korea Times at the end of the first semester, my nickname in the department temporarily became "Miracle Worker." Of course, I didn't work any miracles. I just let the students know that I expected a lot from them and gave them a reasonable amount of help in achieving it. They were responsible for the "miracle." One of the most important things I've learned from my years of teaching, then, is this: If teachers have high expectations for their students, the students will nearly always live up to those expectations and excel. If teachers have low expectations, the students will often sink to the level of those expectations. In my experience, Korean university students--whether they are attending one of the most prestigious universities or not--tend to be brilliant, well-prepared, and anxious to learn. If they're not learning, in many cases at least, it's not a problem with the students, but with the teachers and how they're being taught.
So what can we do to teach better? How can we become better teachers? I'd like to give just a few suggestions based on advice from speakers I've heard at several conferences I've attended during the past couple of years. First, I hope some of you heard Penny Ur's plenary address at the PAC2 Conference last month. She spoke about the need for teachers to know more than just techniques or activities. I would add that English teachers also need to know more than just the language, or about the language. Good teachers know about theory, and they get that from training programs like this one. We need teachers who are well-trained first, people who are willing to take the time and make the effort to learn the basics--that is, the theories and general principles that can be adapted to their own situations.
But it doesn't stop there, of course. At this year's Thailand TESOL Conference, both Jodi Crandall and H. Douglas Brown chose to speak about the value of collaboration in becoming better teachers. Jodi Crandall reminded us that "We learn to teach by teaching," but also stressed that new teachers, especially, can and should benefit greatly from collaborating with more experienced teachers. H. Douglas Brown suggested, correctly I think, that as we become more experienced English teachers, we can learn a great deal from "our own collaboration with each other." We're lucky nowadays to have better and easier ways to do that than when I first started teaching in Korea. For example, we can now continue to learn to be better teachers through training programs like this one or through distance learning, and we can share ideas with other teachers in organizations like Korea TESOL, or even publish our ideas in places like The English Connection or The Korea TESOL Journal.
Finally, as Jack Richards has pointed out in a number of books and presentations, it's also not enough just to know the theories and principles and to gain experience. Good teachers also need to develop "their own internal principles" based on their training and experience, and then to "continuously reflect on and evaluate the principles they teach from." To be a good teacher, then, requires a lifetime of dedication to training, experience, and reflection.
So what is it about teaching that's so attractive to people like you and me? Maybe the high salary? The fame? The glamour? Yeah, sure.... I think it has more to do with what someone said more than a hundred years ago: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." Wow! "A teacher affects eternity." We've decided to become teachers because we want to have a positive influence on the lives of our students and on the future. If we really want to do that, our life's work is already cut out for us. We need to get the proper training, work together to become the best teachers we can be, and constantly reflect on what we're doing in the classroom in order to do it better and better.
Thank you for listening.
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