Well I've seen her along with the other exchange students and she never really said anything about the topic (whatever it was). I discussed this with my teacher friends and we came up with an array of answers, as I'm sure you have as well.
So today I saw her with another exchange student from Taiwan and asked her if she ever solved her problem. She told me she hadn't and if I had the time at that moment to talk. So we talked in my classroom and her issue are the other Korean students. This was a relief considering the scenarios me and the other teachers had come up with.
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It all has to do with Korean maturity. Here's my hypothesis (which I talked to Yaya about when we video Skyped). Korean kids go to school non-stop. When they're not in school, they are in the school's study halls, or they are at the hagwons (private institutions), or they're even working a job. Because of this non-stop schedule, Korean kids never get a chance to be just that, kids. They don't have time to play, hang out with friends, and go over each other's house to play video games and such because there are "more important things to do."
This has caused these children to mature at a slower rate than their foreign counterparts. For example, I teach high school, and sometimes these students laugh at things I used to laugh about in middle school and maybe even elementary. Granted, I do have my set of advanced university-bound students who are really mature, act their age and beyond, but that's not the majority or bulk of these students. The bulk of these students look older, but they have such a childlike mentality and laugh at things that if I laughed at those same things in high school, someone would be right behind telling me to grow up. This is the effect of what overworking these kids has led to, and all my colleague friends and I, and now the foreign exchange students, agree.
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So when speaking to her, and the other Taiwan student who joined us later, I got the sense we were on the same wavelength about the teenage culture in Korea. They told me how Korean teenager idea of fun is just dinner, karaoke (called norebong here), and maybe a movie. I told them that yeah, that sounds like normal PG fun, but that I remember going to parties in high school. As soon as I said that, both of them bursts with a big "YES!" that showed their agreement with me. They said how when they got to Korea their host families where going to have a party, but that it was just a dinner. They told me how much they missed going to real parties with their friends, I felt bad for them at this point.
But then after I explained the Korean maturity mentality I mentioned above, I got a sense of sympathy from them so that they're able to meet their classmates halfway. I also told them that a big part is intimidation. When I first got here I blogged about being the "new puppy" everyone was dying to play with, and after that died down I was just a teacher to them. However, there is still a large number of students in the school whom I don't teach, they're not in any of my classes. When I see those students in the halls, they don't know how to speak to me. Heck, some of them have even said I make them nervous. Double heck, even some of the other teachers have said I make them nervous. That's just it though, it's intimidation. Korea is a very homogeneous society where the majority eat Korean food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, only speak in Korean, and many have never left Korea to travel. Given these circumstances you can imagine that it's hard for them to relate to people who are multilingual, come from multicultural hometowns, are of a different ethnicity, and have left home to travel the world. Granted, before I got to Korea I made sure I traveled up and down the east coast, west coast, and even some places in between, including the home countries of my parents. The only reason some of these teens have ever gotten on a plane has been to go somewhere else within Korea, a country that is smaller than many US states. And it's not that I'm saying they don't know any better, but this is because the country is on a tipping point in its westernization, it's going to take some time.
So how is a Korean student who has had to go to school from sunrise to sunset supposed to relate to someone who came from France, speaks English fluently (even though it's not her native language), and has traveled before? It's tough. Granted, I'm very fortunate to live and work in Songtan. This is city that is abundant in foreigners, English-speaking shops, diverse restaurants, and so much more. This was very good for me when I got here, but it's not such good news for the students. Yes, I see them at the Main Gate area, and I see them sometimes getting a McDonald's burger, Baskin Robins ice cream, or some Popeye's chicken, but that doesn't mean I see them interact with the Americans there. The silver lining here is that they have grown up accustomed to seeing people from around the world, but there is still that lack of interaction due to intimidation. It's that same layer of intimidation that I'm covered with when I'm with them or when the four exchange students are with them.
The students I have just think of me as Mr. Navarro, just another teacher, but I do wish that the students I don't have would think the same. Some of them don't want to practice their English skills because of that intimidation. It's strange because talking to the exchange students we all relate to the fact that people from our countries want to be multilingual and cannot wait to practice what they've learned. I remember when my parents went to school, they didn't want any of us to speak Spanish because they wanted to practice their English. And when they did learn English, it was up to my sister and I to retrieve what words we could from our French database so we could continue talking about our parents in a typical offspring fashion. Had the French & Taiwanese students never wanted to speak English to foreigners, they would not have befriended me, the other English teachers at my school, or one another for that matter. So that's another observation we made, that the intimidation layer can never be lifted until these other students see that they are free to want to practice outside the classroom and with me. Granted, they do well when they're with me, but I wish it would go outside the walls of the school. Had I not learned and practiced what little I know in Korean, I would have never learned to read or had gotten home each time I stepped into a cab. I also understand that these kids are in Korea, so why learn a language when you don't need it?
Student back home take many languages. I took French, two years of Russian, Latin, two years of Spanish in HS, and a semester of advanced Spanish in grad school. And I know that honestly Spanish obviously comes easily to me because of my background, but I've also taken it upon myself to want to practice Latin, Russian, and French when I was taking those courses. Have I ever needed Russian to survive in my country or culture? No, but I was curious to learn and I really wanted to be a student of the world. But because of the homogeneous mindset that exist here in Korea, it's going to take some time for this idea to sink into the minds of students.
On a final note, I will give Korea credit for taking a step in the right direction that other countries have yet to do. That is that is has hired native English teachers to teach throughout its country to increase student fluency. This starts in kindergarten and continues in high school. However, because this is a recent trend in the education system here, the students I have now were part of that transition, which means that it will only get better with each passing year because students in high school will emerge who had a native English teacher at a younger and younger age.
All I can do in the meantime is be supportive to these exchange students, be glad that they have one another for support, and hope that they learn what they came to learn from this experience. I'm still learning too.
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#4- David Archuleta's "Riu Riu Chiu"
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