Teaching English Abroad

[Josquius]

It's not really coming along well, most teachers, even one's who've been here a while have awful Korean. There's not much incentive when you know you're going back home eventually.

Weird, that's kinda the opposite of my attitude.
I think "I'm in Sweden for two years. It'll look bad at home if I DON'T know it".
With English speakers having such a bad reputation for languages I really feel I must try my harest to learn everything that appears.

[Jaron]

It's not really coming along well, most teachers, even one's who've been here a while have awful Korean. There's not much incentive when you know you're going back home eventually.

Weird, that's kinda the opposite of my attitude.
I think "I'm in Sweden for two years. It'll look bad at home if I DON'T know it".
With English speakers having such a bad reputation for languages I really feel I must try my harest to learn everything that appears.

Trust me, you can only damage the reputation of English speakers around the world.

"Candy..Sweet..whats the difference, ja?"

[jimmy olsen]

Welcome to the wonders of K-Pop. Few videos can better epitomize the true spirit of K-Pop than this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElW_V6SyfE8

[HisMajestyBOB]

Not enough girls dancing around in short skirts

Watch this instead. I'm sure you heard it already in the store
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7mPqycQ0tQ

(although it is almost a year old now, so maybe not)

[Tamas]

How's your Korean coming along?
Being in a country where you've no choice but to speak the language must be odd...but good for learning.

It's not really coming along well, most teachers, even one's who've been here a while have awful Korean. There's not much incentive when you know you're going back home eventually.

You lazy Yank SOB If you wanted you could learn the language in a few months, given that you live in some small native town. It could prove to be very useful in your future that you speak some obscure language well (there are big Korean companies out there, for example) But noooo you already speak Teh Language, why bother?

[Barrister]

But noooo you already speak Teh Language, why bother?

Indeed.  Why bother?  After all we have you damn Magyars convinced to learn our language, why should we bother learning anything other than Mother English? 

[DisturbedPervert]

If you wanted you could learn the language in a few months, given that you live in some small native town.

The best way for him to learn the language would be to get a Korean girlfriend.

Although then he runs the risk of speaking girly Korean.

[Pat]

It's not really coming along well, most teachers, even one's who've been here a while have awful Korean. There's not much incentive when you know you're going back home eventually.

Weird, that's kinda the opposite of my attitude.
I think "I'm in Sweden for two years. It'll look bad at home if I DON'T know it".
With English speakers having such a bad reputation for languages I really feel I must try my harest to learn everything that appears.

How's the Swedish coming along?

[jimmy olsen]

Not enough girls dancing around in short skirts

Watch this instead. I'm sure you heard it already in the store
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7mPqycQ0tQ

(although it is almost a year old now, so maybe not)

Yeah, they still play that in the music video line up sometimes. 

[Duque de Bragança]

We used to have dictation in (native German) language class. Main focus (besides spelling) was interpunctuation and proper capitalization.

I found it much harder in French. Understanding from context whether it would be en, ans, on (all sounding the same to me) etc. was pretty hard for me.

La dictée is still a classic in France. Stupid teenagers fed on SMS and keske get bad marks but they deserve it.
En and ans sound the same but not on Same thing with brun and brin except in regional varieties.
I was good at it so I am biased

[Josquius]

How's the Swedish coming along?

Not as good as I'd like but...so so considering so much is against me.
I suck at languages, don't know other languages (easier to learn another foreign language once you know one), I'm a native English speaker (damn Germans think they're smart when they have it so easy...), the only time I HAVE to speak it is with Iranians and the rare little old lady, I have to devote the learning part of my brain to my studies and, most importantly I think, the university has a stupid system whereby they give Swedish class priority to exchange students and hence out of 3 semesters I've only had Swedish classes one semseter.
Its just all a case of trying to bulk up my vocabulary with all those Germanic and Scandinavian exclusive words.

La dictée is still a classic in France. Stupid teenages fed on SMS and keske get bad marks but they deserve it.
En and ans sound the same but not on Same thing with brun and brin except in regional varieties.
I was good at it so I am biased

Ack, I hate that stuff. Sure to an extent its good to learn queen's English but teachers take it way too far and try to utterly obliterate regionalism.

[Grey Fox]

La dictée is still a classic in France. Stupid teenages fed on SMS and keske get bad marks but they deserve it.
En and ans sound the same but not on Same thing with brun and brin except in regional varieties.
I was good at it so I am biased

Why can't french evolve, english has?

