"The Original"

"The Original" oddly specific category of food that makes sense only in Asia.  Wait, why is that in English?

Installing the English Language Pack for Office 2007

Like most teachers who come to Korea, you'll find that you're given a computer that has the Korean version of Windows installed.  Unless you speak Korean fluently, you'll find that this leads to a lot of stumbling around the user interface trying to figure out which button to click.

Fortunately, you can "fix" Microsoft Office so that its menus and buttons are in English.  Finding the proper install file can be hard to find because Microsoft has stopped distributing the file, but Digital River (a distribution partner of Microsoft) still has a copy available on their servers (see link below).  It was well worth the effort, as it saves me tons of time when I'm preparing worksheets and presentations for my lessons.

Here are the instructions:

1. Download the English Language Pack for Office 2007 at: http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msoffice/pub/X12-42421/X12-42421.exe
2. Run the downloaded program.
3. Open 시작 > 모든 프로그램 > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office 도구 > Microsoft Office 2007 언어 설정 (which translates to Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings)
4. Change the drop-down box on the first tab from 한국어 to English.
5. Click the left button on the bottom of the dialog to apply the changes.
6. Re-open Microsoft Office.  Congratulations!  You can now read the menus and buttons!

Note, this does NOT install a new copy of Microsoft Office.  It simply updates the existing copy of Microsoft Office to support additional languages in its User Interface.

I did all this before I decided to write this tutorial.  So, if I missed any steps, or if you get stuck, please let me know and I'll get it fixed.  I'm using Office 2007, but if anyone else figures out how to do this for the other versions of Office, please post on here for the benefit of anyone who stumbles on this post who is using those versions.

I hope this is helpful to someone!

The Perils Of Language

Much of second language acquisition is about taking risks.  You'll have a hard time mastering a language if you're afraid to experiment and improvise when your not sure how to say something.  This unfortunately means that sometimes be misunderstood, but when you learn what your mistake was, it'll very likely to stick.  Furthermore, its exhilirating when you are understood, even more so if you're told that you said it "correctly" (i.e., the meaning was clear and sounded natural).  So, experimenting not only creates verry effective opportunities for learning, it can be very motivating by showing you that you are learning and you can use what you're learning.

The mistakes you make can often be comical, so long as they don't result in a serious miscommunication.  An example of a "mistake" I made occured a few weeks ago.  I was chatting with one of my coworkers via text message.  He teaches Korean Literature and is one of the most fluent English speakers in the school (he reads English newspapers on a regular basis).  I was giving him my new phone number (having a smartphone in Korea makes life much easier, by the way).  He asked me to save his number.  I wanted to tell him that I had done it, so I replied "끝내요" (goon-nay-yo) with is the present tense, polite, informal form of the verb "to finish."  He asked me what I meant, so I explained that I meant that I had "finished" saving his number.  Then I asked if I had said it wrong.  He replied that 끝내요 means that "the relationship is finished."  I was mortified, especially because he's one of the teachers that I've become closest to among my coworkers (see my previous post here).  He hadn't taken offense, thankfully.  He knew he hadn't understood me.  He just said "It won't be easy for you to adjust to korean word cheer up" (sic).

I realized later that I should have used the word 하다 (ha-da), which essentially means "to do."  Using the past tense 했어요 (hay-seo-yo), instead of the present tense 해요 (hay-yo), would also have made it clearer.

Unfortunately, the idea that its okay to make mistakes is one of the hardest lessons to teach my students.  Americans, and I suspect people from most cultures, have a hard time grappling with the fact that making mistakes is a natural part of learning and growing.  But, in Korea that fear of making a mistakes is magnified many times over.  Making mistakes is often considered shameful, and so Korean students feel that anything they say in English, especially if its in front of their peers, has to be "right."  So, it can be quite hard to get them to say anything at all.

My Coworkers In Korea

Working with your co-workers in Korea is tricky business.  They're good and gracious people, but with divergent expectations arising from our differing cultural backgrounds combined with the language barrier, opportunities for misunderstandings abound.  There are some interactions I've had with my coworkers in the past that still completely baffle me.  But, I consider myself fortunate that I work at a good school, which has dealth with three other Guest English Teachers (GETs) before me.

