Left Flank

I'm in no way defending the LPGA and its new English-language policy. Defend the game of golf? The sport that has only recently allowed non-whites even to appear with a golf club unsupervised? Damn, there just aren't any dream jobs that don't actually require learning, or commitment, out there anymore.

Padraig Harrington, who has won the last two majors, wondered if the LPGA Tour is taking on too much. Like others, he wants to know how much English a player is supposed to learn to be «effective.»

«Surely if you can say, 'Hello,' that's English. Is that good enough?» he said. «Who draws the line about how many words you've got to know in English? What if you have a person who genuinely struggles with learning a new language; they have a learning disability? That's tough to ask somebody with a learning disability, who might have found golf as the saving grace in their life, to ask them to learn a different language or else you can't play.

«There's a lot of different issues to that,» he said. «It's a big step to actually put it out there.»

Pardon me if I just don't see the problem, when my students stress over a single, picayune grammar rule or word that might appear on a test, or just don't speak because they tremble at the thought of an error. Or, normal people need to go to classes for skills training.

Here's a solution:

In the case of the South Koreans, hiring a full-time interpreter for every event would be a good start to solving the precarious situation in which the LPGA Tour and its membership currently find themselves.

But fining, docking access to tournaments, etc.? Aren't there laws against that sort of discrimination in the US? What is the inverse-GITMO exception for bad corporations where onerous American laws don't apply to foreigners? If an adult (or coterie of groupies arrayed around their sugar beast of burden) can't figure out the trade-offs of learning a foreign language in a foreign country, or an American association can't objectively understand what its foreign membership has to deal with in their mutually-advantageous roles, well, corporations rise and fall pretty quickly. Who needs an LPGA?

Shut up, you whiners!

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I have a promise with my teacher. (I should meet my friend).

I live in apartu. (I live in an apartment building.)

The movie was so-so. (The movie was boring.)

These are just a few examples of Konglish, another dialect of English, like Chinglish and Singlish, Michael Erard lampoons and warns about.

Any language is constantly evolving, so it's not surprising that English, transplanted to new soil, is bearing unusual fruit. Nor is it unique that a language, spread so far from its homelands, would begin to fracture. The obvious comparison is to Latin, which broke into mutually distinct languages over hundreds of years — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. A less familiar example is Arabic: The speakers of its myriad dialects are connected through the written language of the Koran and, more recently, through the homogenized Arabic of Al Jazeera. But what's happening to English may be its own thing: It's mingling with so many more local languages than Latin ever did, that it's on a path toward a global tongue — what's coming to be known as Panglish. Soon, when Americans travel abroad, one of the languages they'll have to learn may be their own.

Yet, when South Koreans come to do business, will native speakers tolerate this creativity? And, how much time and money will be wasted because two interlocutors believe that they are speaking in the same language, when suddenly they realize each person's speech is indecipherable to the other?

Really, it's just laziness condoned.

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I agree with much of Jin Jung-kwon's comments reported in a Chosun Daily article, aside from some of the most sensational rhetoric in the second graph.

He said it was all very well helping students get a better education in English, «but committee members seem to believe that only when students have good command of English will the country become competitive." The reality does not bear this out, he argued. "The Philippines is one of the countries where people can speak English best in Asia, and it's hard to make yourself understood in English in Japan. But compare these two countries and see which is more competitive.

"Of course, nobody can say that a good command of foreign languages isn't helpful to enhancing national competitiveness. But it's not a decisive factor either. Those who need English should study the language hard, while others should study their own majors harder than English. That is how you boost national competitiveness."

He asked how many people in Korea actually meet foreigners and work in a foreign language, and how often they do so in a year. «Students can lag behind in technologies and major courses if they concentrate only on studying English,» he warned. He said the committee's plan to introduce English «immersion» education in 2010, was pie-in-the-sky. "It would be very hard for all current school teachers to participate in such immersion education even if they were given English language training in the U.S. and did nothing else for two full years."

I especially liked the Japan/Philippines comparison!

I ran into a bit of a dizzying moment today, when discussing the recent transition committee proposals on education, students started conflating "learning English" with " learning American-style". Along with the usual canard about globalization and competitiveness, I asked the class what "learning American-style" meant, and how did it compare to "learning Korean-style".

The answer in three separate classes: "American-style" = "free talking"—literally where the teacher prompts students to talk English amongst themselves uninterrupted, with "help" in individual cases. I told them, that "free talk" did not exist in America as they understood. It seems students are so annoyed by South Korean teachers reading composed lectures, that they want as different a learning style as possible.

Students don't need English; they need jobs and better teachers. That requires economic growth and structural reform, not worthless bureaucratic mandates.

I can't agree more:

I think the very fact that English education is an issue in the election shows just how ludicrous Korea's fixation on learning English has become.

The craze to learn English in the ROK has little to do with fluency in a globalized world, and more to do with South Koreans competing against each other in a rigid market and social system.

A few years of naively plodding work in the South Korean TESOL field is followed by the desperate need for a second career. This was supposed to be the year I smoothly transitioned from my university's F-2 extra government bonus status to a new career in think tanks and non-profits. OK, it's been a dull, uneventful thud on the depressing way down on the job search these past months, but listening to these political plots to reform the TESOL business adds extra urgency to the instinct to flee.

I do recall in high school, that I had a choice between four foreign languages.

But, this is not the point: both the frustrated employee and the presidential candidates avoid facing how miserable the job market is. It's not just that the public educational system needs dire reform, but where would a South Korean work? In the handful of large corporations? There's not enough of an employment sector to support a better educated population. And, more importantly, both the education and corporate sector are not designed to support full employment. Crush the dumb and resourceless, and promote the well-connected, the unionized, and the best test-takers!