With one week left to go in TKD classes, the Kwanjangnim decided that we are ready for our yellow belt tests. This consisted of performing the three blocks (low, body, and high), three punches (low, body, and high), and four kicks (front, side, roundhouse, and stretching) that we know. Curiously, he did not test our ability with all stances, just riding horse stance. Walking stance and long stance were left amiss.
The long and the short of it is, I passed. It was not difficult, though I did make a huge rookie mistake: I went right when I should have went left. When beginning anything in TKD, it is always to the left, but I went right. Like I said, rookie move.
Next week, we begin to learn our first form. I want to learn this especially well, as I feel it will be essential to making a good impression with the teacher in the hamlet.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Cultural Workshop: Comfort Women
Throughout orientation, and especially during Camp the Program, the Powers that Be have hosted mini-cultural workshops for us to expand our knowledge about Korea’s history and traditions. Unfortunately, I was too tired to attend any of them except for the one on Comfort Women, given by University of Chicago graduate Dr. Josh P.
Put delicately, comfort women were women collected from the East Asian populace by a variety of means (promises of work, money, or just plain conscription) for the purpose of entertaining the Japanese military in a variety of ways. But bluntly, the Japanese took female slaves and raped them, given that you take a broad view of both slavery (being held against one’s will, whether or not one is paid) and rape (forced intercourse). These were usually girls between the ages of 10 and 16.
Though, to be fair to the Japanese, not all of the conscripted women had to perform sexual acts. Some, perhaps the lucky ones, merely had to dance or sing or laugh at the officers’ jokes, but a good many of them were prostituted out. And, as I said, not all were conscripted. Often a family would not be able to support a daughter if they could not marry her off, so the promise of work from the Japanese army, no questions asked, was appealing to many destitute parents. There is some debate as to which country suffered the most from this conscription, as Japan controlled much of the East Asian sphere in the 1930s, but Koreans of course think that Korea was that country.
Many of the Comfort Women now abide as living testaments to the past at a place called Sharing House (www.nanum.org; www.comfortwomen.wordpress.com). Dr. Josh P. seems to have taken as his mantra “History ignored by books and politics soon will be forgotten if not shared.” True enough. What he has done is to record some of the Comfort Women’s stories and especially the songs that they would sing, which, though seemingly just drivel from popular 1930s melodies, have remarkable undertones when seen in the context of a life of forced sex and occupation by a foreign people.
These women have opened up their lives to him over time. One story was particularly painful. A young Korean girl was torn from her family and sent up to Manchuria. When the Soviets liberated that area, they let her free, but did not tell her where she could go. She could only speak Chinese, as she had lived in Manchuria almost her entire life. Eventually, she made it back to her family in Korea, only to find that she was a stranger to them and worse, a foreigner. She felt alienated, and eventually went back to her new home in Manchuria.
One woman at the Sharing House, however, talks about how she actually fell in love with a Japanese officer who was a regular customer of hers. He was a kamikaze pilot, and he taught her to sing a song in Japanese that poetically describes what he would have to do when he left her. She can still sing it to this day.
It was also strange, even slightly disturbing, to hear about how the Americans treated these women when we liberated Korea. The Americans understood the concept of a brothel, of course, and thus thought that the Japanese had just set up prostitution stations throughout their empire. Before the war was over, but as the Americans took different areas from the Japanese, the Americans would just leave the “brothels” running, never imagining that the Japanese had conscripted these women from their homes. Whenever Dr. P. would talk to one woman in particular, she would say that the Americans were always very nice to her. He later found out that the only reason she thought this was that the Americans would pay her for her services. The Japanese did not.
These days, the women mostly sit around Sharing House and watch television. They receive visits from media people and students and even just curious passersby. Once a week, they go to Seoul to protest at the Japanese embassy because the Japanese government refuses to apologize for the conscriptions. The Japanese view is that reparations paid in accordance with the 1945 treaty was supposed to cover all the atrocities the Japanese military took part in, both known and unknown. Many of the comfort women are still unknown today, in fact. They wait until their husbands die to avoid dishonoring them, and even then they risk being ostracized by the rest of their family if they come forward. Korea is a shame culture, and there is apparently much shame in being a comfort woman, even if you were a victim.
