English level of Korean teachers in Seoul schools

[#basedcowboyshirt]

For those of you working in public schools in Seoul, how proficient in English are the teachers at your school? I ask beacause I've worked at a boys' high school for the past year and a bit, and of my seven coteachers, four are at the level of middle school PPTs found on this site, one is almost fluent, and the other two are somewhere in between, but on the lower end.

I had always just assumed that this was the case almost universally, until I visited my girlfriend's school and met some of the Korean teachers there, who were all confidently conversational in English. I asked if this was normal, and she said that yes, in Seoul, most Korean English teachers can speak and read English fairly confidently.

This post is specifically in reference to schools in Seoul, the reason being that I know in rural areas many teachers do have lower English levels. So, I'm not comparing my school to those. I'm trying to compare it to other schools within Seoul.

Also, as I said, I've worked here for more than a year - these aren't just initial impressions / frustration with these teachers. Just genuine curiousity over whether the English teachers in my school lag far behind those in other Seoul schools.

[Songwon]

I have five different co-teachers.  Without exception, they speak English well enough that I can have normal conversations with them and rarely need to stop and explain anything.  Some of them have incredibly good pronunciation, too.  Beyond that, a lot of the homeroom teachers as well as the vice-principal also speak English fairly well.

[#basedcowboyshirt]

Interesting. You're at a public school, right?

I'm at a private high school, and I heard that the teachers at private schools aren't required to pass the standardized teachers' tests that other teachers have to.

[kimchikiwi]

Hi cowboyshirt,
I teach at a technical high school where I have 2 coteachers. They both speak English very well and we communicate with no problems... but no one else in the school can say anything other than hello in english.

[#basedcowboyshirt]

Interesting. Yeah, my school is not a technical school - it's actually marketed as a very high level school since it's privately owned.

So, it seems like most people's coteachers can speak English. Even with my midlevel teachers, I have to use very simple vocabulary and speak in a very slow, measured pace, or they don't understand.

I guess it's the private school thing.

[kyndo]

Hi!

I work in a rural town about 45 minutes east of Daegu, but thought I'd share anyway ('cause, you know, I'm deskwarming and have nothing better to do anyway).

I have 10 co teachers at my Catholic boy's middle school.

2 are fluent -- one I would assume is a native speaker, and the other has only a minor accent ( a bizarre mix of Korean and Southern States o.O )

2 of the others are nearly fluent -- their speech is good, except they mess up idioms, while their written skills are, oddly enough, not as good.

4 are pretty good -- they can hold complicated conversations, though they stop to search for the correct word every now and then.

The last 2 are ok -- conversations are generally good, but there are a few miscommunications now and then, and their sentences come out in fits and starts (Its an idiom. No, it doesn't mean they have frequent seizures).

Also, I find that my coworker's ability with English has a strong correlation with their age.

[amyssi]

I work in Suwon at a private school and my co-teacher actually got her Masters in the states so her English is pretty good.

The other teachers at the school have minimal conversational skills but they can get by, I think.

[korr]

I don't think that being in Seoul always means you're more likely to have coteachers with very high English levels. I teach at two tiny schools in Gyeongbuk, but three of my coteachers have excellent English and one is almost fluent. The fluent one is in her forties, but the other three are very young, so their ages might have something to do with it. Are your coteachers older?

[Yu_Bumsuk]

I don't think that being in Seoul always means you're more likely to have coteachers with very high English levels. I teach at two tiny schools in Gyeongbuk, but three of my coteachers have excellent English and one is almost fluent. The fluent one is in her forties, but the other three are very young, so their ages might have something to do with it. Are your coteachers older?

Generally the closer you get to Seouldae the better the English is. However, you'd be surprised how good as well as how crappy some English teachers English is almost anywhere you go in Korea. What's most amazing is that often it's the ones at the top with the most paper achievements who suck the most. There are professors of English literature who have trouble holding a conversation. The fact of the matter is that a BA from a US state university is going to have better real English than most SKY PhDs.

[money55]

Their english is pretty  good. Their naunces make more sense. English is formal on paper but informal in speaking.  My co
teacher doesn't  think he speaks english well but he does. He actually understands most things.  People
who speak english and their naunces are terrible. Like For example: What's the diffrence between How long have
you been in Korea vs How long do you plan to stay in Korea.

[reversengineer]

I was really quite surprised by the genuine ability of all my co-teachers to speak English. I live in Daejeon, which is considered to be one of the larger cities. But if my teachers in Daejeon can speak English well, I would assume that Seoul would at the very least have similar or greater standards. On the other hand, I have not been able to evaluate their writing ability.

