EDUSAT, India's education satellite

After we get married in early 2013, my fiance Hanna and I are planning a year-long round the world trip, starting in India. Throughout the trip, I hope we'll be able to check out some English classrooms and perhaps teach a few lessons. Hanna has a friend that works with a school near Calcutta, and we're currently planning to volunteer there for 2 months and do some teaching. I've never taught in a developing country before, so I started poking around the internet looking for information about teaching ESL in developing countries and Indian education. Pretty quickly I stumbled upon this:

http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/edusat-teacher-student-connectivity/

Apparently a few years ago India launched an "education satellite", in order to direct education to students in rural areas. Teachers are filmed and then broadcast and shown in these rural classrooms, and the students follow along on their own.

First of all I think it's important to say that any country willing to spend the money to launch a satellite devoted to education at least has its heart in the right place. But in looking at standards developed by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning:

- national leadership and ownership should be the touchstone of any intervention;
- strategies must be context relevant and context specific;
- they should embrace an integrated set of complementary interventions, though implementation may need to proceed in steps;
- partners should commit to a long-term investment in capacity development, while working towards some short-term achievements;
- outside intervention should be conditional on an impact assessment of national capacities at various levels.

it seems that India's investment in this educational satellite is the opposite of "context relevant and context specific". Instead of "embracing an integrated set of complementary interventions", the satellite seems like a one-size-fits-all situation in which students listen (but can't interact) with a teacher hundreds of miles away, whose lesson probably has no relationship to the specific realities they face in their village and region. Might the money spent on this satellite have been better spent on empowering local teachers in each community?

All this said, I admit I have no understanding of the Indian educational system, and perhaps the satellite's broadcasts are more closely connected to the curriculums of the local teachers. However, most of the internet searches I made on the satellite only came up with technical specs of the satellite itself. It seems education is easily eclipsed by technology!

A jumping off point for further info (and my inspiration for this post):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Education_in_the_Developing_World

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

I have a language exchange partner here in Korea, we study together a few times a week. Half the time we discuss his questions about English, and the other half we talk about mine in Korean. Today I brought a Korean chapter book I've been working on reading, and we read it together, discussing it in Korean. I like it even though it's a little higher than my level - it's a really funny book, it's called 찌장 반장 진짜 반장, "The Chinese black sauce class captain is the real class captain", trust me, it makes sense in Korean. At times the interactions between the mom and son will be so easy I'll glide through a few sentences with no questions, but occasionally the sentences will be so impenetrable that even after looking up words I still have no idea what's going on. While learning language I'm a believer in the importance of input, target language in the form of listening/reading, as a catalyst for learning. I wouldn't go so far as Stephen Krashen to say it's the only thing necessary for language development, but it's definitely essential. Indeed, I believe sometimes input can be more useful than full understanding.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" is a phrase I heard a few years ago that I think really applies here. I had hit one of those impenetrable sentences and 재균, my language partner, was trying as hard as he could to explain it to me. He ran into problems though when his English language ability couldn't help me adequately unpack the Korean sentence. He got frustrated and stubborn - he was determined to help me, determined to unlock 100% of the meaning of the story for me as we proceeded. I suggested we just skip on and get the gist of the rest of the story, and he was surprised. Eventually he shrugged and acquiesced, but I could tell that he'd rather we go for perfect instead of go for good. This is a tendency I've noticed in my students sometimes, and also in myself as I learn languages. Sometimes I'll get a new language study book and want to start from the beginning, completing every page and marveling at my "perfect" understanding of the language. I've known students' mothers who will get angry if their child doesn't return home with every problem on every page complete. The fallacy here is the assumption that a completed textbook, totally understood novel, or flawless rendition of a song denotes any sort of perfect grasp or perfect progression toward understanding of a target language. Languages are vast, amorphous networks of relationships, always changing and never really fully understood even by their native speakers. Instead of going for perfection, my advice is to let your motivation and your passion guide you toward what is interesting to you, what draws you into communication, and what beckons you toward future study. Because more often than not, that textbook whose first few pages you've so flawlessly mastered will soon find its way to a dusty shelf when you lose that initial energy.

