What the Job Is – Part 2

What Students Know, What Teachers Don't

ESL teaching is half guesswork. For the native speaker in a foreign land, it can be difficult to predict what the students already know. This problem is particularly acerbated in Korea, as so many words enter the Korean language through adapted homophones. One of my first lessons was a class I copied from an ESL website – a 'make your own pizza' sheet. It included a word search, a vocabulary scramble and a 'design your own pizza' square where students drew their dream pizzas. A good lesson, I thought, that should fill the time admirably.
It took the students about twenty minutes. You see, when you order a pizza in Korean you are essentially speaking English – most of the ingredients are transliterated (cheese is 치즈 [chi-ju], pepperoni is 페퍼로니 [peh-pe-ro-ni]) and the menu uses transliterated English terms to characterise the pizzas (barbeque, supreme) even though there are Korean equivalents available. Couple this with the students' prior experience with time-wasting English games (mostly likely taught from an early age by other native speakers) and it meant I had a lot of bored kids on my hands.
The flip side of this equation can prove more difficult. Another early class I ran was called 'avoiding nice' (another downloaded worksheet) in which the students had to use adjectives other than 'nice' to describe a list of arbitrary nouns. It was a complete, cringe-inducing failure. After eliciting a blackboard worth of adjectives the children knew, students would rush through the sheet putting the same three or four adjectives in the spaces provided as I screamed at them to stop. Students would finish the sheet in a minute, lie slumped on their desks and complain: “Teacher! Bored.” Internally, I pondered how much of my foot I could fit into their throat without their face exploding.
The problem was systemic. From my point of view, the lesson plan was about exercising an already known vocabulary in the correct grammatical way. From the students point of view, it was about filling the gaps with a certain sort of word. We were playing a game with language, except we both had different rule sets.

Dreaming of the Multiple Lamppost

Wittengenstein defined language as a game with a near infinite number of moves restricted and defined by the finite number of given rules. The rules of the game give the board (context), markers (speech) and players (speakers) meaning despite the endless permutations of the game. His definition was designed to give meaning to any specific utterance (conversation) by eschewing it as a subjective, constructive process. Everytime you talk you talk with someone for some tangible reason – in other words, you play a sort of game. Academic debate? Verbal chess. Keeping secrets from a friend? Spoken Jenga. Flirting with a stranger? Go Fish. Some games are predictable, some are not, but each is played using a different set of similar rules.






Your crib or mine?








But there is another truth that underlies this. A truth that has made me appreciate what my job as an ESL teacher in Korea is. It came to me on the outside landing of a friend's apartment in Noksapyeong. I was bending the ear of a new friend of mine, Hyunsin, who had foolishly allowed me to pick her brains whilst I was desperately looking for the bottom of a pitcher of Cass Red (for those back home – 1.6 litres of 6.9% alcohol beer.) I had been thinking about this article for a while and wanted to ask her opinion of language acquisition and more specifically, probe her for an understanding of bilingualism. Hyunsin's parents were both Korean but she was born and spent the first thirteen years of her life in Germany. As a result, she can speak Korean, English and German fluently and also has smatterings of French, Swahili and Chinese.
As someone who reads a lot in translation, I was intrigued by the bilingual mind. I machine gunned her with what were, in hindsight, very dumb questions until she finally said something my lumbering mind could hang onto. It was a chill winter Saturday, and pointing down the twisted alley to a streetlamp choked with IP cables I asked her if she saw that post with the wires hanging from it in English, German or Korean. Was there a quality to the light that was best expressed in German? A way of evoking its rubber spiderwebs in the sensitive definitions of the Korean colour spectrum? But she said simply:
“I think of it in Korean because I'm in Korea. If I was in Germany I think I'd be thinking in German.” And that's when it came to me. Discussion between two speakers is a game – but language itself is a road. And a road has only one function – to connect otherwise isolated spaces.








Not pictured here: subtlety.









Highways, Back roads, Fire trails.

