Student Accomplishments
A couple months ago I wrote about a few of our students who were competing in the regional stage of our franchise’s English speaking competition - some performing in a play while one girl was participating in a debate. While the girl who entered the debate failed to win the regional competition she did qualify for the national final through the disqualification of all the other finalists at the north Gyeonggi-do debate. With this in mind we didn’t expect her to do very well at the national finals, but she advanced out of the preliminary round and eventually finished in joint third - taking home a bronze medal and a check for 400,000 Won.
Our academy director was thrilled by her performance and later commented that she was successfully able to recite several of the prompts that he had written out for her memorize. This makes it sound like she succeeded through better memorization rather than actual debate skills, although I suppose that might be a better skill to have when it comes to doing well on the standardized tests everyone is expected to take in Korea. Essays seem to be extremely rare here - even at the university level - so being able to argue a point isn’t as useful as having the ability to memorize information.
Public schools here in our part of Uijeongbu held their own English speaking competitions earlier this month, and we had five of our students take first place for their respective grades in elementary school. Students worked in groups to create skits, with two of them making their way to my desk for review. One of the scripts involved Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, focusing how Snow White was trying to feed the dwarfs junk food. The moral of their story was that people should pay more attention to what they eat -- going with local produce, preferably organic, over heavily processed alternatives. The second skit involved air pollution and deforestation and how these were quickly becoming important issues in Korea.
[ Jenn, one of the students who placed second in the regional English speaking competition ]
Finally, several students from our academy participated in the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) Bridge examination at the start of the fall. The TOEIC Bridge is the junior equivalent to the TOEIC exam which is used as an indicator of English proficiency in both business and academic settings. High-ranking schools and businesses usually require a high score on the TOEIC, and every resume I've edited for a Korean friend has included this information. It should not come as a surprise to hear that one of the best ways to get a high score is to attend a private institution, although this is certainly not a cheap option. With that in mind, I've heard it claimed that requiring high TOEIC scores is an informal way of promoting class discrimination and "old boy" networks, as only well-off families can afford the years of extra educational fees necessary to do well on the exam and qualify for these upper-echelon positions.
There was a lot of buzz when the test scores were released, not only from seeing how well our students compared to each other but also because it looks like one of our students received - if I heard correctly - the highest score in Korea for that particular testing session. This student always does extremely well in class but is also quite modest about his abilities. He's also a good artist and has a habit of drawing sketches on his tests, most recently drawing a picture of a minotaur with 'TEST' written (tattooed?) across his abdomen and a halo of flames roaring in the background. Oh, this is the same student who brought up echidnas earlier in the year.
I don't know how schools in Uijeongbu compare to those in Seoul. However, a recent report from Yonhap News mentioned that the neighboring district of Nowon-gu (노원구) in the far north of the nation's capital rated very highly on the number of high school students entering four-year universities. Frankly, given the high prices and how often I hear people talk about the large number of private academies in the upper-class neighborhood of Gangnam-gu (강님구) - south of the Han River - I'm kind of surprised that district didn't top the list. Guess I should do some exploring in Nowon to see what it's like down there.