Korea's Mess of Teaching and Employing English (Engrish)

2 Typo's in 2 words from a scene in SBS's drama, Athena

This post was inspired from a subtitle typo in a Korean drama called Athena, currently airing on Mondays and Tuesdays on SBS. It is nice that they were able to film scenes in places as beautiful as New Zealand, but the producers might want to get some editing staff who can actually edit English subtitles properly. In the above image, not only is the city of Auckland misspelled, New Zealand is written as NEWZEALAND, in all caps and without the spacing. So, if you are someone from SBS, please keep your nationally televised typos to a minimum.

It really grinds my gears and is kind of a national embarrassment considering all the money spent on English education here. And please don't get me started on all the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes I've seen at Korea's many national museums. For instance, while visiting the National Museum of Korea in Seoul a few years ago, I noticed that about three quarters of the English translations of all the pieces on exhibit had so many errors that it was hard to derive the meaning of what was being said. And this was the freaking so-called flagship museum of Korea for foreign tourists to visit!!! I joked with my family that the Museum should hire me to edit all the poor English translations. It was sad...not to mention embarrassing.

Let's face it, Koreans are obsessed with learning English in order to be able to compete for the top paying jobs in this little, congested country. Parents are spending insane amounts of their income to pay for extra English language instruction. But...what's the use if all that money is seemingly "wasted?" How much English do these students even retain from all that extra money spent? From my experiences as an English hagwon (after-school academy) teacher and personal tutor, I came to the conclusion that the amount of English they are able to retain is somewhat less than a quarter (this is my own opinion) of everything they should know, considering the money and time invested into their English education.

The Korean educational system has many problems much like any other nation's educational system. But the one thing the government needs to change is how English is taught and especially how it is tested. Most decent jobs in Korea require an above average TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) or TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score. Last month, another Korean "educator" was caught up in a scandal over leaking real SAT questions without prior consent from the College Board. While I do fault this unscrupulous opportunist for acting dishonorably and shaming every Korean who ever wanted to boast of their well-earned high SAT scores, I blame the system that allowed this madness to happen. This man was just an opportunist. Historically, opportunists have been abundant in turbulent times and are like hyenas that smell easy prey (money). Why go the extra mile when teaching your students to excel on the SAT if you can just show them the actual questions they will be seeing? If one is being paid for results, and not for motivating or inspiring young minds, then helping students cheat is by far the most effective method of raising scores.

Teaching English


I have a big problem with how English is taught in Korea. The problem, is that a high level of English confers elite status and prestige for the rich few who can afford the best English education. The way the current system is set up, the best teachers and schools cost the most money to send your children to. That much is understandable in a capitalist nation. But when you start to examine whether Korea really is a truly capitalistic country, you are beginning to scratch at the surface of the problem. While I won't go into the Korean economy in this post, it doesn't take a genius to see that the system is set up to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. I promise to go in-depth about the Korean economy in future posts because I have a lot to say on that topic.

So basically, the Korean economy makes it very hard for working class and middle-class people to afford the best English education. The going rate at a decent hagwon is about W680,000 (roughly $680 US) per month (click on the link if you don't believe me!). The more elite and prestigious the hagwon, the higher the rates, with some easily costing over $1000 per month. Keep in mind that many parents assign a personal English tutor on top of sending their kids to English hagwons. That is a huge chunk (at least 1/3) of the monthly salary of the average Korean office worker. Can you begin to see how grave the plight of the English education system is in Korea? Only the wealthiest can afford this kind of education. Then, when you figure in the other crucial subjects of Math and Korean language, you will get a clearer picture of how much the total educational cost is of raising a child that will be able to compete in the torrid vortex that is the Korean educational system (this is the main reason why Korean couples have just 1 or 2 kids, which in turn leads to gentrification and population shrinkage).

I guess I forgot to highlight one crucial fact: that English is only taught to students of public schools starting in the third grade of elementary. Any competent, self-respecting linguist will be able to tell you that young children pick up new languages better the younger they are. So, if you compare children whose parents were unable to afford after-school English education to those students whose wealthy parents were able to lavish every single form of English education on them, you would see a huge difference in English language ability among the two distinct groups of students. Further, the language barrier is hard to close once it is set in place because it is very difficult for students left behind to "catch up" to their superior (in terms of English ability) peers.

As a Korean who has met many different Korean-Americans in the US, I can testify as to the truthfulness of the aforementioned language acquisition fact. I can differentiate those Korean-Americans who some consider 1.5 generation (immigrated during their teens) from 1st generation Korean-Americans (immigrated as an adult), as well as those that are 2nd generation (those that were born in the US) from their very accent and use of English idioms and nuances. Sadly, 1st generation Korean-Americans will rarely, if ever, be able to speak English as well as 2nd generation or even 1.5 generation Korean-Americans. Korean-Americans of 1.5 generation will also never be able to speak English at the fluency level of a true 2nd generation Korean-American. The accent of a typical 1.5 generation might be much better than the average 1st generation, but their use of English idioms and their understanding of American culture is just not at the level of the typical 2nd generation. This is because you have to use language at an early age (before pre-school) in order to be able to fully and naturally speak it and use it.

