I read an interesting and fascinating short account of an American's experience of teaching in South Korea. Her comments on the Korean people, their habits, reactions to foreigners, English teaching, was stimulating. It got me thinking about my failed internship to tutor English to university students. If I had gotten accepted into that internship, would I be experiencing, more or less, those same accounts that this American English teacher talked about? About standing out from the crowd mainly because of heigh, skin colour and hair colour? Would I be the object of stares and whispers by curious Koreans around me? Sure, it did happen to me a few times. Either, I felt that I was being watched heavily, or that I really did look like a foreigner.
It is interesting to observe how Koreans react towards foreigners. Korea's seemingly high interest in native English teachers reflects the country's dire need to get internationalised in some aspect. English. It certainly is the international language at the forefront of this globalisation age. From personal experience and observation, I do find that this, for lack of a better word, obsession that Koreans have with English feels rather superficial. Do they really want to learn English? Despite the language being adopted as the main teaching medium for some university subjects, or scoring a high TOEFL or TOIEC score being a prerequisite for job interviews, where do we see the real motive for Koreans to actually learn English?
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