Foreign Wives and Migrant Workers in Korea

Today I read an article posted by my coworker Daniel about alarming trends concerning migrant workers and foreign wives:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/people-move-part-ii

In brief, the article describes the case of a rural Korean man who murdered his Vietnamese wife. The frequency of incidences of domestic violence toward female southeast Asian spouses is exposing underlying issues of Korean race relations and cultural perspectives.

Attitudes toward foreigners vary widely in Korea. Ok, I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations right now so bear with me and keep in mind that not all Koreans think this way, but a large enough contingent to make the behavior worth noting. Generally Koreans have a much different reaction whether discussing or encountering Western (white) foreign English teachers, Western (non-white) foreign English teachers, Southeast Asian migrant workers, and Southeast Asian wives. Those in the first category are met with welcoming smiles, constant comments about how beautiful they look, and general goodwill. Those in the other categories are met with a variety of reactions, but markedly less positive.

How does this article tie into this blog's theme of learning language? Well, I believe that one of the major forces behind the difference in reactions to English speaking foreigners and non English speaking foreigners is an issue of prestige. The English speaking foreigners speak the language of world power, a language whose mastery Koreans must achieve to score well on their TOEIC test to get a top job. Non English speaking foreigners find that as their native language is given less respect, they are also afforded less respect as people. In addition, the women who arrive as brides to rural Korean farmers find themselves adrift in a very strict family culture (with the infamous mother-in-law / daughter-in-law relationship to navigate) and if they cannot speak Korean, arrive already horribly disempowered. Combined with the absence of a road to citizenship, it's no wonder that relationships tend to be imbalanced. Solutions will be slow - education centers are needed to help these migrant workers and wives to learn not only Korean but cultural "language" as well. Situations must be fostered in which these workers and wives are motivated to learn English in an environment that respects them as human beings, not just for the increasingly needed rule they play in Korean society.

This article concludes by saying that Korea should focus on cross cultural communication to help its citizens forge more respectful relationships with the foreign workers and wives on the rise in Korean society. I couldn't agree more. Although national pride and a concept of "pure blood" are understandable given the recent and brutal colonial history with Japan, in fostering contempt for "lesser" neighboring nations in Asia, Korea is behaving like a kid on the playground who, after being bullied by a larger child, takes his frustrations out on those smaller than him. It's time to grow up.

The Banking Model of (Korean) Education

After writing about the Matrix metaphor for learning ("I know kung fu") a few days ago, I got to thinking about how similar it is to Paulo Freire's "banking model" of education. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) Freire, a Brazilian educational theorist, described what he viewed to be an ineffective and disempowering model for education. In the "banking model", students were viewed as empty vessels, ready to be filled with knowledge the teachers. This model situates the students in a very passive role, and most importantly doesn't take into account any of the students' previous systems of knowledge or understanding, their motivation, or their identity. They merely, again, "download" the information from teachers into their brains. Not only is this "banking model" conception untrue, it makes for inefficient teaching and can lead to the further disempowerment of students. When the subjective experiences and knowledge of the students is de-valued, the teacher/student interaction is dehumanized.


Paulo Freire

I often hear native English teachers complaining about how education in Korea is very "lecture-based", "teacher-centered" and how it focuses too much on memorization. As outsiders to the Korean education system, these native teachers are picking up on differences between education in their home country vs Korea, and reacting negatively. But it's not always articulated exactly why this teacher-centered, banking model of education is undesirable pedagogy. Using Paulo Freire's critical lens, we can start to see past the classroom behavior into the values (or devaluation) underlying it.

Unfortunately, in an educational environment focused on high-stakes testing, teachers are under pressure to cram facts, vocabulary, and grammar into their students' heads (again notice the banking model/Matrix language here). Until the entire system, from tests to classroom methodology to teacher training, is reevaluated, flow of these forces will continue to reinforce an efficient, ineffective, and disempowering banking model for Korean education.