Today in class I taught the names of the planets alongside a video with their relative size. As part of the lesson I included a 'sentence scramble' – an activity designed to help the students reproduce correct sentences by giving them the building blocks of the sentence required. Thus far most students have been completely unable to complete the task. Why? Because the road isn't completed.
English as it is taught in Korea is a completely abstract knowledge. Students with low intelligence or poor motivation will boggle the minds of their foreign teachers by being unable to recognise basic English words that are plastered over shop fronts and signs everywhere. When one student didn't know what the Korean for 'noodle' was, I literally felt one half of my brain blister like heated paint. The English word 'noodle' is EVERYWHERE. At a rough guess, I'd say up to 185% of all noodle places in Korea have the word stencilled somewhere within.
English as it is taught here isn't used to communicate with other speakers of the language. Rather, English is used as an indicator of class or sophistication – the same way one might hang decapitated antlers in the parlour or a dried, twisted wreath of laurels over a door.
The equipment to build the road is supplied but it goes nowhere. There is simply no reason for Korean students to make a sentence because one: it is not required for their final exams (all of which are done in multiple choice) and two: because there is nothing you could wish to impart in the language that doesn't consist of verbs and nouns. If I ask my class, “How do you spell 'dictionary'?” No one answers. But if I say, “Dictionary. Spelling?” They will dutifully answer. The games of English that Korean students play are limited to algebraic substitution (gap fills and multiple choice) and banal word recognition puzzles (word searches and letter jumbles).


What the Job Is (part 2)

I was discussing bilingualism with a friend on mine who has recently moved to Mexico with his Chilean girlfriend. He commented that the most difficult problem is “the trap of translation” - that of converting the target language (in ESL terms, the L2) into the native tongue (the L1) and then back again. Imagine a triangle with 'English' at the bottom corner, 'Korean' at the bottom right and 'translation' at the top point – it is a ludicrous method and can only be overcome with practice and patience. As my friend went on to write in his email:
“Knowing the English word for 'auto' in Mexico is not necessary or relevant - all that matters is the word that Mexicans use. And, again, knowledge of the English word is not actually necessary to understand the concept.”
The word itself and not the idea of the word. But here is where this whole festering mess come to rest – 'the word that Mexicans use'. My friend is still learning enough Spanish to immediately communicate his needs to other Mexicans, but because he is living with someone he can converse with in Spanish, and because there are so many other people who can engage him in Spanish, he will be able to communicate with Mexicans much easier than my students can communicate with me. The English of my students is played in the classroom and for tests. The Spanish my friend learns is the game of the lost tourist.










Learn the plural form of 'Rape' in fifteen new languages!










In my last article, I talked about how isolating this job is, and how the avowed claims of 'language fluency' were actually a lie – but I never realised how completely this job was isolating myself from my target skill. Put in a situation where they can only communicate in English, the students are bullied and baffled by a strange looking guy whose arms swing wildly and eyes flash like hornet's wings. On the most basic of levels our job is to be AN ENGLISH SPEAKER. We are not educators in the truest sense of the word – we are cultural immunisations.
This is not the fault of the Korean education system – they are doing their best to institutionalise a foreign language in their native country. But the concept of language that they are dealing with is irrevocably flawed. While it is possible to teach abstract skill sets without specific goals in sight, the elements of a language are informed by countless interactions which both parties' need to willingly enter into. Imagine teaching soccer by reading the rule book to a classroom – the students could not play soccer, they could only emulate the rules. Similarly, the majority of my Korean students cannot speak English though they have massive vocabularies and an impressive knowledge of grammar.
I have begun to feel that my classes should have no explicit grammatical goals, nor do they follow a trajectory of knowledge. My classes are becoming more like my own tastes – strange things riddled with non-sequiters and wonderous, useless marvels. My best recent lessons have been about dinosaurs, the solar system and how to draw anime. Internally I hope that these useless lessons begin to destabilise the image of English as a drab, dead thing. It would be no use to teach poetry to the kids – they couldn't understand it. But to learn the names of the planets as they spin in a silent void? To raise my voice as they watch a video that relatively scales the earth to the sun and the sun to the biggest stars we can see? That's fun. And what's more, it's a game they might learn to like.




Daniel East is a curse word in 12 languages.

The Autumn Years

For this week's post we decided to do a photo essay dedicated entirely to the most beautiful season of the year. While I, Lara, did the effects on all of these photos, East is responsible for some of the lovely leafy shots. Most have been taken in Seoul, though some span back to our trips to islands and tea fields. What do they all have in common? Autumn!

So much depends upon red leaves.

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
Over the river wild and wide.

I want a holiday with a scene,
Of green, green and green.

With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.

The autumnal leaves will colour my face in yellow.

As I disappear.



All alone, except for stone.

Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy.

We are two stubborn people.
Which side do you choose?

All day I hear the noises of water,
Making Moan.