[orangeman]

At my first PS (elementary) I had 2 co-teachers that I taught with and 7 homeroom teachers for 6th grade.  The CT I dealt with most was fluent, she lived in the US for a couple of years.  The second CT was also quite high level, although in the first week she told me she looked up 'shhhhhh!', which I said constantly to the kids, and thought it was a curse word (sh1t).  That was cute.  The homeroom teachers varied from being able to hold a decent slowed down conversation with me to screaming and running away anytime I approached them.  Then I got another CT instead of those homeroom teachers and she was also near fluent.  She actually studied English in University although she had never been to an English country.  All three of these CTs were delightful.  Then the first one had to get knocked up (by her loving husband of 10 years) and the substitute was a crazy person.  I have discussed her insanity elsewhere, but suffice it to say if she kept her pants on during class I called it a success.  But I digress.  She said she earned an MA in the US, but her English was spotty at best.  The rest is a blur from the large quantities of alcohol I was forced to consume to get through days with her. 

At my current PS (also elementary) I have 2 CTs.  Both are near fluent level.  I haven't had much success with the other teachers at this school, though, besides the head teacher who is my official co-teacher. 

Of course with everyone idioms and other nuances are sticky points, but that's an issue even with other native speakers.  I was out with an Aussie, South African and Brit the other night.  I have no idea what we talked about.

[Ben-Ja-Meen]

I am in my second year teaching at a small public elementary school in central Seoul.  The school is so small that I only work with one co-teacher at a time.  I've had three so far, two of whom left for various reasons.  The first spoke English pretty well. The second not so well... and my current co-teacher speaks hardly any English at all. In fact, NOBODY at my school speaks English, which makes my experience uber-frustrating.  My co-teacher and I really can't communicate about anything---lesson plans, schedule changes, vacation days, open classes, all these things require loads of time in front of google translate.   Recently, I feel like we've just given up on any kind of communication at all.  Any attempt just leaves us more confused.   I'm counting the days until my contract is finisheee. 
 

[johnthegreek]

For those of you working in public schools in Seoul, how proficient in English are the teachers at your school? I ask beacause I've worked at a boys' high school for the past year and a bit, and of my seven coteachers, four are at the level of middle school PPTs found on this site, one is almost fluent, and the other two are somewhere in between, but on the lower end.

I had always just assumed that this was the case almost universally, until I visited my girlfriend's school and met some of the Korean teachers there, who were all confidently conversational in English. I asked if this was normal, and she said that yes, in Seoul, most Korean English teachers can speak and read English fairly confidently.

This post is specifically in reference to schools in Seoul, the reason being that I know in rural areas many teachers do have lower English levels. So, I'm not comparing my school to those. I'm trying to compare it to other schools within Seoul.

Also, as I said, I've worked here for more than a year - these aren't just initial impressions / frustration with these teachers. Just genuine curiousity over whether the English teachers in my school lag far behind those in other Seoul schools.

Are you sure these co-teachers are actual Public school teachers or Koreans who have good english who tutor part or full time. The reason I say this is nearly all the conversation teachers I have met who are the new influx of non qualified teachers were all tutoring at Middle or High Schools before they got conversation teacher contracts.

I taught at Elementary schools and I never found a qualified teacher who really knows how to speak English at anything more than basic level. Though the younger teachers coming in are much better I admit. Though its worth knowing that many Koreans can throw out comprehensible sentences and can mislead people to think they are fluent. True making a complicated sentence like you would say to a native speaker and you'll get the nodding and the "hmmm right" response that tells you they don't understabd a word you said.

You may be surprised to know that most if not all P.E. teachers are not real qualified teachers as well.

I personally don't think unless a Korean has either a lot of western friends they hang out with or have lived in an english speaking country for at least 3 years their english will never be natural and native sounding. That is why we are here to model native speaking, they want our tongues....I'm not kidding so people shouldn't get too up themsleves as 'teachers' here cause this is the reality of why we are hired.

[Sara]

I don't work in Seoul (I know, sorry) but maybe I can provide some insight here. I teach at a teacher's university and help students prepare for their teacher's certification exam. Each province or  large city has it's own exam and teachers must take the exam where they plan to teach. The amount of new jobs is set each year, this year in Seoul it's around 600. So...the top 600 scorers are the ones who will get jobs. The teacher's exam is taken in 3 parts, one of them being an English interview and lesson. Naturally, the pool is much more competitive in Seoul than it is everywhere else, so it's safe to assume the top 600 teachers hired in Seoul (a fraction of all those who sit the test) have impeccable English abilities/scores. Teachers in rural provinces are much more likely to have low scores because there is less competition.