Two Metaphors for the Second Language Learner

I'd like to consider two models of the second language learner for a moment, to highlight some of the conceptual differences between popular and academic portrayals of language acquisition. I love the movie The Matrix, it was one of my favorite movies as a kid, but one part in particular has really bothered me after studying linguistics.


"I know kung fu."

When Neo wakes up from the Matrix and finds himself in the post-apocalyptic real world, he learns that since he was a "farm-raised" human, he has a jack in the back of his head and can plug in to new realities. Not only that, he has the ability to learn new skills simply by "downloading" them into his brain. Though he doesn't actually learn any new languages in this manner in the films, this portrayal of knowledge as quantifiably downloadable is also apparent in such expressions as "my brain is full".

In language acquisition and in learning in general, this metaphor couldn't be farther from the truth. True learning comes through making connections with things that we already know, and by building skills slowly through experience. One conception of learning that has resonated with me recently is Lev Vygotsky's concept of learning as apprenticeship.


Lev Vygotsky

In Vygotsky's view, learning arises from social interaction between a "master" and "apprentice". The learner is paired with a more knowledgable person (a teacher, coach, or a higher level student) and together the pair work at a task, for instance, a communicative linguistic task. It is the "master's" job to ascertain the student's level and to find what Vygotsky (1978) calls the "Zone of Proximal Development" (ZPD). The ZPD is defined as what the student cannot do alone, but could accomplish with the help of a skilled teacher. For example, I could easily describe on my own what I did yesterday in Korean, but I'm fairly certain I would struggle and fail to describe my political opinions regarding corporate taxation. However, with a teacher who scaffolded necessary vocabulary and linguistic structures for expressing opinions, a conversation like this is within my reach that I might be able to accomplish it with a little help from the teacher.

After sufficient scaffolding, the language student would need less and less help and finally be able to accomplish the task on his/her own. Of course, there are many linguistic tasks far beyond a learner's grasp, even with the help of a teacher - if I wanted to suavely charm a high-society Seoulite at cocktail party, I'm sure not even the best scaffolding from the best teacher could help me. Finding that ZPD "zone", then, becomes an important task for the educator, since time could be inefficiently spent on linguistic tasks already within a student's ability to accomplish on his/her own, or on skills so far beyond the student's grasp that any scaffolding will fail to "stick" in individual practice.

To reiterate, the crux of Vygotsky's theory is that learning is a social process, an interaction and an exchange of information, a series of tasks that apprentice a learner into a new skill. It is an active process - so unfortunately for those learners as lazy as me, if you want to learn kung fu, you're going to have to at least move your legs.

For more information, try reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_apprenticeship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

An Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Geek's Guide to Learning Langauges! My name is Henry, and I'm a recent grad of the Masters program of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I'm currently a professor in the Department of English Literature at Gwangju University in South Korea (광주대학교 영어영문학과). Ever since I finished my degree, I've been kicking around the idea of putting together bits of knowledge and experience I've gathered from my studies, and from teaching English into a reader-friendly format, focused around the concept of language acquisition. I anticipate the audience of this blog to be language learners curious about the best ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts.

This sort of inquisitive learner I've chosen to describe as a "geek", but given the prevalence of this term in pop culture a bit of explanation is probably warranted. My working definition of a "geek" is the sort of person not satisfied by simply using the tools that years of culture and technology have passed down. A geek is someone who likes to take things apart, who likes to see how those parts fit together, their relationship with one another, their motivation for interaction, etc. In the context of language learning, a student might be told in a language class that simply staring at a list of English words and their Korean translation is not the best way to acquire vocabulary, and that student might nod their head in agreement. A geek would want to know what methods are superior, and why. If that describes you, read on.

All that said, I'm excited as to the directions this blog might take. I'm hoping to update a few times a week, mostly prompted by techniques and situations I've encountered in the classrooms, conversations with colleagues, inspiration found from digging through notes from grad school, and new developments I read about in the field. As with the often-haphazard, organic acquisition of language itself, I'd be delighted if this blog enjoys some nutty deviations or some joyously chaotic associations. Time will tell. If you've found something you'd like me to share on the blog, feel free to email me at henry.gerlits@gmail.com.