I have come across a few in my time. I just think this is so dishonest. They are not sincere about teaching at all. A few language exchange partners have offered to teach me Korean, also someone I hired paying by the hour, online teachers - they made it obvious they don't care about teaching Korean and just want to learn English from you or practice their English on you.
It really turned me off learning from Korean people. I felt like I could not trust anyone. It's a real shame - I live in Korea but there aren't many people I can learn Korean from, even from other beginner learners like me - I am forced to attend an academy to learn Korean conversation ... Even some people who I pay or do language exchange with (so it's not free for me as I have to teach English) are not sincere ...
At least with an academy the teachers are employed by the school so they cannot do whatever they like and abuse the system and try to use it to learn or practice their English ... although one teacher started to do this in a community class I was attending ...
Some teachers are good but they also try to practice their English --- every time they say a Korean word they say the equivalent English word ... I know this happens in teaching a lot, but I can tell the difference when someone is genuinely trying to help you by saying the English word and when someone just cares about practicing their English or tries to show off their English all the time ...
Frequently I have had to ask the teacher or language exchange partner to stop doing this - it gets really annoying.
I have to say when you are teaching a language to students whose language you are also learning, it's tempting to practice the student's language while teaching at the same time, but I think this is not really fair on the student and you should refrain from doing this. You shouldn't exploit students or language partners like this. The people who do this sort of thing should man up and pay for lessons instead of using this sort of method to practice their English, as they are not teaching properly, are not doing the job they are being paid for with sincere intentions or are cheating their language partner and wasting their time.
Once again, I KNOW that there are times you have to use the other person's language, but I am not talking about those times. It's hard to draw the line exactly between these two times, but as a student or language partner, you can quite easily TELL when someone is doing this ...
For example, if the person keeps supplying the English word or translation unasked, it's probably because they are practicing their English ... when they do it a lot unnecessarily, it's a sign. You can tell by the way the person keeps talking in English even after you ask them to talk in Korean only ...
And when you speak in English because you do not know how to say it in L2, how easily the person responds in English and keeps talking in English even when it's supposed to be their turn to speak in Korean ...
I actually had a one on one teacher do this. I was paying her and meeting her for lessons and she would bring a notebook and write down phrases in English as I said them. She would practice her English all the time. For example, she would teach me: "The weather is clear" (in Korean) and then write the sentence down in English in her notebook and repeat it aloud in English. She would not say much and wait for me to say something in English - I didn't know much Korean at the time so I did speak in English a fair bit. Since I wasn't being paid to teach her English, I didn't correct her and tell her that that phrase does not translate exactly into English like that. I even stressed to her before I hired her that she must speak a lot in Korean during the class. After a short time I gave up on her.
Knowing how crazy this country is about learning English, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a high proportion of people doing that here in Korea. It's no wonder I keep coming across many people like this. Not only that, people who are already good at English can be guilty of doing this. By teaching Korean they hope to improve their English or practice their English. These teachers tend to use English really really readily - partly to practice and partly to show off. Even when I insist or stress that the teacher must stick to Korean as much as possible, they don't seem to really care. Of course, not all teachers are like this, but I have come across quite a few like this.
Haha...maybe you have me mixed up with someone who has studied Korean at some point? Your posting is unfortunate. This is certainly your own problem, but you keep on trying to blame others. This conspiracy theory about everyone trying to keep you from learning is a fantasy. You remind me of this guy who would always post about "language banditry". Hilarious thread & blog:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13595&PN=74&TPN=1
http://languagebanditry.blogspot.jp/
Are there people who will take advantage of you if you let them? Of course. But why let them? This is just an excuse not to suck it up and do what it takes to learn a language. I gave you a very straight-forward, no-fail way to become a good speaker. Did you decide to take the advice, and stop blaming the country of Korea for your problems? No. You ridiculed it. Like I said earlier, maybe somebody else will find my posts useful.
The first step is to admit you have a problem – <em>Lucy van Pelt</em>
Unlike others, I’m not going to encourage your downward spiral. This is not a Korean conspiracy to rob you of your English. I’ve tried to help you before, by letting you know that this is your problem, not the problem of your teachers or Korean people in general, but rather than use my advice, you’ve decided to instead argue about things and waste both of our times. After all these months, it looks like you’re still having a problem, so I’ll try once again to help you, as your op is a clear cry for help. If it doesn’t help you, maybe it will help someone else.
1) Stop using English in your classes. Of course it’s ok to get definitions on occasion in English, but there should be no reason for more English than that. You should have enough basic grammar and vocabulary down so that this is sufficient. If not, learn the basic stuff before you have more sessions, but by all means stop using English.
Of course if that attitude from teachers are obviously deliberate there are no excuses and should be considered as very dishonest.
However, and according to my experience in languages (as a student), the lower your command of a language is the most need the teacher have of explaining things in your mother tongue.
I mean. When I was in my first or second year of French, our teachers in the academy had to speak very much in Spanish as otherwise any of us could have understand one single explanation of French grammar if had been explained in French. But as we moved to higher courses, and once we got an intermediate level, almost 100% of the class was explained just in French.
2) Stop letting others design your classes. It amazes me that you’d allow someone to waste your time by “learning English” when you paid them to teach you Korean. Tell them to stop as often as necessary, threaten to withhold money or report them if needed, but don’t allow this to continue. I’ve literally had thousands of one on one sessions in my lifetime, and I can only think of one teaching session when the teacher refused to teach me my way, and she quit/refunded my money after about 10 minutes. Is it possible that your skills are lacking to the point where they need to use English to make you understand? How are your listening skills? You should be listening a lot every day. Also, why are you letting this control you? There is only one person who can decide whether the whole country of Korea is against you or not. It sounds like you are suffering from culture shock, which is no joke, but you and only you can get a grip on that.
3) You are forced to attend an academy to learn Korean conversation? Why? Let me outline a very simple method for becoming good at conversation, which I have found the most efficient. a) talk to an online skype tutor for 1 hour, all Korean, writing down(typing out) all the words and sentences that you wanted to say but couldn’t, and all the words and sentences the teacher said that you didn’t understand b) immediately after the session, commit the words and sentences to memory and put them into an SRS for the next day’s reviews c) repeat a) and b) Do this for 100 days and you’ll be a solid B1; 200 days and you’ll be a solid B2. Of course this is just a component of a well rounded learning method; it doesn’t work miracles – if you do absolutely nothing else you can forget about making the B1 and B2 in a timely manner.
4) Get over the culture shock, blend in with the culture more, make friends, go to language exchange meet-ups, find a Korean boyfriend, etc. Having a local support group of friends will keep you out of culture shock, and speed your learning.
