Phonetically Racist

My first year as an English teacher in South Korea, in addition to my 22 hours of classes per week, I was given the responsibility of teaching an after school debate club, much to my chagrin. There were 4 students enrolled, all boys. One was severely deaf. They were phonetically challenged in a stereotypical Korean fashion. There are significant differences between English and Korean in sentence structure, morphology, subject-verb agreement, and phonology, all of which make it a challenging puzzle for Korean English as a Foreign language students to master, let alone acquire even an elementary passable spoken proficiency of. My students were no different in relation to the law of statistical averages here, each lying firmly within the bell curve distribution of usual egregious errors in consonant pronunciation: 'z' softens to 'j' (pizza reads 'pee-jah'); 'l' hard to distinguish from 'r' (Ryan reads 'Lion'); the consonants of 'p' 'b' and 'v' used almost interchangeably ('very' reads 'berry'), etc. Many of these phonetic distortions are rooted in the discrepancies between the Korean alphabet of Hangeul (한글) and the Roman alphabet, and the resultant non-correspondence with certain phonemes such as in the aforementioned examples.

As one can easily imagine, as a native English speaker, the resultant mispronunciation, butchered cadence and intonation of East Asian students can very easily provoke violent purges of belly laughing from accosting one viscerally. My first year on the job was a great induction into keeping one's shit together professionally. Imagine a nearly deaf Korean student attempting to enunciate the fine phonetic differences of the English language in a 'for' or 'against' position during a mock debate; and all that's audible is a garbled syllable salad that warbles like a radio dial between stations. I should pitch my experience to the Saturday Night Live sketch writing team; sweet Jesus was it rich with material to be mined for comedic affect. It was utterly hilarious in its eager sincerity and yet sad. Imagine the shitty fortune of being born severely deaf, being placed in a foreign language debate club where you are instructed to clearly state your position by successfully articulating clearly the phonetic differences of English (your second language), so different from your native tongue that even your classmates with perfect hearing have trouble accomplishing even satisfactorily. And if that enigma within a riddle within an enigma wasn't enough, try doing that while in front of three of your closest schoolmates who continually mock and smirk while you attempt your impossible speech act formally before the teacher. Meanwhile, the teacher as well, continually looks away so as to manage an almost uncontrollable convulsive laughter from erupting upon to his physiology, breaking a professional countenance and disgracing a kept decorum of educational concern, compassion and correction, and yet the tactful attempts to disguise his laughter are readily noticeable.

Despite my best effort to start slowly with this group of students, it quickly became quite evident during our first or second class that the phonetic difficulties of English were proving to be a much bigger obstacle than initially expected. After giving the introductory lesson on the basics of debate terminology, we established our teams. Our first debate issue was unanimously selected by the students from a list of rudimentary topics: Why zoos are bad for animals. But... as we began with our first mock debate, I noticed a troubling linguistic trend in the small classroom. As each student presented their 'for' or 'against' arguments, I couldn't help but hear the aforementioned topic sentence being effectively enunciated as, "Why [J]ews are bad..." While a bit humorous indeed, as a first year teacher I felt compelled to pause the debate proceeding and give a bit of correction, hoping to bring them into a savvy phonological awareness, as this seemed to be what might be known to a naive rookie English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher as "a teachable moment."

After pausing the debate, I went to the board and had each student repeat again the topic sentence for me so I could effectively highlight the phonological mistakes each and every one of them was making. I drew a 'j' and a 'z' and further instructed the finer points of English phonology and morphology when it came to clear enunciation between two very similar sounding consonants: "j" being an affricate consonant and "z" being an alveolar hissing sibilant. Suffice it to say, sounds that are very foreign to their native Korean tongue and unfamiliar to their linguistic palates. In addition to this, I drew a giant swastika on the board and asked the students what it was. They responded knowledgeably. Then, in a slow deliberate fashion, enunciated again, as they had been doing incorrectly initially and very exaggeratedly and explicitly spelled out the unintended meaning of that minor mistake in phonetic consonant pronunciation. The potential sinister consequences of this slight error in spoken English proficiency became starkly clear to them. But never mind that this was a well-received correction by the collective milieu. Because, just then at my finest moment, I glance to the windowed hallway beside the classroom and notice the after-school program administrator approaching and remember today was the day that he was coming by for a quick photo-shoot for the school newspaper. He not more than 5 strides from the classroom door,

I quickly assessed the grave situation: here i am, a 6'3'' white male with a shaved head, standing in front of an impressionable group of young adolescent Korean debate club students with a giant swastika on the board next to what says boldly in equally giant font, and without a proper accompanying instructive caveat,

"Why Jews are bad..."

The writing was literally on the wall. And with eloquent clairvoyance, the future public relations nightmare, a terminated employment contract, and a revoked visa status acutely registered in my reptilian brain with a surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline - like an oracle or prophecy from a lost-in-translation hell. My precarious fate as a rookie EFL teacher in Korea hung in the lurch between the lumbering locomotive gait of the slovenly, slightly obese, obliviously sauntering after-school club administrator towards the closed classroom door. Newspaper headlines all over Korea soon-to-read: "Foreign guest native English teacher at Such-and-Such Middle School fired for teaching neo-Nazi rhetoric in an after-school debate club in southeastern Seoul."

My first year teaching in a public school in Seoul, South Korea was an interesting one, to say the very least. With no teaching background whatsoever, and zero educational classes taken during my undergraduate years, I had no idea what I was getting into my first year teaching English in an East Asian country. EPIK (English Program in Korea) placed me with the Seoul Ministry of Education in the southeastern section of the city next to the aging grandeur of the Olympic Park area (built for the '88 Olympics) with nothing but a weekend seminar on EFL pedagogy attended. So, there I was standing in front of 44 wayward, highly incorrigible adolescent Korean middle school kids with not one iota of what-the-fuck-to-do. Ah, fuck it, I thought: Keep calm. Look at the English curriculum teacher's manual for the native English teacher's lesson planning guide. Oh shit; it's written completely in Hangul. 'Oh-fuck' moment numero uno. Okay, ask the bitchy pumpkin headed co-teacher, Ahn Hee Jeong, that sits next to you in the claustrophobic office what to do: "It's you [sic] class, Ryan Teacher. You make plan [sic]." Strike two. Okay; fuck it: I'll make some worksheets. Standing at the copy machine with my worksheet to copy, peering down at the machine, I take notice: It's all in Korean. Strike three. I'm out. Nice. What was I expecting? Fuck me sideways. Twenty-two 45 minute classes per week; 44 incorrigible barely English speaking adolescent students per class, and absolutely not one fucking semblance of a decent idea of what the fuck to do. Palpable panic ensues.

And I forgot to mention, despite being a "subject teacher" I was given no classroom; I was expected to move to each classroom - that's 22 different classrooms, occupied with 22 different gangs of students. It's adolescent psychology 101 what not to do, to give students a classroom and make the teachers rotate and come "teach" them. They own that physical space, or at least they act like they do. You're entering their turf. It's their rules. You're an outsider. So, you should fall in line, not them - is what their entitled under-sized hormonal adolescent brains think. As if the deck wasn't stacked against me enough, for whatever brilliant reason, the school administration also decided to make the ingenious Confucian decision to separate each grade level by gender. So, you can imagine the difficulties created, especially in a class full of hormonal Freshman boys without the presence of females to mitigate their chaotic, directionless and mostly unconstructive energy without the preoccupation with "looking cool" in front of the opposite sex to temper the classroom dynamic.