How you say ... ?

[Bruce Brakel]

With Kiralyn off to college Diana has been looking for work, and it is not exactly a job seekers market in Michigan.  But Diana found a part-time job through a friend teaching English to South Koreans.  The friend is actually the manager for North American operations, which means she recruits teachers.  Her kids did plays and musicals with Kiralyn. 

The South Korean students are in South Korea, mostly working for international corporations, and they all need better English skills to get on the upward track.  They do lessons by Internet voice-only telephone.  The students can pick their teacher, but they first have to pick a time, and if their choice for a teacher is not available, they get assigned to some other teacher.  And all they know about their teacher is a first name, picture and state.  Diana  Michigan.  That's about it. 

So the other day two new students both said they were really glad to get Diana for their teacher because she was their first pick.  Diana asked both why they picked her and they said they liked her picture.  Well, that was odd, Diana thought, because she never got around to giving her boss-friend her picture because she could not find a good picture to use. 

So the next time she talked to her boss-friend she was like, "Hey, what's up with my picture?  My students say they really like my picture."  And her friend said, "Oh, you did not get me a picture in time, so I just used a picture of Kiralyn."  I told Diana, "You probably don't need to do anything about that, you know?"



Diana

Michigan

[Bruce Brakel]

So Diana's students have all the same pronunciation and grammar problems as the Asian stereotype.  They drop the articles "the" and "a", have difficulty pronouncing "r", and when "r" follows a vowel, they drop the r.  They also have difficulties remembering which syllable to emphasize in three and four syllable words. 

Diana was doing a lesson today with one of her favorite students.  The topic was American and Korean customs for showing respect in the workplace towards co-workers and bosses.  At first Diana was shocked by what she was hearing and then she realized that her student was just dropping an r in the middle of a word.  So she interrupted him saying, "O.k., until you can pronounce the letter r in 'or' and 'ar' don't ever describe your boss as 'important.'"  He is absolutely clueless and she says, "Well, the way you are pronouncing it, it sounds like you are saying something about his ability to father children."