I feel that is the reason why there are so few true bilingual or trilingual people in the world. Many people claim they are completely bilingual (especially here in Korea), but after you hear them speak or read their writing, more often than not, you will be disappointed at one of their claimed "fluent" languages.

Testing English

Then, what is the problem with how English is tested in Korea? This is the same problem that exists whenever school and education administrators- not to mention parents- focus on scores at the expense of actually trying to have the student learn the material they're being tested on. As long as there is intense competition, there will always be a system that encourages students to aim for the highest grades and scores to stand out among the rest. Now, the problem would not be as severe IF students receiving the highest grades and scores were the ones who are putting in the most effort (let's not consider the few geniuses who don't need much effort to score high). It would be only fair to these hard-working students to have the top scores. But people are always looking for shortcuts to glory, and that's how the aforementioned SAT teacher was able to make bank. He was selling them a shortcut "ticket" to a high SAT score without the hours of studying attached.

My humble suggestion to educators is this: change the way you assess a student's mastery of a subject, especially if it is a language. Yes, good speakers of English usually score higher on standardized tests of English such as the TOEIC and TOEFL; however, there are students who really can't speak a lick of English who may end up with perfect scores on these so-called tests of language ability. There are also good English speakers who score much lower than expected.

Among the many problems with standardized tests of language are costs, time, limited human resources, and ironically, of the tests being standardized. A lot of these problems with tests like the TOEIC is that the education industry either lacks the resources or the willingness to invest in a more accurate, performance-measuring way of testing a student's ability. For example, just like the TOEIC, the Korean college entrance exam [called Suneung (수능)], is a standardized, multiple choice exam.

To really test a student's English ability, it would be best to use performance-based assessments such as essay writing and speech & debate. Of course, the costs to administer these tests would increase compared to a standardized test, but it would be a far more accurate measurement of English ability. Try to imagine for a moment that in the future, that Olympic events are judged by computers and machines instead of a panel of human judges. These computers would be algorithmically correct every time with the score they gave to each participant, but to the human onlookers, the winner of that event may have just nailed the things that the machines score high for while sacrificing true artistry and form. Think of Kim Yu-Na losing in figure skating because although she obviously seemed like the best skater, she couldn't jump as high or spin as long as the eventual winner could.

It is outrageous. But that is exactly what standardized English testing is doing to Korea (and to the rest of the non-English speaking world). It is theoretically possible for a monkey to score a perfect 990 on the TOEIC because the monkey just needs to fill in a few pages of ovals with a pencil for the minuscule chance at guessing every single multiple-choice question correct. Does that mean that that one lucky monkey is proficient in international English communication because of its perfect score?

Finally, standardized English (but not limited to just English) testing allows students of lesser English ability to score higher than they should if they are drilled with sample questions and given "tips" on how to find the correct answer. This would be easily eliminated if every student tester has to write a few essays on general topics and give a short speech to a highly trained human audience of raters.

Although recently many Korean universities are emphasizing verbal English ability over grammar and English test scores, isn't it a little too late? College students are already adults, so teaching them how to speak English won't really help at that stage because they're already too old, not to mention the fact that once they leave college, they will rarely use English, which in turn leads to language loss.

Will the current English educational system in Korea ever change? Perhaps. When Korea starts to lag behind other advancing countries who adopt better educational systems, maybe then Korea's government will notice it's time to start climbing out of the quandary they're in. Until then, you have me to complain on Korea's behalf.

UPDATE: 14 FEB 2011
- I recently saw another major error while researching for one of my ongoing projects on Asian baseball. This time I found the mistake on an online article published by one of the biggest English newspapers in Korea. (I have embedded the link, so check it out for yourselves!)

Here's one simple mistake I found in this article:

"She started with the SK Wyverns in 2003 and has never moved to another team, which is a rather rarity in her profession."


To change the above sentence to be grammatically correct, you would have to swap the position of the two words "rather" and the "a" right before it. Then it would read "...which is rather a rarity..."

I know this article is almost a year old, but I promise to keep vigilant on English typos and grammatical mistakes found in major publications and media outlets in Korea, especially if they are claiming to be publications for the expat/foreign visitor to Korea.

UPDATE: 17 FEB 2011

I uncovered yet another typo on a major Korean English-related website. The culprit this time? The Korea Herald Translation Center, a sister company of The Korea Herald, which claims to be Korea's "No.1 English newspaper".

Snapshot taken from www.heraldtrans.com

Needless for me to point out, they have spelled "interpreting" as "interpretating", which is odd, given the fact that most word processors and even web browsers have built-in spell checkers.

I actually found out through www.heraldtrans.com that they were in fact, the company hired to translate for the National Museum of Korea. This...I suppose, is not surprising.

It would be nice if I actually got some flack from SBS, The Korea Herald, and the National Museum of History for pointing out their mistakes online. So far, I haven't heard anything from them, but I did notice that on SBS's Athena, they fixed the typo when spelling Auckland on the next episode.