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I don't completely understand why this is such a sensitive subject. In the States, everyone chose a Spanish/French/Japanese name for their language classes. It's not forcing someone to adopt a new identity, it's a quirky and harmless way to add an extra English component to an English classroom.Though I will campaign again for the use of realistic names in the classroom. If you're providing a list, quickly Google search "popular baby names 2000-2010" and use those suggestions. There's no point in having kids practice names they will literally never hear.
The correct course of action is to assign names based on appearance. That way you know what students are called just by looking at them. I have a "Potato" and "Garlic" as well as "licorice." One student was called "Hamburger," but that was partially in jest.Another option is to assign them all the same name. It is simpler to remember their name if it shared between them. For example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Z5pc2eDu_sk#t=142s
Another option is to assign them all the same name.
yeah. names like "big pig" or "Psy" are not latin-based or English oriented. i think Big Pig is most closely related to a nickname. and Psy is just a lazy way of saying "Psychotic" or "Psycho". lol
Some Korean students like using English names (and those students will usually tell you) and I see no problem using them for students that want it but some (most) don't and I don't see a reason (besides it being easier for the English teacher to say) to use anything but their real names.
Quote Some Korean students like using English names (and those students will usually tell you) and I see no problem using them for students that want it but some (most) don't and I don't see a reason (besides it being easier for the English teacher to say) to use anything but their real names.I don't teach HS level but I saw this thread and I think the reason to do this is actually pretty obvious:there's a world outside Korea. It's pretty big. And, shocking I know, but basically NO ONE outside in that big, big world, can speak Korean, read Hangeul or pronounce, correctly, Korean names, even if they are transliterated accurately and consistently [which of course they rarely are].This includes the closest neighbors like China and Japan; and the places where aspirational Koreans go on vacations, like Thailand, Cambodia, or the Philippines; and places where lots of intra-Asian business gets done like Hong Kong and Singapore. AND, of course, the holy grails of academic study, in America, Canada, and Europe.Do you think a student whose 'real' name is, say, Eun-hye, as is one of mine, is going to well-served in the larger non-Korean world by insisting on using her Korean name to do things like make hotel reservations, or talk to new people at meetings? How many times will my student Ye-ra have her name pronounced 'yee-rah' before she sees that using Lucy [her choice] is just easier? And then there's Hae-ri, and Ji-eun, and Hye-jie...it goes on. We here know how to say them, but no one else does, and they never will because Korean is such a niche language with such weird sounds. They will have to listen to people butcher them time after time, or they can just make it easier for everyone and use the universally understood English names.It's kind of like, you know, mandating learning a language that's not native to your home country because it's the lingua franca of the larger world...which I'm pretty sure is something they have some familiarity with doing, don't they?