You can visit Sharing House if you ever travel in Korea, and I think I will visit someday this year. They have scheduled times when a translator can be there for those who only speak English. Maybe when I go, though, I will be able to talk a little with these living members of history myself.
Put delicately, comfort women were women collected from the East Asian populace by a variety of means (promises of work, money, or just plain conscription) for the purpose of entertaining the Japanese military in a variety of ways. But bluntly, the Japanese took female slaves and raped them, given that you take a broad view of both slavery (being held against one’s will, whether or not one is paid) and rape (forced intercourse). These were usually girls between the ages of 10 and 16.
Though, to be fair to the Japanese, not all of the conscripted women had to perform sexual acts. Some, perhaps the lucky ones, merely had to dance or sing or laugh at the officers’ jokes, but a good many of them were prostituted out. And, as I said, not all were conscripted. Often a family would not be able to support a daughter if they could not marry her off, so the promise of work from the Japanese army, no questions asked, was appealing to many destitute parents. There is some debate as to which country suffered the most from this conscription, as Japan controlled much of the East Asian sphere in the 1930s, but Koreans of course think that Korea was that country.
Many of the Comfort Women now abide as living testaments to the past at a place called Sharing House (www.nanum.org; www.comfortwomen.wordpress.com). Dr. Josh P. seems to have taken as his mantra “History ignored by books and politics soon will be forgotten if not shared.” True enough. What he has done is to record some of the Comfort Women’s stories and especially the songs that they would sing, which, though seemingly just drivel from popular 1930s melodies, have remarkable undertones when seen in the context of a life of forced sex and occupation by a foreign people.
These women have opened up their lives to him over time. One story was particularly painful. A young Korean girl was torn from her family and sent up to Manchuria. When the Soviets liberated that area, they let her free, but did not tell her where she could go. She could only speak Chinese, as she had lived in Manchuria almost her entire life. Eventually, she made it back to her family in Korea, only to find that she was a stranger to them and worse, a foreigner. She felt alienated, and eventually went back to her new home in Manchuria.
One woman at the Sharing House, however, talks about how she actually fell in love with a Japanese officer who was a regular customer of hers. He was a kamikaze pilot, and he taught her to sing a song in Japanese that poetically describes what he would have to do when he left her. She can still sing it to this day.
It was also strange, even slightly disturbing, to hear about how the Americans treated these women when we liberated Korea. The Americans understood the concept of a brothel, of course, and thus thought that the Japanese had just set up prostitution stations throughout their empire. Before the war was over, but as the Americans took different areas from the Japanese, the Americans would just leave the “brothels” running, never imagining that the Japanese had conscripted these women from their homes. Whenever Dr. P. would talk to one woman in particular, she would say that the Americans were always very nice to her. He later found out that the only reason she thought this was that the Americans would pay her for her services. The Japanese did not.
These days, the women mostly sit around Sharing House and watch television. They receive visits from media people and students and even just curious passersby. Once a week, they go to Seoul to protest at the Japanese embassy because the Japanese government refuses to apologize for the conscriptions. The Japanese view is that reparations paid in accordance with the 1945 treaty was supposed to cover all the atrocities the Japanese military took part in, both known and unknown. Many of the comfort women are still unknown today, in fact. They wait until their husbands die to avoid dishonoring them, and even then they risk being ostracized by the rest of their family if they come forward. Korea is a shame culture, and there is apparently much shame in being a comfort woman, even if you were a victim.
You can visit Sharing House if you ever travel in Korea, and I think I will visit someday this year. They have scheduled times when a translator can be there for those who only speak English. Maybe when I go, though, I will be able to talk a little with these living members of history myself.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Camp the Program Teaching, Part 2
My second teaching experience with English as a Foreign Language (not Second Language, as there’s a big difference) was quite a bit more successful than my attempt at teaching about American Folktales. There were two major reasons for this, I feel. The first is that the Advanced-Intermediate students were a lot better at English than the Low-Intermediate students I had before. The second is that I tried to dumb the lesson down quite a bit—lowered my expectations on comprehension, left myself enough time to explain things thoroughly, and made my production project fairly simple.
