This evening I met up with Chang. He was my former TP but he and I both felt that he would benefit a lot more from just simple conversation. I noticed after a few email exchanges with him that his grammar was really good (he was out of town for a couple of weeks). His proficiency did not reflect so much in his speaking skills though. I saw this as an opportunity to ask him questions about his native country Korea. I continued to ask him about certain practices that I had read online. Some of them seemed really antiquated so, before my presentation, I wanted to find out if these practices still applied. Chang confirmed some of my suspicions that several customs were no longer used or at least emphasized amongst Korean young adults. He said certain practices were reserved for the older generation.
We then continued our conversation about Korean history, politics and government. I learned somethings about the upcoming Korean election and decided it would be important for me to take note of names, controversies and issues (looking into this afterwards I learned some information about TEFL controversy). We then wrapped up our conversation talking about fishing and the nature of english conversation.
After we met I went to the library and began to research Korean politics and TEFL. I found an article in the Korean Times, written quite recently, criticizing the effectiveness of having foreigners teach english. The article cited a case in which a Native speaker could not spell something for the class while the Korean TA was able to. The tone of the article was interesting. The author spoke out against the hiring of unqualified and overpaid foreign teachers in tough economic times. This would have to be something I should be aware of considering that if such an article is published in a popular newspaper then there must be a significant part of the population that shares this sentiment to some extent.
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