How to be a Foreigner

“To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time” - Cornelia Otis Skinner.

There are over 250 000 foreigners currently living in Seoul and of these, I have met no more than a hundred. These meetings have generally happened by chance, involved either alcohol or the intention of drinking and taken place at English-speaking friendly locations: westerner bars, mutual friends' birthdays and plays. What these factors have led to is a dangerous belief that these environments are where I belong and where I can find my people. At the first shared word with an American, Canadian, South African, British, New Zealander or fellow Australian I think to myself, here I have found a friend based on the one tiny similarity that we share in language. What of the millions of other factors that go into building a friendship? Why do we insist on greeting one another based on just one fraction of who we are?


Halloween Had Its Moments

Unusual as it may seem, this year's Halloween celebrations gave me a perfect reflection of the expected behaviour between a group of westerners. Our costumes, designed in spirit for deception and surprise, offered another set of greetings that we foreigners have long perfected. It may be a safety reaction that we turn to in times of uncertainty; being unsure of what we are approaching we attempt to simplify it with recognisable overtures. Halloween was an environment rife with examples and I was one of the worst - upon seeing a friend my first words weren't, 'so how was your week' or 'what did you get up to at school' or even, if applicable, 'are you feeling better?' It was one of two comments: 'what have you come as' and 'I love your costume'. By dressing up we created yet another impersonal platform from which to communicate. It didn't matter that the conversations we had after these initial moments were much more involved. They all began with the same desire to determine and catalogue. After waking up the next day, costume either rubbed off or missing, I realised why the night before had seemed so familiar, despite me having never truly celebrated Halloween before. My behaviour was identical to how I greet every new westerner I come across, and how they respond to me. There is always one question and one answer: 'where are you from', followed with either 'I've been/lived there' or 'that sounds nice'. Every single time, this is how I attempt to create a relationship with these people and the reason lies within our shared label as foreigner. If I met someone in my home country I would probably ask what they did for a living or which area they called home but as all foreigners I meet generally live in Seoul and are teachers, this avenue has also been taken from me. We have pre-knowledge before we even meet a new person and while this should drive us to be more creative in our creating a friendship, we take the easy road and use a foreigner greeting template. And what do we ask after we've secured the home country of the person: 'where are you going after this?' Have we really just skipped over the entire present tense of a person's life? What of their experiences in Korea, their jaunts to nearby lands, their miseries and triumphs and new found loves? There seems to be a pattern amongst foreigners where we assume our experiences in this country are all in all similar and so we leap to subjects removed from the immediacy of now. We react to what we recognise not in ourselves but in the greater scheme of foreigner politics.


A Big Wide World

Personally, I think Koreans have the right idea. When speaking to someone, be it a taxi driver, waitress or subway traveller, they are much more interested in what I think of Korea as opposed to where I've come from. True, most assume that I'm American and when I tell them Australia they often mistake it for Austria but all this really does is make my origin unimportant. Their interest in me comes from how I relate to the country I currently live in, not how I got there. They want to know which parts of Korea I've seen, what food I eat, where I go to drink or dance and every time I answer them I realise that I've rarely been asked these questions by another foreigner. This baffles me. These details are a fantastic jumping point for any conversation because they are full of relate-ability. 'You like kalbit'ang? So do I. There's a great place in Suwon that you should check out.' Think of the opportunities missed ignoring these details. This is a problem I haven't experienced with the locals; my friend wanted to know which exactly was my favourite type of kimchi, if only to look smug when I told her I loved them all. This of course is good old Korean-style pride, a powerful force; one man asked if I loved Korea or Australia more and my answer received quite a talking to until I said 'of course, it's very beautiful here'. Despite this, their attitude is such a refreshing way of communicating that I find myself seeking out Koreans for conversation. The problem, ironically enough, lies in the language barrier. It seems that finding the best of both worlds is a near impossibility. Those I can speak to are interested in a life I no longer live and I haven't the ability to talk to those who want to share in my present. I just don't have the words.


Despite my opinions on foreigner relations, I have met a lot of truly excellent westerners since arriving in Korea with whom I've experienced culture and custom. While writing this I thought about the people I've come to know, through proximity or by chance, and I understand why we share our lives the way we do. What more do we have in common with a new person if not what we immediately recognise? This was the reason I waved to other white people while travelling through Nepal, and why hearing an Australian accent in the bowels of a Yorkshire club would set me looking for its owner. When in a country that speaks my language, I am drawn to a familiar accent and when in a non-English speaking country I search for words I know. We foreigners play it safe with each other and ask the easy questions because we need to cling to something we ourselves feel: communication ultimately leading to conversation which, if undertaken by two friendly people, has every chance of developing into friendship, however begotten.