The lesson itself was on circumlocution, and by that I mean, we messed around with riddles. I originally thought that circumlocution would be too hard of a word to even bother trying on EFL students, as some of my Program colleagues didn’t even know what it meant. This class was reading The Giver, though, so I tried it anyway. I don’t know if any of them will remember the word, but they understood it well enough when I said, “It just means to talk around something.” Lots of head nods and “OK!”s to that.
As I said, I did the lesson on riddles. To hook them, I used a couple of movie clips from “Batman Forever”, a movie which none of them had seen. (I’m getting old. First my campers at Arrowhead Lutheran Camp didn’t know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song, now this…) We then moved on to looking at some “Who am I?” riddles, which were a hit in general. I had some rather smart cookies who got some of the hard ones even, but the hardest ones no one got, mostly I think because of some gaps in language. After this followed a production section in which they were to write their own riddles. If they could stump me, then they would get a prize of a lollypop. Actually, I understood all of their riddles, but I let them think I was stupid for the sake of giving away candy. Maybe Rebecca H. is right… I am a softy. (Again, I’m getting old.) Smiles all around. A successful lesson. Still, my supervisor, Kiehl C. advised me to stay flexible in the future. Usually lessons built around activities tend to flop. This is worrisome, as I intend to be very “activity” based when using TPR in the Hamlet.
The lesson itself was on circumlocution, and by that I mean, we messed around with riddles. I originally thought that circumlocution would be too hard of a word to even bother trying on EFL students, as some of my Program colleagues didn’t even know what it meant. This class was reading The Giver, though, so I tried it anyway. I don’t know if any of them will remember the word, but they understood it well enough when I said, “It just means to talk around something.” Lots of head nods and “OK!”s to that.
As I said, I did the lesson on riddles. To hook them, I used a couple of movie clips from “Batman Forever”, a movie which none of them had seen. (I’m getting old. First my campers at Arrowhead Lutheran Camp didn’t know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song, now this…) We then moved on to looking at some “Who am I?” riddles, which were a hit in general. I had some rather smart cookies who got some of the hard ones even, but the hardest ones no one got, mostly I think because of some gaps in language. After this followed a production section in which they were to write their own riddles. If they could stump me, then they would get a prize of a lollypop. Actually, I understood all of their riddles, but I let them think I was stupid for the sake of giving away candy. Maybe Rebecca H. is right… I am a softy. (Again, I’m getting old.) Smiles all around. A successful lesson. Still, my supervisor, Kiehl C. advised me to stay flexible in the future. Usually lessons built around activities tend to flop. This is worrisome, as I intend to be very “activity” based when using TPR in the Hamlet.
EFL vs. ESL: Camp Fulbright Teaching, Part 2 Addendum
This was explained to the whole ATEs in a lecture given by Dr. Andrew F. earlier in orientation. Dr. F. is a Scottish English teacher who has worked in Korea for a couple of decades now, I believe, and is considered one of the experts on pedagogy for teaching English to Koreans. (I, and number of people at the Program, think his methods are a little optimistic, as they depend on willing students who are paying an obscene amount of money to go to language institutes after 12 hours a day of public education so they can earn high marks on their entrance exams, not students who are actually in compulsory education like ours will be… but whatever.)
He explained that the difference between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) is huge in terms of pedagogy because in ESL, the student is immersed in English. In other words, when they leave the classroom, they will have to speak English. You can’t assume that in a foreign country, however. In fact, when students in Korea leave the classroom, they will most likely be speaking Korean. Therefore, we must approach the entire process with this aspect of student life in mind. How we are to do this, specifically, he left to our own imaginings.
He explained that the difference between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) is huge in terms of pedagogy because in ESL, the student is immersed in English. In other words, when they leave the classroom, they will have to speak English. You can’t assume that in a foreign country, however. In fact, when students in Korea leave the classroom, they will most likely be speaking Korean. Therefore, we must approach the entire process with this aspect of student life in mind. How we are to do this, specifically, he left to our own imaginings.
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