Post-64: Refusing a Nickel

I give out U.S. coins as prizes every now and then to the Korean students.

It’s mostly pennies, nickels, and dimes. Once or twice, I offered a gold-dollar coin as a big, end-of-semester prize to a winner of one contest or other.

Often, the kids are dazzled by these coins.

I happened to pocket some nickels for that purpose one day this past week. I had the idea to give them out as prizes in the “T1” class which consists of 7th and 8th graders. Earlier that day, though, I’d bought something and gotten change, so I had some 100-Won pieces (equivalent to about 10 U.S. cents) in my pocket, too. I didn’t remember this. They all got mixed together.

A little “social experiment” came together in my mind when I realized I had coins from both countries. I offered well-performing students a choice between a nickel and a 100-won piece.

This can only count as anecdote, because the sample size was tiny, but…. I noticed that the lethargic, unambitious, quieter students — who tended to be lower-ability — opted for the 100-won coin, while the students who seem more optimistic about English, are more talkative in class, and who seem to be of higher-ability, chose the nickel.

I don’t think this should be a surprise. The motivation is the same:
— Type #1’s thinking:“I can buy things with 100-Won coin, but that nickel is of no use to me.”
— Type #2’s thinking: “Although I could use the 100-Won coin, the nickel is something new and fascinating; I’ve never possessed one, or even held one in my hand before. The nickel is much more appealing!” 

It’s clear which kind of student-temperament would tend to do better in language learning.

It’s also tempting to extrapolate this simple coin-choice “experiment” into an entire Weltanschauung, as above. Although that leap may be both reckless and hasty, it really makes sense to me. It also, I think, could point to why Koreans are (collectively) so famously-bad at learning English, despite their huge commitment to it for so long: The Type #1 attitude (above) prevails in this society. Most Koreans, I think, see English as not relevant to their lives beyond some piece-of-paper that says they got such-and-such a score, qualifying them for this-or-that.

This “#1” attitude even dominates most hagwons (language-learning institutes, at which I work), it seems to me. I was just thinking about the fact that my present-place-of-employment has a whole lot of signs hanging on the walls. They are all in Korean only. If this hagwon were committed to English, it would put them in both languages.