Hope that helped 

[Yu_Bumsuk]

I don't work in Seoul (I know, sorry) but maybe I can provide some insight here. I teach at a teacher's university and help students prepare for their teacher's certification exam. Each province or  large city has it's own exam and teachers must take the exam where they plan to teach. The amount of new jobs is set each year, this year in Seoul it's around 600. So...the top 600 scorers are the ones who will get jobs. The teacher's exam is taken in 3 parts, one of them being an English interview and lesson. Naturally, the pool is much more competitive in Seoul than it is everywhere else, so it's safe to assume the top 600 teachers hired in Seoul (a fraction of all those who sit the test) have impeccable English abilities/scores. Teachers in rural provinces are much more likely to have low scores because there is less competition.

Hope that helped 

The competition in rural areas is very intense, too. I know people who've failed the Gyeongsangnamdo test multiple times. The test is not just difficult but also confusing. A lot of native speakers wouldn't understand some of the theoretical questions. As for the interview, I believe candidates are given time to prepare answers, making it less a test of extemporaneous English ability but presentation skills (also important for teaching). Hence not everyone who passes through has impeccable English, especially in terms of idiom usage and prose ability.

However, there are many contract teachers working in every part of Korea who are contract teachers because they have not / cannot pass this test. Often they're hired through personal connections and while their degrees may say 'English Education' their degrees were done mostly in Korean.

[Danihel]

From the teachers that I actually teach with, all are good at English, sometimes their syntax can be awkward, but it's easy to converse with them and there are few miscommunications.

My main coteacher is a different story. She's old and her English is good, but when I need to tell her something or I want to get an idea across, it feels like I'm ramming my head against a brick wall. Sometimes she obviously doesn't understand what I'm saying, but will not bother to mention that, I can only gauge it from the fact that her response has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

[johnthegreek]

I don't work in Seoul (I know, sorry) but maybe I can provide some insight here. I teach at a teacher's university and help students prepare for their teacher's certification exam. Each province or  large city has it's own exam and teachers must take the exam where they plan to teach. The amount of new jobs is set each year, this year in Seoul it's around 600. So...the top 600 scorers are the ones who will get jobs. The teacher's exam is taken in 3 parts, one of them being an English interview and lesson. Naturally, the pool is much more competitive in Seoul than it is everywhere else, so it's safe to assume the top 600 teachers hired in Seoul (a fraction of all those who sit the test) have impeccable English abilities/scores. Teachers in rural provinces are much more likely to have low scores because there is less competition.

Hope that helped 

That's correct. I think more than just rural/metro split for English ability it explains why the younger teachers have a much higher level of English because these test were not done in the past.  Something my wife told me is that in Korea before the 1997 IMF crisis it was very easy to become a teacher and the tests to become one were relatively easy. Post financial crisis everyone wanted to be a teacher because it was a stable job for life and therefore became much more desirable. The tests are not very tough and competitive and have been now for some years.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

That's correct. I think more than just rural/metro split for English ability it explains why the younger teachers have a much higher level of English because these test were not done in the past..

As I wrote above, there's also a split between tenured and contract teachers when it comes to the younger ones. In the case of "private-public" schools, the younger one(s) is mosre likely to be a contract teacher who got the job through a personal connection.

[Ben-Ja-Meen]

I don't work in Seoul (I know, sorry) but maybe I can provide some insight here. I teach at a teacher's university and help students prepare for their teacher's certification exam. Each province or  large city has it's own exam and teachers must take the exam where they plan to teach. The amount of new jobs is set each year, this year in Seoul it's around 600. So...the top 600 scorers are the ones who will get jobs. The teacher's exam is taken in 3 parts, one of them being an English interview and lesson. Naturally, the pool is much more competitive in Seoul than it is everywhere else, so it's safe to assume the top 600 teachers hired in Seoul (a fraction of all those who sit the test) have impeccable English abilities/scores. Teachers in rural provinces are much more likely to have low scores because there is less competition.

Hope that helped 

So...are you saying that ALL teachers in Korea, as a part of their teachers certification, have to pass an exam in which they demonstrate something like proficiency in English?   This news is shocking to me--because, as I mentioned earlier--NO ONE in my Seoul school can utter a single correct/complete sentence in English.  I'm not exaggerating. 

Your post makes it sound really competitive---leading one to believe that any K teacher in Seoul should really be at the top of their game.  And I'm sure that's the case in most circumstances.  I don't know what happened at my school, though.