By Here is some news that will effect most English teachers working in government schools in Seoul:
Most native English-speaking teachers in about 300 high schools in Seoul could lose their jobs next year. In its budget for 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education cut about W4 billion (US$1=W1,126) for 225 native speakers teaching at high schools.
If the budget is approved by the city council, most of the high schools in Seoul except for 30 English “immersion” and international schools, can no longer afford a native speaker.
Currently 1,245 native speakers teach English conversation at primary and secondary schools in Seoul, 895 of them subsidized by the city office of education and the rest by the city government or district offices.
“A native speaker earns on average W42 million a year, and we concluded that they are not effective enough to justify the cost,” a spokesman for the city office of education said. “A survey conducted for us showed that Korean teachers with outstanding English and teaching skills are more effective in the long term.” [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link but I wonder how much this has to do with the Seoul government needing to find money to pay for new social welfare programs? If it is that would be a bit ironic since providing a native English teacher in government schools is arguably a social welfare program that helps kids who could otherwise not afford to receive instruction from a native English speaker to receive this training.
She hasn’t seen...
6:06 pm on December 9th, 2011 1
I started with the EPIK program, teaching at a middle school in Seoul, back in ’97. 2 months after I arrived, the economic meltdown started happening.
The result was that SMOE’s budget was slashed and and everyone was let go at the end of their contracts. Only a select few were renewed to stay on at the teacher training center.
This reminds me of that.
Sounds like it’s going to be a boon for the hogwans as the demand for kids to learn from a native speaker is not going to go away. Wonder how long until this will be reversed.
As has been said so many times before, blaming “unqualified teachers” is just a scapegoat. Poorly planned programs that don’t know how to proper utilize foreign teachers in the class are the big problem. Couple that with the truth that if they really wanted highly qualified teachers, they know they would have to pay much better- they just want to do it on the cheap- means they’re going to be unsatisfied with the results.
The result we get, again, ‘blame the furrin teachers’ and get rid of the bums!
Oh, well!
6:40 pm on December 9th, 2011 2
bleh.. this is hardly a news
6:46 pm on December 9th, 2011 3
…”news that will effect most English teachers working in…”
Addressing English teachers and making a deliberate mistake in word-form within 7 words.
I like your sense of humor. 
10:10 pm on December 9th, 2011 4
…”news that will effect most English teachers working in…”
It will affect most English teachers, while effecting fewer English teachers.
In all fairness, GI Korea is not an English teacher.
Anyway, I see the English teacher crowd is pointing fingers everywhere but their own ranks. They need to see how others see.
10:40 pm on December 9th, 2011 5
What about non-native English teachers who teach like native English teachers?
2:47 am on December 10th, 2011 6
There are a lot of factors in this. The bad economy. Change in the political parties. Change in the KSAT. Korean teacher’s resentment. And more.
The idea the Korean teachers are more effective than even the untrained FTs with college degrees is crap:
They teach in Korean almost exclusively. Both of my co-teachers could teach in English if they had the discipline, but after about 3 weeks, it became 98% Korean except for the limited time they allow me to control the class. I’ve talked to other FTs and they say it is the same with them.
Korean teachers also stick almost exclusively to wholly inadequate textbooks. They say they have to cover each page in the book and don’t have time to go beyond it, but after having taught many of them in a special program and now having worked in the schools, I think they do it because it is easy: They feel the textbook provides everything they need.
High school teachers (and some middle school ones) obsess over grammar and no mistakes as 3 years of test prep for the SAT. One reason I’ve heard for getting rid of the high school FTs is that the new SAT will require them to focus on it all 3 classes in the week. Which means the only way a Korean high school student will actually have contact with English as a language of communication is in the hakwons.
With Korean elementary school teachers in general limiting the amount of class time FTs have control, the only time non-hakwon students will be exposed to communicative language learning will be 1 class every week or 2 in middle school.
The foreign teachers are not really needed. I agree with that.
If the Korean teachers would teach in English (80-90% of the time) — and secondary school teachers would stop focusing on grammar and test prep — and teachers would focus on communicative language teaching techniques I know they studied about in teacher training schools — instead of memorization and set sentence patterns — they would not need a native speaking instructor.
But they don’t do these things.
So, Korean parents will continue to have to send their kids to hakwons to learn from inexperienced native speakers just to give them enough exposure to English to give them a hope at learning the language adequately.
8:38 am on December 10th, 2011 7
#6,
That’s the thing. Judicious use of the first language can be beneficial…Yapping away in the first language is not judicious use as it is detrimental to meaningful communication in the target language.