[Duque de Bragança]

La dictée is still a classic in France. Stupid teenages fed on SMS and keske get bad marks but they deserve it.
En and ans sound the same but not on Same thing with brun and brin except in regional varieties.
I was good at it so I am biased

Why can't French evolve, English has?

Fixed it for you You should evolve too

[Grey Fox]

Proving my point, thank you.

[jimmy olsen]

Veddy intresting.

http://newledger.com/2009/12/north-koreas-ajumma-rebellion/

North Korea's Ajumma Rebellion
by Joshua Stanton

A sort of tea party movement may be breaking out today in the least likely of all places.

The unseen pillars of Korean society are its ajummas. "Ajumma" — literally "aunt" — is one of those wonderfully untranslatable Korean words — more colorful than "hausfrau," less derogatory than "fishwife," and probably not too far from "yenta." In South Korea, "ajumma" is an inglorious term most associate with gargantuan red sun visors, bright lipstick, baggy clothing, and an oblivious, pushy determination that draws the scorn and admiration of anyone who has ever been in an ajumma's way. My Korean wife has called "ajumma" The Third Gender. In "A Nation of Sheep," Eugene Lederer observed ajummas fleeing south over the snow and ice in flimsy slippers, with all their valuables on their backs, and concluded that they had "no nerve endings." I met one ajumma on Cheju Island who made her living by rising before the sun and carrying 40 pounds of snacks and drinks 180 feet up the side of this crater to sell to exhausted climbers a third her age (the woman was in her 70's, so technically, she was really a halmoni).

There is steel under those garish colors, for the ajumma is also legendary for her determination to pay any price or bear any burden for her family. Today, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo reports that North Korean ajummas are leading the popular resistance to Kim Jong Il's Great Confiscation, a canceling and reissue of the national currency that wiped out the savings of millions of families and threatens to plunge North Korea back into famine just as winter begins. Then, North Koreas died passively by the millions. Collectively, the survival strategies of those who remained formed an underground market, operated largely by North Korea's ajummas. And this time, the ajummas are fighting the suppression of their survival strategy by forming something of a North Korean tea party movement:

    "The women are tough and defiant," a source said, "and now they are angry. Markets are turning into places of protest against North Korean leader Kim Jong-il." The women gather to accuse the authorities, defying threats of arrest. [Chosun Ilbo]

These developments extend a trend we've begun to see in the last year — ajummas as leading dissenters against the world's scariest, most totalitarian regime (see here, here, and here).

AFP, picking up the Chosun Ilbo story, adds:

    Open Radio for North Korea, a broadcaster and website that collects information from informants there, said two money-changers were executed on Friday in Pyongsong near Pyongyang for illegally exchanging currency. [AFP]

The regime is tried to soothe its angry subjects by last-minute adjustments to the limits on the amount of their savings they were allowed to exchange. Today, it is promising them a pay raise by paying them their old wages in the new, lower denominations. That amounts to an immediate hundred-fold pay raise, but in currency that's less trusted than ever, still chasing after too little food to go around — in other words, guaranteed hyperinflation. The only thing that would make matters even worse would be destroying the makeshift market distribution system that's been keeping North Koreans alive for the last decade:

    According to North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS), a decree has been handed down saying that selling rice in the jangmadang [markets] has been banned and that any rice on sale will be confiscated.

    The NKIS source explained, "New market management regulations have been received by local people's committees, and instructions ordering a crackdown on the markets have been forwarded to the National Security Agency."

    Indeed, side effects of the market crackdown have already been reported. Good Friends, a Seoul-based NGO, has released a story claiming that, "In the Kangan-dong jangmadang in Sooncheon in South Pyongan Province, the rice price, which used to be around 16 won per kilogram (in new won), rose to 50 won on the 3rd."

    Furthermore, despite the fact that the authorities have already announced that the rice price would be pegged at the level it was immediately after the July 1st Economic Management Reform Measure in 2002, 45 won, by the 7th it had risen to more than 80 won. [Daily NK]

The irony of this is the initial speculation by some analysts that the Great Confiscation was designed to halt hyperinflation. In fact, the real purposes seem to have been fundamentally political — the enforcement of dependency by robbing citizens of their personal savings and suppressing the markets where they buy their food.

North Korea's ajummas won't bring down Kim Jong Il alone, but they are breaking new ground in transforming discontent into dissent, and bringing it out into the open. It's hard to say whether this will lead to something like our own tax revolt centuries ago, but then, as now, it is pocketbook issues that have the greatest power to mobilize people to the extraordinary courage it must take to risk a fate like this.