Question:
Korean Children Suffer English Fatigue Syndrome
Not so long ago, a 38-year-old mother got a call from her third-grade daughter's instructor saying, Your child seems distracted in class, please get her to pay attention. When the mother asked her child what had happened, the child said, I want to kill English! and burst into tears. Not being able to understand what the foreign instructor was saying, her daughter was simply stressed out by the quick pace of the class and her poor test results.
The English education market in Korea is a US$10 billion industry, but there is also a growing number of children who -- sometimes violently -- boycott English. They suffer from what is loosely diagnosed to as English fatigue syndrome. In a survey of 359 mothers by the Chosun Ilbo together with online early-stage English community suksuk.com, almost half or 48.7 percent of respondents reported that their children had at times taken a profound aversion to the international language of business. If even among mothers who are relatively successful getting their children to learn English the number is about half, the syndrome may be much more virulent among the silent majority. br
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The symptoms are multifarious. Mothers report that their child tells lies when it is time to go to class such as, I'm sick or The teacher hit me. Some yell and flail their arms about in the house, take a long time to complete even easy homework tasks, or erupt in screams of Don't speak English!
The director of Shin's Child and Adolescent Counseling Center, Shin Chul-hee, offers an analysis, “The common denominator causing these symptoms is forced study, and excessive private study,” adding,“Children who attend schools that focus on workbooks rather than learning through play and give too much homework show the highest levels of rejection.”
In the survey, 38.9 percent of mothers described the reason behind their child's English education boycott as being due to a method demanding excessive study, while 23.4 percent identified a “dislike of English itself,” while 20 percent admitted the reason was parents’ excessive expectations of their children, including comparing them with other children.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/new...0606220020.html
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The director of Shin's Child and Adolescent Counseling Center, Shin Chul-hee, offers an analysis, “The common denominator causing these symptoms is forced study, and excessive private study,” adding,“Children who attend schools that focus on workbooks rather than learning through play and give too much homework show the highest levels of rejection.”
english is the hardest language to learn. learn through music baby lol
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aw.. how forceful.
english as a language shouldn't be taught so forceful and not only from books!
english is my second language and when I learnt it, it was pretty easy, because i had fun learning it.
english language teachers shouldn't be so strict.
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I don't remember English being that hard to learn...
english is my second language and when I learnt it, it was pretty easy, because i had fun learning it.
english language teachers shouldn't be so strict.
I agree. The teachers who helped me learn English were really kind and patient, that's why it was more like a game than actual learning for me.
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When I was learning English I didn't even know I was learning it cause I was having fun. Teachers should really use that method.
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english is the hardest language to learn. learn through music baby lol
u sure it's not chinese?
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I don't think english is the hardest language to learn.
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u sure it's not chinese?
why would you think chinese is hardest? much harder languages out there...
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u sure it's not chinese?
i understand mandarin has all the tones and stuff... but the grammar issues in english are quite.... undescribable.
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I can sorta relate. I'm horrible at picking up new languages. HORRIBLE.
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its because of the grammer and spelling of english words.. since english is like a mix of a bunch of other languages, there are always little exceptions here and there..
english was my first language soo i dont really know how difficult it is to learn it
anyways.. i agree and think that the kids would be much better off learning in a more light and fun environment
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english is known to be the hardest language to learn so i'm not surprised.
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english is known to be the hardest language to learn so i'm not surprised.
yup. Poor kids...English could be fun--they should make a rap or something so it's easier for the kids to learn...hehe...I don't know, it could be enjoyable.
One of my cousins from germany, he's like 19 and so kute when he tries to speak english (Me: how long are you staying here?(slowly) Him: tree weeks, yea, two or tree weeks) hehehehe...
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English is pretty hard to learn.
The whole irregulars and all that stuff.
and I thought Spanish was hard -___-.
Spanish is nothing compared to English ahha
poor kids.
Korean mothers are crazy [korean mothers in korea] no offense. haha XD
my mom was... sort of like that except not like that LOL
i was pretty quick at learning things and I learned english at the age of 2 so.. lol yeah it wasn't that difficult.
but man. i think korean mothers are soo... like extremely intense haha.
poor kids.
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why would you think chinese is hardest? much harder languages out there...
cantonese has 9 different tones.. each sound has many meanings?
anyways.. english is complicated. if you're mad, you could be angry furious etc. theres so much words for one meaning. i was born here...but since my parents didnt know english, and i had to goto school... oh boy. the school tried to tell my parents to let me attend a special school [or whateve r that meant!] because their ESL program didnt have proper [chinese] teachers to help me.
its sad really :[ but i stuck to it. i remember sitting on the toliet counting 1-100 in chinese first. then 1-100 in english. i didnt LEARN and UNDERSTAND english until i was.. 7. sad.
i can understand their pain =_=
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Is english the hardest language to learn? O_o
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why would you think chinese is hardest? much harder languages out there...
mainly the writing. not the language itself.
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so forceful. english is better learnt from conversations and music, i think.
i can sort of understand how those children must have felt being forced to study english because when i was a child, my grandmother refused to talk to me unless i spoke to her in english. and it's awful considering that i spent half of my childhood living with her.
personally, i think chinese is hard. then again, i'm very bad at picking up new languages.
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I'm pretty sure Arabic is the hardest language out there.
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Just because they had trouble learning English that doesn't make it the hardest language to learn. Language is made of two parts. It's always easy to learn vocaublaries from all languages, the only hard part is the grammar part. Anyway, personally, I think English is hard only because it's different from Korean to Korean Children and sometimes they dislike it because they just don't understand why they have to learn it in the first place. Not a lot of people around them speak English so it's hard on them. But I think if they know the reason why they have to learn it, it'll be easier on them. Unfortunately parents don't usually give kids options, do they? Sometimes they give you the reasons why, but never let you choose on whether you want to learn certain things.
I personally think learning another language is a good thing! Especially learning it when you were little. Later on that language will help you a lot.
