Some Stumbles with My Korean Students

Hello Cryptoworld!

As I have mentioned a couple of days ago, I would post small fragments of my essay about my experience teaching overseas (till 2008). This post I was expected to do yesterday, but I was with no energy to achieve it last evening.

Note that the essay was prepared to participate in an international conference in 2009. Due to obvious reasons of unemployment, it was not possible to attend.

(Images generated by IA)
This is the continuation of my post: . Also the complete version in Spanish:

One of the first observations that surprised me was the difficulty that Koreans face among themselves in developing friendship. On one occasion, I recommended to a student that he practice with his classmates, especially with those who were bilingual.
He replied:
”They are not my friends."
His response left me confused. And I could only manage to tell him that we would practice more in class.

On another occasion, while we were reviewing the assignments they had submitted in writing and taking advantage of the errors that arose—without mentioning names, of course—a student suddenly started to cry. The first thing that came to my mind was to stop the class, and we arranged ourselves in a circle to listen to each other's opinions about the review of assignments and the idea of learning from mistakes. I think my student calmed down. After that, I got used to warning them that the mistakes we corrected were not meant to make them feel bad, but to improve by identifying them in group. And that the same mistake was generally repeated by other students.

That student called herself Gabriela (oh, because they choose their names in Spanish—months later, they might change their minds and pick another name).That it reassured me to hear opinions that calmed the tense atmosphere, especially from the boys who had experience living in Latin countries. It was an improvised reaction, but it conveyed the message that there was no intention to single anyone out, that the mistakes of some were present in others, and reflecting together helps everyone improve. So, afterwards, I had to be more delicate with group reviews.

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