Are Old-World Values Holding Back Korean and Japanese ESL Students? Toronto English School Chelsea Calls for Change at Start of New Decade.
English school principal calls for revolutionary change in New Year away from outmoded values he says are limiting East Asian ESL students’ progress.
Toronto, Canada, January 04, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Students from Confucian East Asian countries like Japan and Korea have a big problem: generally they cannot learn English as fast as students from other societies, according to Robbie McMullan, principal of Chelsea Language Academy in Toronto, a popular destination for ESL students. “Are they stupid? Of course not, but 3000 years of inflexible ideas, mostly from Confucianism, make it hard”, says McMullan.
“Think about it for a moment”, he offers. “How hard would it be to learn a second language if you had been conditioned your whole life just to listen quietly to the teacher or other students when they speak? McMullan emphasizes that “most Asians are too respectful and polite; they need to interrupt. But their culture makes it difficult for them to assert themselves enough to speak up and learn foreign languages properly”.
Mr. McMullan continues that “East Asians are also taught that it is rude and strange to just start talking to strangers, whereas westerners are conditioned to feel that doing so is perfectly acceptable.” The result, asserts McMullan, is that East Asians students who travel to English-speaking countries don’t get as much out of the experience as non-Asian students do. “Practically speaking”, he says, “they are too shy to initiate conversations with westerners at a bus stop, for example, which would open them up to a great variety of conversations that would then allow them to develop their English skills beyond what is taught in ESL classes.”
McMullan is a fan of many East Asian values, such as the emphasis on hard work; however, he is firmly critical of what he calls “that society’s over-emphasis on respect for elders and authority figures”, which he feels discourages interactivity. McMullan points out that in Korea, for instance, that many students are still taught that they should exalt the teacher -- not that long ago they were even discouraged from stepping on a teacher’s shadow. “Teachers are like demigods in such cultures”, he says, “so it’s no wonder Korean and Japanese ESL students often can’t speak up, compared to someone from Europe or Latin America, for instance.”
McMullan’s advice to students from Japan and South Korea in the New Year is that “they should rebel in two ways. First, they should rise up and protest in the streets. Really, I’m serious. They need to force government policymakers, the ultimate makers and keepers of culture, to officially reject their continued promotion of the ancient idea that students should sit like lumps in class while their teachers, who are basically licensed to be arrogant by their governments, yammer on unchallenged. The fact is, conditioning students the old way is putting Koreans and Japanese at a very big competitive disadvantage in our ever globalizing world. I’m utterly convinced that this system has a strong negative economic impact on them, both on an individual and national level, because it leads to generally such poor English skills there. It’s so sad that it takes them years to get to the same English level that a Latin student can reach within just months in a good ESL school here in Toronto, for example, where I teach.”
Second, McMullan urges, “I want Koreans and Japanese, when they encounter an English teacher from the West, to put aside the idea that by not interrupting the teacher or other students that they are being respectful. Staying so ‘respectfully’ quiet from now on should just seem, frankly, kind of stupid to the informed ESL student. Besides, we teachers are not demigods; we’re no better than students; we only know more English. That’s all.”
Robbie McMullan is principal of Chelsea Language Academy, a fast growing English school in Toronto, Canada that he originally founded in 1993 in Tokyo. Mr. McMullan is a highly experienced language teacher, writer and alumnus of Harvard University.
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For further information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Robbie McMullan, please call Jin Park at +1 416 322 0008 or e-mail Jin at Jin@ChelseaLanguageAcademy.com
“Think about it for a moment”, he offers. “How hard would it be to learn a second language if you had been conditioned your whole life just to listen quietly to the teacher or other students when they speak? McMullan emphasizes that “most Asians are too respectful and polite; they need to interrupt. But their culture makes it difficult for them to assert themselves enough to speak up and learn foreign languages properly”.
Mr. McMullan continues that “East Asians are also taught that it is rude and strange to just start talking to strangers, whereas westerners are conditioned to feel that doing so is perfectly acceptable.” The result, asserts McMullan, is that East Asians students who travel to English-speaking countries don’t get as much out of the experience as non-Asian students do. “Practically speaking”, he says, “they are too shy to initiate conversations with westerners at a bus stop, for example, which would open them up to a great variety of conversations that would then allow them to develop their English skills beyond what is taught in ESL classes.”
McMullan is a fan of many East Asian values, such as the emphasis on hard work; however, he is firmly critical of what he calls “that society’s over-emphasis on respect for elders and authority figures”, which he feels discourages interactivity. McMullan points out that in Korea, for instance, that many students are still taught that they should exalt the teacher -- not that long ago they were even discouraged from stepping on a teacher’s shadow. “Teachers are like demigods in such cultures”, he says, “so it’s no wonder Korean and Japanese ESL students often can’t speak up, compared to someone from Europe or Latin America, for instance.”
McMullan’s advice to students from Japan and South Korea in the New Year is that “they should rebel in two ways. First, they should rise up and protest in the streets. Really, I’m serious. They need to force government policymakers, the ultimate makers and keepers of culture, to officially reject their continued promotion of the ancient idea that students should sit like lumps in class while their teachers, who are basically licensed to be arrogant by their governments, yammer on unchallenged. The fact is, conditioning students the old way is putting Koreans and Japanese at a very big competitive disadvantage in our ever globalizing world. I’m utterly convinced that this system has a strong negative economic impact on them, both on an individual and national level, because it leads to generally such poor English skills there. It’s so sad that it takes them years to get to the same English level that a Latin student can reach within just months in a good ESL school here in Toronto, for example, where I teach.”
Second, McMullan urges, “I want Koreans and Japanese, when they encounter an English teacher from the West, to put aside the idea that by not interrupting the teacher or other students that they are being respectful. Staying so ‘respectfully’ quiet from now on should just seem, frankly, kind of stupid to the informed ESL student. Besides, we teachers are not demigods; we’re no better than students; we only know more English. That’s all.”
Robbie McMullan is principal of Chelsea Language Academy, a fast growing English school in Toronto, Canada that he originally founded in 1993 in Tokyo. Mr. McMullan is a highly experienced language teacher, writer and alumnus of Harvard University.
###
For further information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Robbie McMullan, please call Jin Park at +1 416 322 0008 or e-mail Jin at Jin@ChelseaLanguageAcademy.com
Contact
Chelsea Language Academy
Robbie McMullan
416-322-0008
www.ChelseaLanguageAcademy.com
Additional Contact: Ms. Jin Park. 1+ 416 322 0008
Robbie McMullan
416-322-0008
www.ChelseaLanguageAcademy.com
Additional Contact: Ms. Jin Park. 1+ 416 322 0008
Contact
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