Lara promises to ask the next foreigner she meets if they have ever watched a biopic of Hunter S. Thompson and not loved it.

The thin line between Entertainment and War: Notes on Korean cinema and the pop-art abyss

The following statement is considered entirely logical by today's standards:

“I believe in a Christian god because I believe it and that's my right.”

The following is also considered perfectly sane:

“I absolutely love this movie because I believe it and that's my right.”

However the next sentence is considered to be an outrageous, xenophobic claim:

“I think Korean cinema is puerile because I believe it and that's my right.”

Most rational people (who gave a damn) would point out to the holder of the last opinion that perhaps they had not taken in all the facts, that they were being a little too willing to judge an entire culture's artistic output in a certain light.

Whereas someone who questions the second opinion, someone who asks for justifications for a particular point of view on a film could be seen as arrogant and pig-headed. After all, a movie is just a movie and it really doesn't matter why you like it, or who likes it.

Someone who disputes the first claim is generally considered a jerk. Someone who outright demands a Christian provide proofs for their assertions of blind faith, to rationalise a belief in such an unlikely and irrational deity is a sort of pigheaded atheist bore.

I'm not making a point for atheism here, I'm trying to outline the sensitive rhetoric of opinion that so cripples authentic aesthetic discussion in these baffling years of moral relativism. What I'm outlining is a battlefield where I will sight the beast, shoulder my carbine rifle and put three slugs (the semi-automatic three count CRAK-CRAK-CRAK) in the guts of the high art/low art debate. Not enough to stop this insensate beast, but surely enough to warrant some kind of honorific.

Personally, I've always wanted to be a grand poobah of something. It just SOUNDS right.

Scrutiny for Lady Vengeance

This was originally a review of Park Chanwook's film Sympathy for Lady Vengeance but as I researched my topic it grew into something much more complex. To best summarise my dilemma, I quote Nathan Lee's review of the film from the New York Times:

His puppet people and phony plots are an excuse for rhetorical showboating, neither a source of human value nor the medium of legitimate ethical inquiry.

That's why the story of "Lady Vengeance" is such a convoluted hodge-podge of time frames, subplots and bit player back stories. That's why Geum-ja's ordeal elicits no sympathy. That's why the ending is trite, not transgressive.

Now, I completely agree with the criticism of Chanwook's film given above – problem is, I also really liked the film in question.

Now before I go off on my rhetorical dialectic I would like to give a quick review of the film in question: Park Chanwook's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is not a complex film. One might be fooled by the segmented plot (which unlikely Hollywood product occurs in three distinct sections with three distinct thematic events, reminiscent of a novel or TV serial) and the moral complexity of the actions undertaken by the protagonist (elevating the characters within to an archetypal status) but I would like to point out another movie with segmented plot and morally complex characters whose status is not misunderstood as Lady Vengeance's. Ginger Snaps 2.

Not to belabour the point, but the climax of Ginger Snaps 2 is a morally complex and ultimately transparent parable that asks whether it is madness, reason or beast-like instinct that drives humanity to the extremes of violence. Except with werewolves.

AND NO ONE WOULD AWARD IT SHIT.

Jack Nicholson pictured here at the 2008 Academy Awards

Foreign pulp is the new arthouse

In all the reviews I read, both for and against Chanwook's film, there was never a tacit claim on the film's pulp status. Which makes me want to slap my head in disbelief. I mean, it's right there in the title, one of the most beloved tropes of the pulp/cult classic canon – the revenging she-devil. Yet every review either clucked their tongues in disapproval or proclaimed how 'riveting' and 'visceral' the film was. Somewhere between the post-production and the American release something happened to completely retard the normal cinema viewing process – and it happens in the bottom eighth of the screen at constant intervals. The subtitles.

There's an interesting moment in the director's commentary of El Mariachi where Rodrigeuz talks about the reception of his movie at a film festival. He noticed that the patrons in the cinema were busily nodding their heads throughout the movie, and he often overheard them talking about the 'moral complexity' of his b-grade exploitation flick. I don't mean to overstep my mark here but this is exactly what is going on in the case of Lady Vengeance. This movie is a beautifully shot pulp/cult joyride and doesn't pretend to be anything else. Just because it's part of a 'trilogy' doesn't mean it must be a work of profound artistic merit – it just means the director didn't develop artistically from his last two movies (George Romero I'm talking to you.) (Not that you're listening, but still.)