This week, the co-worker I share a desk in the teacher's office told me that I should say goodbye to her every day and that it hurt her that I didn't say goodbye to her when I left for home in the evenings.  Normally, I might have laughed at such a comment, but I could tell from her tone and her expression that she was quite serious.  Aside from the fact that saying goodbye isn't something really all that seriously in the US, I spend most of my time in the classroom, as I don't have a computer in the office and so I can't get much work done there.  So, I've only had a handful of conversations with this co-workers, so it never would have occured to me that she might be offended by my not saying goodbye to her each evening.  Furthermore, I make it a point to say hello to everyone the first time I see them everyday, as this is something I was told by my predecessor was important.  The thing is, as a GET, the terms of my contract are set by the government and is different from that of my coworkers, and so my workday ends an hour earlier that of the other teachers.  This is often a point of enmity between the GET and their coworkers.  In fact, I had to point out this in the terms of my contract to my head Co-Teacher when she tried to keep me until 5:30 pm.  For this reason, I often hesitated to say goodbye to people on my way out (except for my boss, the Vice Principal) as I felt like I was "rubbing it in" that I got to leave early.  Most of my coworkers also probably don't realize that I do a lot of class prep at home, as I use Keynote on my Mac to create my presentations.

So, another lesson learned the hard way.  I felt bad about hurting this co-worker's feelings, as it surely was not my intent.  Despite minor faux pas like these, I'm on good terms with pretty much everyone in the office, I think.  In any case, I'm finally buying a laptop this weekend so I can work in the teacher's office and wont have to do any work from home anymore.  Even though its a little silly for me to buy more own laptop that will be used mostly for work, I think it will be a worthwhile investment.

Shhh...Students Might Learn Something. Just Don't Let Them Know...

For the second week of lessons I've been doing a short unit on travel, mainly because I could connect it thematically to my initial lesson, which was a self-introduction that included pictures of places I'd traveled to.  I had an activity planned whereby students would first write out a plan for a vacation they wanted to take (in English), and would then practice conversation talking about their trip, first one-on-one and eventually to the whole class.  As an extra incentive, I thought I might offer students a chance to vote on which vacation they liked best and award that student a peice of candy or two.

Well, for the first three days, after going over the vocabulary and brainstorming ideas with students about a vacation, I explained to them that I had a worksheet for them to describe their dream vacation.  I didn't explain any further than that, mostly because its already hard to get one's point across with the student's limited English, and I didn't want to confuse them by giving them all the detail up front.  Big mistake.  Even though it was a substantially creative activity, students heard the word "worksheet" and they moaned.  Most of the students did it, maybe 2/3rds, but only grudgingly.

So, on Friday I decided to try a different approach.  I started off saying that we were going to have a competition to see who can come up with the best or most creative vacation, and whoever won would get a couple peices of candy.  I carefully never used the word "worksheet" in my explanation of the process.  You'd think I promised to pay for their vacation.  Every student, save maybe one in my second class on Friday, dived right in and was toiling away on their worksheet with seconds.

Hiking In Korea

See a pattern in my post titles yet?

One of the big draws for me coming to Korea is the abundance of scenic hiking trails. Today me and a couple of other English teachers braved the 백화 (pay-kwa) mountain trail, which is about an 8km hike. See the results for yourself...

Comfort Food In Korea

Well, I had my first encounter with Korean Toast today.  There's a restaurant right across the street from my school.  Korean Toast is like a grilled-cheese sandwhich, only they put scrambled eggs, cabbage, pickles, and various sauces on it.  Plus, you can get it with all kinds of meats, such as ham, chicken, beef, or bacon.

Strangely enough, when I paid with what I thought was exact change she gave me 500 won (about 50 cents) back.  I don't know why.  Is this the "white guy discount"¹ at work again?  I told the lady that it was "very tasty" in Korean, though I'm not sure it registered with her what I was saying.

And the verdict?

Yummy!

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1. Last week I bought a monitor at the local 하이 마트 (Hi Mart), and the price changed twice in the process of purchasing it. The marked price tag was 290,000 KRW, but he only asked me for 288,000 KRW, which he wrote down on a peice of paper. When I gave him six 50,000 KRW bills, he said "250" in English and handed me back one of the 50,000 KRW. Haggling isn't common in these types of stores, to my knowledge. When I asked one of the other English teachers in town about this, he said that he was giving me the "white guy" discount, presumably because I was a foreigner and he wanted me to frequent the store.^↩