It’s no wonder sometimes that the kids I teach have difficulty mastering English. Although some have been studying English for 3 or 4 years, a chance meeting on the street with a student won’t produce much more than “I’m fine, how are you?”
There areT-shirts here in Korea that have terrible language. Some are terrible grammar, but some have terrible words that would get a child sent home back in the US. Many of those T-shirts are cast-offs from western markets; they either didn’t sell or never made it to the store shelf. Many of those T-shirts find their way to Asian markets where the imprinted English is secondary to the fact that its a cheap shirt.
In the classroom, however, materials with poor English abound and are not western market cast-offs. Most are produced here in Korea. Apparently, having English on the product makes it more saleable. Also, apparently, having someone on the manufacturer’s graphic arts staff who knows, understands or has more than a passing knowledge of English is a rarity.
Poor English shows up on pencil cases, pencils, pens, notebooks, bags – everywhere one could put text on a product. They range from the profoundly poor English to the profane to simple misspellings. I took a few snapshots this week of some pencil cases my students possessed.
Sometimes, it’s funny to read the stuff on the school paraphernalia the kids come in with. Sometimes, they wonder what it is I laugh about – which is really sad because they don’t understand the English or don’t understand why its not good grammar. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that some pencil cases I looked at this week at were just fine. Many T-shirts, notebooks and pencils are fine, too. The problem is that there are so many products with English and the kids and (most of) the parents cannot discern good from bad English. It bothers me that this country wants so badly for their citizens to learn English but does little to ensure they don’t learn improper English.
On my other website, Ulsanonline.com, we got the interest of a new Korean/English tabloid paper. We listed it on our partner page, but I want little to do with it. Just reading their introduction is painful. Their goal is to introduce English to their Korean readers. But they, too, have grammar problems. They want us to share some of our articles for their paper. I have no problem with that. They wanted some editing of their own English, too, but they want to pay next to nothing. Our goal on ulsanonline.com is to be a knowledge base for other foreigners. A place to learn about the country we live and work in and a place to showcase some writing, programming or photography talent. Our goal is not to help people learn English. I get paid to do that, so for a newspaper to want editing for free just doesn’t fly.
Sorry, there’s no free runch.