Every law is local

There is something unique about this film that displays a character I would tentatively outline as a recurring element of Korean drama – that is, the ability to underpin what are often overly melodramatic narratives with moments of surreal and absurdist comic devices. The sharp cuts in Lady Vengeance are some of the most perfect examples of cut-away comedy I can possibly recall. There is one beautiful moment when a group of killers wait in a line outside a room of their intended victim. They begin to discuss exchanging murder weapons and the techniques they will use to execute their revenge, all with a improbable awkwardness that wracked my body with laughter. This otherwise bleak and improbable story is elevated by moments of stillness and comedy to a level above the shlock of Hollywood.

NOT PICTURED: Remorse.

It's a lovely thing to watch a Korean film occur. The narrative logic employed is so foreign to the logic of Hollywood that is a confusing delight to unwatch the story unfold. It is a storytelling aesthetic best compared to the devices of anime and manga, wherein very serious, intellectually probing melodramas are told via the medium of improbable, cartoonish elements (such as giant robots, gun toting samurai or naïve immortals). It is the pairing of the tragic and the comic, of the mature and the immature that gives these stories (and in my opinion, Lady Vengeance) their appeal and their character. A somewhat confronting blend of high and low art.

Which brings me full circle. The dialectic of high and low art is such a Eurocentric, self-defeating argument one wonders why we persist to perpetuate the myth. The terms can only make sense if one looks at the literature of one culture. If one inserts outsider voices into the mix the whole sham falls apart.

If one considers the position of, say, a Korean film into this high/low art dichotomy one immediately begins to identify an unfair cultural bias that discredits the production of new voices within the canon. The reviewer is tempted to forget that this film MIGHT NOT BE MADE FOR THEM and the literary tropes and devices within the work might carry different significance from another cultural perspective. Perhaps it is accepted shorthand in the Korean tradition to display character depth not through dialogue and internal conflict, but by having the bastard DO something and let the audience second guess their true motives. Doesn't matter. Point is, there's no good film or bad film – nor are there good portrayals or bad portrayals, only stylistically different ones.

And it is this last point I want to make the most stridently. We all back away from artistic debate because we think that no one is allowed to be wrong in the wars concerning intention. Which. Is. Bullshit. There's still failure, there's still misconception, there's still a reason to pass judgement on art. Cos art ain't art unless some bugger's trying to kick its damn legs out. Art's just entertainment that bears up under scrutiny – same as morality is an action that can sustain a critical enquiry.

Our Lady of Vengeance

The first impulse I had after watching Lady Vengeance was to write an article that discussed the previously mentioned absurdist elements as indicative of Korean cinema – but I soon realised this would be incredibly ignorant as my experience of the culture was limited to a dozen or so movies. I thought it would be disrespectful to use a limited perspective to inform a broader view of something as important and as difficult to define as Korean cinema culture. Which seems a little ironic considering the sweeping generalisations I have made above.

Darcy Paquet, reviewing Lady Vengeance on koreanfilm.org, had this to say:

Lady Vengeance might feel rather subdued, even lackadaisical, for some viewers with a built-in expectation bred by Park's previous works. Its narrative might strike other viewers as meandering and unfocused. Yet others might take issue with the subplot involving Geum-ja's daughter … Despite these potential flaws, however, in Lady Vengeance we are again presented with a unique vision of hybrid cinema, the kind of which we are not likely to see anywhere in the world, not to mention Korea.

If I had to recommend a film by Chunwook I would put the excellent Thirst above this film, but wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it. As for the statement above, while I disagree with the glowing review Paquet gives it I have to agree with his assertion that this is “a unique vision of hybrid cinema” and well worth a look.

Furthermore, I would invite you as an audience to exercise some critical acumen regarding your own reception of the movie. We all know the best way to watch a movie is without preconceptions, but perhaps you will find it rewarding to interrogate the cultural tensions that may inform your opinion before you get a chance to see the movie.

So pull up a comfy chair and sit down to Lady Vengeance: it's like a bowl of cut watermelon and blood orange; sweet and refreshing, but not all that filling.

East.

Daniel East: not a pipe.