Last night I was finally able to get in touch with my Skype adult tutee Dojun Kim. Some background information on him includes the fact that he's from Busan, South Korea but works in Seoul for a local aircraft carrier company. Despite the fact that he's been studying English since middle school (going on 10 years now) he feels he still lacks the confidence to communicate effectively in English. As he isn't a student his main reason behind seeking tutoring is to be able to communicate more naturally with the foreign flight crews he comes in contact with throughout his job. His second reason was for future travel in the states.
He went on to mention that he does not use English outside of his job so he stressed utilizing the tutoring sessions to build his listening and vocabulary skills. We went on to talk about his previous experience learning English and he shared with me that all of his English teachers were South Korean. This shocked me at first but as I continue to sift through job listings in Japan I came to an understanding. I realized as to why now more than ever the requirements for English teaching are for Native English speakers or for those who were brought up through the 12 year compulsory education in English. It's for authenticity. We started discussing why it might be that Philippines/Taiwan's ability to speak English well triumphs that of South Korea and Japan. I proposed that there are probably more English-speaking communities and accommodations provided for English-speaking foreigners compared to that of Japan's i.e that only has a foreign population of 2%. We then conversed on how the English teaching game is changing, especially with the 2020 Olympics coming up in Japan. He said the same will probably happen for the S.Korea Olympics in 2018. Overall it was a good start and I think for future sessions we will work off different topics/themes where he is able to practice self-expression on them while I guide him through his 'beautiful mistakes' Next projected topic is: Lunar New Year.
No comments:
Post a Comment